On April 12, President Donald Trump wrote on X:  “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. We don’t like a pope who says it’s OK to have a Nuclear Weapon.”         

Despite his escalating attacks on Pope Leo XIV over the pontiff’s opposition to the Iran war, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans has climbed to 86%. The poll was conducted by The Economist and YouGov on April 15. 

This includes high-ranking Republican leaders like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: “A pontiff or any religious leader can say anything they want, but obviously, if you wade into political waters, I think you should expect some political response, and I think the pope’s received some of that.” 

Mike Johnson

And not to be outdone, Vice President JD Vance-–a Catholic convert who often calls himself deeply religious—said: “I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

So much for the current actions of a Right-wing dictator. Now for those of a past one.

In 2005, Avvenire (“Future”), a daily newspaper which is affiliated with the Catholic Church and based in Milan, Italy, carried a story about Adolf Hitler’s plots to kidnap Pope Pius XII in 1943 and 1944.

The plots were part of a wider plan to “abolish” Christianity and replace it with a religion in which Hitler would be worshipped as the savior of humankind.

But instead of kidnapping the Pope, SS General Karl Wolff, in charge of the SS in Italy, went to the Vatican to warn Pope Pius XII of the danger he faced.

Wolff, who survived World War II, revealed the affair in a March 24, 1972 written statement to Vatican officials weighing the case for setting Pope Pius on the road to sainthood. 

Karl Wolff 

Jmac66999, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Previously, Wolff testified at the Nuremberg trials that Hitler had talked of seizing the Pope in 1943. With Italy in ruins from Allied bombings and Italian armies defeated or in retreat everywhere, Italians were desperate for peace.

On July 25, Hitler’s fellow Fascist, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini—who had held power since 1922—was overthrown. Summoned to the royal palace by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, he was arrested and taken to a police station in an ambulance.

He was eventually transferred to the Hotel Campo Imperatore, in Italy’s Gran Sasso mountain range.

On September 12, 1943, he was rescued through a daring German airborne operation. German paratroopers and Waffen-SS special forces landed to free him from his imprisonment.

Although he was officially restored to power, he remained strictly a puppet of Hitler. His symbolic reign came to an end on April 28, 1945, when he was executed by Italian partisans.

Benito Mussolini

Hitler exploded in rage at the news of Mussolini’s arrest—and ordered German troops in Italy to take over the country: “Drive into Rome and arrest the whole Italian government! Get the King and the whole bunch right away! Arrest the Crown Prince and the whole gang! Pack them into a plane and off with them!” 

Several generals asked what should be done with the Vatican.

Hitler replied: “I’ll go right into the Vatican! Do you think the Vatican embarrasses me? We’ll take that over right away. The entire diplomatic corps are in there. That rabble! We’ll get that bunch of swine out of there! Later we can make apologies!” 

In September, 1943, Hitler decided to occupy the Vatican, “secure the archives and the art treasures, which have a unique value, and transfer the pope, together with the curia [the papal bureaucracy], for their protection, so that they cannot fall into the hands of the allies and exert a political influence.”

Hitler feared the Pope would speak out against the Nazis’ deportation of Jews, and wanted to eliminate the Church as a political force in Italy.

Pope Pius XII

The plan allegedly involved 2,000 SS troops blocking all Vatican exits to seize the Pope and cardinals. Proposed destinations for the kidnapped Pope included Liechtenstein or Lichtenstein Castle in Württemberg, Germany.

Wolff talked the Fuhrer out of the scheme, warning that it would prove an international political disaster. But in 1944, Hitler returned to the subject.

By May, 1944, American forces were advancing northwards through Italy, so Wolff had to shed his SS uniform when appearing in public.

On May 10, Wolff, wearing civilian clothes, met with Pope Pius XII in secret and warned him that he was in danger. He also assured the pontiff that he would not carry out the order. 

Pius asked Wolf to save the lives of two condemned prisoners, and this was arranged.

Nevertheless, fearing abduction, Pope Pius XII prepared a resignation letter to take effect immediately upon his arrest. The College of Cardinals would flee to neutral Portugal to elect a successor. 

The Germans evacuated Rome on the night of June 4-5, 1944.

Eighty-two years after Pope Pius XII faced the threat of terror by Adolf Hitler, an American-born Pope—Leo XIV—faces the threat of terror by Donald Trump.

It’s become commonplace for liberals to attack President Donald Trump as a reincarnated Adolf Hitler—and Republicans as Nazis.       

And Republicans furiously deny this, even as they embrace many of the same tactics—if not the goals—of Nazi Germany’s onetime rulers.

Throughout his first term as President, Trump adopted Hitler’s method of “negotiation” “Do what I want—or I’ll destroy you!” And it has remained so since his re-taking office on January 20, 2025. 

On February 28, Trump—in concert with Israel—launched a series of devastating, unprovoked airstrikes against Iran.          

Asked by a reporter how long the war would last, Trump arrogantly replied: “Any time I want it to end, it will end.” 

But then Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% to 30% of the world’s total daily oil supply passes.

Gas prices in the United States immediately rose. Analysts warned that if the disruption continued, gasoline prices could exceed $5 per gallon.

Strait of Hormuz

Facing an apparently unwinnable war that he had started, Trump found himself facing an unexpected opponent: Pope Leo X1V.

According to Christopher Hale, a political consultant and the editor of the popular Letters from Leo newsletter: Trump’s Pentagon has threatened to declare war on the Vatican.

“In January [2026], behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre—-Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States—and delivered a lecture,” said Hale in an interview. 

“America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world,” Colby and his associates told the cardinal. “The Catholic Church had better take its side.” 

One American official “reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.”

Two weeks after the confrontation, the Vatican declined Trump’s invitation to host Pope Leo for the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary in July, 2026. 

The Vatican obelisk in St. Paul’s Square

Livioandronico2013, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

According to sources in the Vatican and Americans briefed on the Pentagon meeting: Colby’s team studied the Pope’s January state-of-the-world address. They decided it was an attack on Trump. 

What “enraged them most” was Leo’s line: “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.” 

“The Pentagon read that sentence as a frontal challenge to the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’”— Trump’s self-named update of the Monroe Doctrine.

Issued by President James Monroe on December 2, 1823, it officially prohibited European colonization and interference in the Western Hemisphere. And it was backed by the threat of an armed response to any such attempt.

On April 12, 2026, Pope Leo said that praying for peace was a way to “break the demonic cycle of evil” to build instead the Kingdom of God where there are no swords, drones or “unjust profit.

Pope Leo XIV

“It is here that we find a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive,” he said. “Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death.”

On April 12, in talking to reporters, Trump furiously attacked the Pope: “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.”  He charged that the Pope was not “doing a very good job” and that “he’s a very liberal person.” He suggested that the pontiff should “stop catering to the Radical Left.” 

On X, Trump wrote: “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. We don’t like a pope who says it’s OK to have a Nuclear Weapon.”

This from a man who was convicted of 34 felonies on May 30, 2024. A New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal hush-money payments made to porn “star” Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. 

And he continued:  

“Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!

“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States.

Donald Trump

“I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do. 

“Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

Just as the majority of Nazis rallied around Adolf Hitler, so have Republicans rallied around Donald Trump.

Despite his escalating attacks on Pope Leo X1V over the pontiff’s opposition to the Iran war, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans climbed to 86%. The poll was conducted by The Economist and YouGov on April 15.