Matthew Remsky, Derek, and Julian dissect Pope Leo XIV's escalating feud with Donald Trump over AI-generated blasphemy and geopolitical stances. They trace the conflict from Trump's Truth Social attacks on Leo's Iran policy to Christian nationalists like Marjorie Taylor Greene labeling an AI Jesus-Trump image as antichrist. Analyzing Leo's Holy Week liturgy through liberation theology, the hosts highlight a historic rift where conservative Catholics are alienated by evangelical Christian Zionism and anti-Semitism. Ultimately, this implosion reveals three deepening fissures: the Vatican-Trump dispute, theological splits over Israel, and grassroots disillusionment, suggesting progressive churches must now house displaced religious voters. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Sponsor Spotlight: Jordan Harbinger Show00:02:03
We've got a very different kind of sponsor for this episode, the Jordan Harbinger Show, a podcast you should definitely check out since you're a fan of high quality, fascinating podcasts hosted by interesting people.
The show covers a wide range of topics through weekly interviews with heavy hitting guests, and there are a ton of episodes you'll find interesting.
Since you're a fan of this show, I'd recommend our listeners check it out.
We have a fair amount of overlap.
You know, Jordan recently did an episode on remote viewing and how the U.S. government spent millions of dollars on this.
ESP pseudoscience.
You might also look up an episode called Saving Bros Soul from Alt Right Rabbit Hole.
Anyway, you can't go wrong with adding the Jordan Harbinger show to your rotation.
It's incredibly interesting.
There's never a dull show.
Search for the Jordan Harbinger show.
That's H A R B as in boy, I N as in Nancy G E R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Learning English is hard.
That's why I make easy stories in English, where you can have Fun while you learn.
You can listen to stories full of action, romance, and mystery.
Each episode, I tell stories for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners, and there's a story for every mood.
Whether you want something to wake you up or relax before going to bed, Easy Stories in English is the podcast for you.
Hey everyone, this is Matthew Remsky.
This is Conspirituality.
Where we investigate the roots and intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
You can follow myself, Derek, and Julian on Blue Sky.
The podcast is on Instagram and threads under its own handle.
You can support our Patreon, and you can also find me on YouTube and TikTok as Anti Fascist Dad.
Leo's Diplomatic Twitter Response00:15:48
This is a brief episode called Pope Leo versus AI slop Jesus Trump.
On April 12th, Donald Trump posted the following to Truth Social Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy.
You know what?
He actually didn't say that out loud.
That's just some Trump AI to bring his truth or shit to life.
In his post, he claimed that Leo thinks it's acceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.
He objected to Leo's criticism of the Venezuela attack.
And he asserted that Leo only became Pope because the church wanted an American who could manage Trump, concluding, If I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican.
He also demanded that Leo stop catering to the radical left and focus on being a great Pope, not a politician, warning it is hurting him very badly, and more importantly, it's hurting the Catholic Church.
Now, this churned up a backlash from the Catholic MAGA crowd.
Even Bishop Robert Bootlicker Barron, who I profiled a month ago here, issued a mild rebuke.
Quote, the statements made by President Trump on Truth Social regarding the Pope were entirely inappropriate and disrespectful.
And then Barron went on to thank him for including him on the Religious Liberty Commission.
Now, Trump sensed blood in the water, and he's increasingly unable to read the room.
And so he couldn't resist following this up with some AI slop of himself dressed as Jesus in a Renaissance painting, laying his hand on a dying man's head while he's carrying a bead of light in his other hand.
And, you know, it's AI, so it's weird.
There are even four demon looking shadows hovering above his head in the background.
And within hours, more rage ensued, this time from his white Christian nationalist core.
And it eventually forced him to delete it.
But we have Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, I completely denounce this and I'm praying against it.
It's more than blasphemy, it's an antichrist spirit.
Milo Yiannopoulos, who's actually a Catholic now, I missed that, says, Oh, hell no.
We tolerated this kind of meme against our better judgment because he promised to save America, and only when it was clear he didn't actually think he was the Messiah.
Megan Basham on The Daily Wire writes outrageous blasphemy.
He needs to take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God.
And then anti trans activist and fifth place swimming star Riley Gaines wrote, Why?
Seriously?
I cannot understand why he'd post this.
Is he looking for a response?
Does he actually think this?
Either way, two things are true.
One, a little humility would serve him well.
And two, God shall not be mocked.
And finally, Sean Foyt, the Christian rocker who led MAGA worship protest concerts, wrote, This should be deleted immediately.
There is no context where this is acceptable.
Now, it wasn't just influencers, though.
The outrage actually seeped inward towards Trump's cabinet because Pastor Joel Webbin, who has been boosted by Defense Secretary. Pete Hegseth wrote on X that he genuinely believes that Trump is currently demon possessed.
And he then followed up by posting a video asking Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?
Now, in response to the Truth Social Post, Leo Unruffled gave a statement to his press pool on the plane as they traveled to Algeria for the start of a four country papal tour.
I do not look at my role as being political or politician.
I don't want to get into a debate with him.
I don't think that the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing.
And I will continue to speak out loud against war, looking to promote peace.
Promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems.
Too many people are suffering in the world today.
Too many innocent people are getting killed.
And I think someone has to stand up and say, there's a better way to do this.
Thank you very much.
So I think this is a diplomatic response.
It's also pretty clever, given that he's obviously politically engaged.
I also think it's an effective response in appealing to the third way brain of Catholics who put their faith before their political affiliation, whether that's coherent or not.
But what was Trump really lashing out at?
Well, a few hours before his shitpost, three U.S. cardinals backed Leo's call for peace on 60 Minutes, with Cardinal Robert McElroy stating the Iran conflict fails the just war test under Catholic teaching and is a war of choice, as he put it.
Now, those bishops were clearly rallied by Leo's statements.
On April 10th, between 9 and 9 15 a.m. Eastern, Leo posted these three bangers.
Right to X.
The first one is this Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are immersed in extreme poverty, yet, disproportionate wealth remains in the hands of a few.
It is an unjust scenario in the face of which we cannot fail to question ourselves and commit to change things.
There is no lack of resources at the root of disparities, but the need to address solvable problems related to a more equitable distribution of wealth to be achieved with moral sense and honesty.
Five minutes later.
Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously through the sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, with no regard for people's lives, which are considered at most collateral damage of self interest.
But no gain can be worth the life of the weakest, children, or families.
No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.
And then, five minutes after that, God does not bless any conflict.
Anyone who is a disciple of Christ.
The Prince of Peace is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.
Military action will not create space for freedom or times of peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.
So, in posts on X, and he's out there every day, and also public audiences that he's giving several times a week, the Pope is punching hard and connecting the disastrous and illegal war on Iran and Israel's attacks on Lebanon to the systemic effects of capitalist greed.
Given all of the fascist enabling religious and spiritual influences we cover here on this podcast, I think it's worth periodically reviewing this unlikely source of anti fascist populism, including its flaws and contradictions, and also including how it is opening up a rift in American Christianity.
Because for 50 years, Catholics have provided theological cover for the 1970s cynical evangelical turn into anti abortion polemics.
Most Protestant denominations viewed reproductive freedom as an economic issue with racist undertones.
In other words, brown people already have too many babies.
But once the Republicans of the era, including Reagan and the Bush family, realized that flipping their position would split the Democratic vote down religious lines, Catholics, who were once marginalized in American politics, became a new target demographic and their clerics were recruited into culture war discourse.
Now, The Catholic Church has not shifted its policies on reproductive freedom for women or women's rights in general, but its dogmatic anti abortion position, framed as pro life, carries a presumed moral consistency that can now push back against rising fascism as migrants are attacked in the street and disappeared, and as the White House flaunts any possible application of just war theory.
That consistency is playing a considerable role in exposing the incoherence of the MAGA.
Christian coalition.
Quote, it was always a fragile and improbable alliance born of the political and not the religious.
That's from Robert Orsi at Northwestern.
And Christopher Hale, the journalist who covers Pope Leo from the left and from the Vatican, quote, conservative Catholics who spent years building an alliance with evangelical Protestants are waking up to find that their allies consider their faith a species of paganism and their sacraments a blasphemy.
It's worth assembling a bit of a timeline here.
Leo started his geopolitical jousting back in November of 2025 with remarks backing U.S. Catholic bishops on immigration.
Quote We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.
If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that.
There are courts, there's a system of justice.
Now, on immigration, Leo doesn't fully sort of go into the internationalist Marxist ideals of the liberation theologians, he often quotes.
He says things like, No one has said that the United States should have open borders.
I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.
But on January 9th, in an address to ambassadors of states and Holy See diplomatic relations, Leo lifted a moistened finger to the wind as he turned to the subject of war.
War is back in vogue, he said, and a zeal for war is spreading.
The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.
Now, there's a little bit of American idealism there, of course, suggesting that the Cold War was in fact cold, which it wasn't.
But he goes on, quote, peace is no longer sought as a gift and desirable good in itself.
Instead, peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one's own dominion.
This gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.
So he called for, quote, a return to a diplomacy of sincere negotiations, not the diplomacy of weapons.
Then comes March 1st.
This is the day after the US and Israel launched their first missile salvos at Iran.
And Leo is speaking to thousands in St. Peter's Square, saying that the world is faced with the possibility of a tragedy of enormous proportions.
I address to the parties involved a heartfelt appeal to assume the moral responsibility of halting the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss.
A week later, he's in the square again.
He extends his remarks Deeply disturbing news continues to arrive from Iran and the entire Middle East.
In addition to the episodes of violence and devastation, as well as the widespread climate of hatred and fear, there's also the concern that the conflict will spread and that other countries in the region, including beloved Lebanon, may again sink back into instability.
Of course, this has happened.
We lift up our humble prayer to the Lord so that the thunderous sound of bombs may cease, weapons may fall silent, and a space for dialogue may open up in which the voice of the people can be heard.
On the 15th, March 15th, he calls for a ceasefire.
On the 23rd, speaking to Lufthansa staff at the Vatican, he rude the usage of aircraft for aerial bombardment.
But I think that it's at the start of Holy Week, at the Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square, that he turns to a more direct confrontation with the White House.
Because a few days prior, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had hosted a prayer meeting at the Pentagon.
In which he repeated the prayer offered by the commander of the raid that had captured Nicolas Maduro.
Here's part of that speech Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.
Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.
Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse.
Evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.
For the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.
So Leo, whose name of course means lion, responded saying, Brothers and sisters, this is our God, Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.
He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying, Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.
Your hands are full of blood.
And then Leo pivots into a full on liberation theology register, which will characterize the rest of his Holy Week appearances.
Quote As we set our gaze upon him who was crucified for us, we can see a crucified humanity.
In his wounds, we see the hurts of so many women and men today.
In his last cry to the Father, we hear the weeping of those who are crushed, who have no hope, who are sick, and who are alone.
Above all, we hear the painful groans of all those who are oppressed by violence and are victims of war.
Christ, King of Peace, cries out again from his cross God is love, have mercy, lay down your weapons, remember that you are brothers and sisters.
So that's Palm Sunday.
On Thursday, he's back on Twitter with this extraordinary tweet, which I'll spend some time on The cross is part of the mission.
The imperialist occupation of the world is disrupted from within.
The violence that until now has been the law is unmasked.
The poor, imprisoned, and rejected Messiah descends into the darkness of death, yet in so doing, he brings a new creation to light.
And I'm going to take some time with this because I think it's extraordinary, but I'll start by saying that every once in a while, something lights up the social channels in a way that shows what people are otherwise hiding.
The number of respondents to and sharers of this tweet in particular who revealed their post Catholic or collapsed Catholic or gutter Catholic selves lighting up was kind of amazing.
These are people who never talk about their heritage because it's private, and they're suddenly overcome with the need to gesture, to point at, and wonder.
And my favorite among hundreds of responses was from Nora Laredo, who's an independent leftist journalist here in Canada who does a lot of great work covering the NDP, but also right wing extremism.
She retweeted the Pope with a quote tweet Be right back.
I'm just pouring contempt on all my pride.
And she's remembering a hymn that we all sang on Good Friday When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride.
This is Written by the English nonconformist and father of English hymnody, Isaac Watts, who published it in his Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1707.
Liberation Theology and Marxist Lens00:03:33
But my favorite aspect is that Laredo's quote tweet is expressing humility not toward the cross, but towards Leo's capacity to intervene on Twitter, which is a cesspool of pride.
So, as to the tweet itself, since Leo XIV is highly educated in and fond of liberation theology, I read it through a Marxist lens because, to my ear, it's a powerful description of the development of liberatory consciousness through contradiction.
So he starts by saying the cross is part of the mission, and it's an opening that sets the stage for a meditation on transformative conflict.
So the cross of history can be seen as the symbol of a horizontal flow of events interrupted by vertical revolutions.
And also in liberation theology, the cross is the instrument of state torture, which is ongoing and suffered by all bodies under capitalism, especially those in the global south.
Also, I think the meaning of mission here is close to the German Sendung, or the idea that workers and the poor are sent to transform the unjust society.
He goes on, the imperialist occupation of the world is disrupted from within.
I mean, come on.
I see two braided meanings here.
So, first, capitalist imperialism always contains the seeds of its own destruction in the form of class conflict and the crises of inequality.
Secondly, the microcosm of this.
Is one's own conscience as one contemplates the ways in which one and everything one loves are exploited, and one can no longer pretend it's okay.
One's heart becomes disruptive.
Quote The violence that until now has been the law is unmasked.
In Christian terms, Leo is likely referring here to a very old covenant of patriarchal control that's undone by the innocence of the human child.
But through Marx, we can think about how genocide and immoral war and extreme exploitation of the poor are not only permitted, but encouraged, incentivized, made to seem normal and inevitable.
He goes on the poor, imprisoned, and rejected Messiah descends into the darkness of death.
And here I see that the worker must experience.
Her labor is alien, her working conditions as hostile, her social relations as transactional.
She has to feel the full weight of what capital does to human life, and then things will become clear.
Lukacs said that the worker is both the product of capitalist relations and the only agent of its transformation.
And so a descent into full alienation is the condition for seeing through it.
There's no way out but through, as they said in Andor.
And what kind of death are we talking about?
In liberation theology, this is the death of the naive self that thinks it is free, that thinks it is an autonomous individual who owns its labor and enters contracts voluntarily, the self who believes it's a frustrated millionaire or who thinks that power will bless you if you are polite and follow the rules.
In short, it's a self that believes its freedom is real, its suffering is deserved, and its liberation will come individually.
And once that false self dies, here's Leo's last line He brings a new creation to light.
So that was Holy Thursday.
Walking the Stations of the Cross00:03:08
At the Good Friday liturgy of the Stations of the Cross, Leo got even more direct.
There's video of him that went viral carrying a model cross for the more than hour long service.
And then there came the quotes from the liturgy itself.
Now, for you non Catholics out there, there are 14 Stations of the Cross that walk through the scriptural accounts of Jesus' arrest by Roman soldiers, his kangaroo trial, and then the torture, crucifixion, death.
And his disciples laying him to rest.
The practice goes back to pilgrimage rituals in Jerusalem, where early Christians walked along what's called the Via Dolorosa, or the route Christ traveled to Calvary.
As pilgrimage became impossible for most believers, the devotion was localized to each church.
Franciscans were responsible for that because they took custody of the Holy Land sites in 1342, and they became the primary promoters of the Stations of the Cross throughout Europe, erecting outdoor shrine sequences at monasteries and churches.
Now, the number of stations has always varied.
There's sometimes been seven, there's been as many as 30.
But Pope Clement XII standardized 14 stations in 1731, and the devotion has since become central to Catholic piety, serving as a reenactment of the Passion that's accessible to ordinary folk.
There are pictures or sculptures at each station, even for those who cannot read, and to this day, The 14 stations are in every church, often arranged so that the last one puts you right in front of the tabernacle.
So Leo gets to the eighth station, which is called Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem, and they read that passage from Luke that describes him stopping to speak to the weeping women.
And then there is this commentary written by Father Francesco Patton, who is not anyone who's terribly well known, not much on him, but he's Written the commentaries for this particular liturgy, and this is what he says about the eighth station From the beginning of your ministry, Jesus, women have followed you and cared for you.
They are there even now, standing at the foot of the cross.
Women are present wherever there is suffering or need in hospitals and nursing homes, in communities dedicated to care and providing shelter, in foster homes for the most vulnerable children, opening schools and clinics in the most remote mission lands, and tending to the wounded and comforting survivors in war zones and areas of conflict.
Women have taken you seriously, and even now they take to heart your demanding words.
For centuries they have wept for themselves and for their children, children taken away and imprisoned during protests, deported by policies devoid of compassion, shipwrecked on desperate journeys of hope, killed in war zones, and wiped out in death camps.
Okay, that's the eighth station.
Evangelical Split Over Trumpism00:03:28
At the tenth station, Jesus is stripped of his garments, and here's the commentary there.
This violation is repeated time and again, even today.
When authoritarian regimes force prisoners to remain half naked in bare cells or courtyards, when torturers tear away not only clothing but also skin and flesh, when authorities permit forms of surveillance and intrusion that disregard human dignity, when rapists and abusers reduce their victims to mere objects, when the entertainment industry exploits nudity for the sake of profit, when the media exposes individuals to public opinion, and even when we ourselves, through our curiosity,
fail to respect the modesty, Intimacy and privacy of others.
So I have to say that as a cradle and now post Catholic, it's kind of extraordinary to watch these guys use these very old rituals to speak directly into the fire of the present.
So, Trump had to delete the AI slop icon of himself.
But that's not going to stem the tide.
About 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, and a large portion of them are Christian Zionists.
Catholics were much more split in their vote, roughly 50 50 or 60 40 on partisan affiliation.
And that voting block is teetering.
And adding fuel to the fire, we have far right Catholic converts like Candace Owens who are actively inflaming the Catholic evangelical split by framing opposition to Israel as a distinctly Catholic position.
While consistently lashing out with anti Semitism, JD Vance, for his part, is trying to quell tensions between Trump and the Pope, but he's also telling the Pope, hey, you should stick to church stuff.
There are also reports of quiet quitting among evangelicals and Catholics alike.
And what this looks like is pastors and priests avoiding political sermons, but at the same time helping folks disengage from MAGA, particularly over images of federal agents arresting immigrants near churches and schools.
The Trump administration's decision to lift bans on ICE operations inside churches jolted a lot of those who supported him back in 2024.
So here we are, with at least three deepening fissures.
First, the Vatican Trump feud over Iran and immigration, now personalized through an American pope.
Secondly, a deeper evangelical Catholic theological split over Israel and Christian Zionism that Trumpism has just tried to paper over.
And third, a grassroots disillusionment among moderately religious voters horrified by immigration enforcement atrocities and really bad memes.
So it's all very volatile at the moment.
And my personal hope is that the progressive churches throughout the U.S. of whatever denomination are strategizing hard currently to think about how they're going to provide spaces of welcome for the inevitable flood of refugees that will stream out of this impending Trump MAGA church implosion.
As somebody who's done a lot of journalism on cults and people recovering from cultic dynamics, I know that there's going to be a lot of people who need a place to land.