Pope Leo XIV has positioned himself as the most political pope in many years. The consequences are being felt in Israel and the territories as well
Last Sunday, exactly one week after Easter, the U.S. president took to social media to launch an attack on the pope. Donald Trump declared that Leo XIV was “weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy,” adding that the first American-born pope would not have been elected without his help.
The background to the sharp post on Truth Social was a report aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” in which three cardinals criticized the war in Iran. The very act of cardinals daring to speak out so publicly was unusual, reflecting an accelerated political-strategic shift in the Church’s stance since Leo ascended to the Holy See. The day after Trump’s furious response, the pope took another unusual step: He held a public conversation with journalists and directly criticized a head of state – which is almost unprecedented. “I have no fear of the Trump administration,” he asserted.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest, most powerful and wealthiest in the world. Its 1.4 billion adherents include tens of millions of Americans – among them six Supreme Court justices, the vice president and the secretary of state and, since last May, a pope. The Church traditionally avoids public political intervention. But after less than a year in office, Leo is showing growing impatience with his homeland. The war in Iran pushed him to make an unusual statement and Trump’s backlash has apparently only strengthened his resolve to leverage his global influence.
The shift in relations with Washington emerged in January, with the pope’s first annual address on the state of the world. Like most of his predecessors, he expressed a message in support of the poor and downtrodden, and against wars. The Trump administration was not pleased. The right-wing news site Free Press reported that Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby summoned the veteran Vatican ambassador, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, to the Pentagon for a dressing-down and threats. According to the site, Colby reprimanded the envoy and emphasized that “the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants.” He even reminded the cardinal of the Avignon Papacy – the period in the 14th century when agents of the king of France violently attacked the pope in Rome, whereupon the papacy was relocated to France.
When the U.S. and Israeli armies launched a war with Iran on February 28, the pope did not remain silent. Already in his first sermon addressing the war, in March, he called on all sides to cease fire. Trump responded to Leo as he had to the Iranian ayatollah – with a deliberate escalation of rhetoric.
Tensions between the two most influential Americans in the world has peaked in recent days, after the president posted an artificial intelligence-based illustration on Truth Social in which he himself was rendered as a Jesus-like figure, ministering to a sick man. Criticism flooded in from all directions: from the American right, through the Iranian president, to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. In a highly rare move Trump backed down and deleted the post. The pope, it turned out, has friends and admirers in high places.
While the clashes between Trump and Leo have particularly attracted global interest, other incidents involving the Catholic Church have also fueled the fire – among them an incident in Israel that shocked the Christian world, a week before Easter. On March 30, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and his entourage, who arrived at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City, were astonished to find the site blocked by the Israel Police. It was Palm Sunday, marking the start of the Holy Week – and the first time in at least 100 years that Catholics were prevented from celebrating that occasion at the church, as has been customary since the fourth century.
The condemnations were fast in coming. Italian Prime Minister Meloni called the Israel Police’s conduct “an insult,” and French President Emmanuel Macron described it as part of “worrying series of violations” of the status quo relating to Jerusalem’s holy sites. Even the U.S. ambassador to Israel, evangelical preacher Mike Huckabee – who does not usually criticize the Jewish state and is not known for his sympathy for Catholics – joined the chorus: “For the Patriarch to be barred from entry to the Church on Palm Sunday for a private ceremony is difficult to understand or justify.”
The incident at the Holy Sepulchre was a distillation of three processes that came to a head at that critical juncture. First, Leo XIV has demonstrated confidence and even audacity that surpasses those displayed by his predecessors, openly and also discreetly intervening on behalf of Christians in hostile countries. Second, the current U.S. administration has become overtly Christian – it includes Catholics in key positions, among them Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance – and it sees the Catholic community as a significant political anchor. And third, the pope, who is proficient in Hebrew incidentally, has shown a natural interest in Christian sites in Israel, but seems more willing than his predecessors to intervene on their behalf and that of the local Christian community. The incident involving the patriarch was neither the beginning nor the end of the story.
The West Bank Palestinian village of Taybeh is one of the oldest in the area. St. George’s Church, still active there today, was built in the fifth century. Foreign conquerors came and went, but Taybeh and its religious character prevailed. Today, it stands out as the only locality in all of historic Palestine whose entire population is Christian – whether Orthodox or Catholic. After the establishment of the State of Israel, tracts of its land were first carved away: Hundreds of acres were eventually transferred to the Rimonim settlement, while dozens more were allocated to residents of another settlement, Ofra.
Dramatic changes in Taybeh accompanied the rise of the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir government and intensified after October 7, 2023, when violent Jewish neighbors began to invade with impunity. On June 26, 2025, dozens of Hebrew-speaking vigilantes raided the village, setting fire to property and homes. The Washington Post covered the attack, as part of a series of reports of what came to be called pogroms, in which the marauding settlers did not distinguish between Muslims and Christians.
The next serious incident occurred on July 7, when gangs of settlers started a fire near St. George’s Church. This time, the Vatican’s official news site – a journalistic institution that is meticulous about what it covers and how it presents facts – responded with an extensive report on the pogrom, describing it as an attack aimed at the very heart of Christianity: “The town of Taybeh, widely known as the last fully Christian Palestinian town in the West Bank, has faced repeated attacks on homes and property, with a sharp rise of incursions since June 2025. Over the past two days, a new escalation has seen settlers enter and take control of a cement factory and quarry on the western outskirts of the town.
“Since the morning of March 19, Israeli settlers have reportedly entered the site, where they have conducted Talmudic rituals and prayers. Their presence has continued for a second consecutive day, effectively asserting control over the area. Witnesses also report that an Israeli flag was raised atop one of the plant’s storage tanks.”
Moreover, the local priest, Bashar Fawadleh, was interviewed by Vatican Radio – which also enjoys substantial global reach – and warned of a significant and concerning shift in the nature of settler violence against Christians in Israel and the territories. He described how police officers summoned to the scene arrived during the disturbances, but did nothing. Fawadleh’s warnings resonated throughout the Catholic world. He clarified that this was not a matter of a handful of vandals, but an organized effort to take over a strategic area. He then went on to describe the grim, daily reality of local life under occupation: checkpoints, movement restrictions and difficulty in maintaining contacts with other Christian communities in the West Bank.
The emerging Catholic campaign against the settlement enterprise also received extensive coverage on non-mainstream media such as EWTN, a Catholic television channel that reaches some 400 million people in 160 countries. The deputy patriarch in the Holy Land, Bishop William Shomali, described with shock what Christians in the West Bank are enduring at the hands of settlers and with the backing of the army, and not only in Taybeh. There is a very real threat to Christian families here, he stressed, adding that the occupied territories are becoming less Palestinian and increasingly dominated by settlers.
Meanwhile, as Trump was bickering with the pope and evangelical Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth levelled criticism at the Vatican regarding its views on the war with Iran, the many Catholics in the administration began to listen. On March 28 – a day before the incident with the patriarch at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the issue of Christians in the Holy Land found its way to one of the most influential programs in the MAGA movement: Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. The Republican strategist, a devout Catholic, struggled to hide his anger at Israel, which he believed dragged the United States into the war with Iran.
Jason Jones, one of the most prominent voices on the plight of Christians in the Holy Land, is imploring Americans to remember that they are the true superpower, and that they have leverage over the Israeli government.
“I think many people watching will be slightly surprised by the fact – because it doesn’t get any attention at all on U.S. television – that Palestinian Christians in the West Bank are under a particularly heavy form of persecution,” explained one of Bannon’s guests, Jason Jones, a Catholic activist who had arrived in Bethlehem for Easter, to viewers and listeners. His words caught the ear of the host, who asked: “It is your thesis that West Bank settlers hate Christians more than anyone else in the world? Even more than they hate Muslims? That would surprise a lot of people.”
Jones is not just any Christian activist: He is one of the most prominent voices addressing the American public on the issue of the plight of Christians in Israel, the West Bank and Lebanon. He built a career as an anti-abortion advocate, and in recent years has focused on protecting Christians from Israelis. He now implores Americans to remember that they are the true superpower, and that they have leverage over the Israeli government.
“It’s the most vulnerable Christian community in the world and the oldest in the world,” he told Bannon. “You can hear from the settlers’ own mouths that they have a special disdain for Christians, more than they despise Muslims… they believe they have a right to the land that the Christian community holds, they fear those communities. They spit on priests. They spit on nuns. Just in this year alone, 2026, 10 Christians have been killed in the West Bank. We’ve seen brutal attacks on the only 100 percent Christian village left in the West Bank, Taybeh… This could be the end of the Christian community in Bethlehem. It would be really tragic to see the oldest Christian community in the world erased before our very eyes.”
Jones also sharply criticized U.S. Ambassador Huckabee, who he says cares more for settlers who promote his own evangelical vision than for local Christians. “We cannot look away from the atrocities that the State of Israel is committing,” he asserted. “Settlers, with the protection of the Israel Defense Forces, are burning Christian farms, slaughtering their animals, destroying their homes, raping and assaulting Christians, including nuns.”
Despite this, Jones expressed optimism given what he describes as shifting public opinion in the United States, citing both the dwindling cache of Huckabee’s brand of messianic evangelism and of the power of the pro-Israel lobby. “Huckabee is someone I admired,” Jones said. “I thought of him as a godly and sincere man. I understood he held on to a dispensationalist theology of Christian Zionism but he’s been shockingly disappointing… this small sect of evangelical Christianity is dying. This dispensationalist theology has died in Gaza and not going to continue past the boomer generation that still clings to it today. We see young evangelicals flocking to the Catholic and Orthodox church because they’re horrified by their parents advocating an ethno-nationalist apartheid state and genocide.”
Among the Catholics supporting a more powerful and assertive approach to their religion and its ties to Israel is Vice President Vance who, amid the war with Iran, officially announced the publication of his second memoir in June. After the bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy” – which was adapted into a Netflix film and served as a springboard for his political career – Vance wrote a new book describing the spiritual journey he undertook on his path to joining the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics are a large minority in the States, but their significant representation in key positions and their political heft are important to any and all right-wing leaders. Estimates are that there are at least 50 million Catholic Americans, however, a significant proportion declares that they do not attend church and are not necessarily committed to religious principles – thus viewing themselves, similar to secular Jews, as feeling an affiliation with their religion only in terms of heritage, culture and holidays. Nevertheless, an attack on the pope is a red line even for them.
Indeed, Jane Mayer, who writes for The New Yorker, drew an interesting comparison between Catholics and Jews in the United States, arguing that their influence exceeds their demographic weight: “It’s true that the evangelical voting block is the most devoted MAGA block, but there is this swing block that has carried most presidential elections over the top and that’s Catholic voters,” she said, in the magazine’s podcast. Their great power, she claimed, stems precisely from the fact that they are not in the Republican pocket.
“I remember talking to Karl Rove about this,” she added. “In the George W. Bush era they made a huge play for Catholic voters. Obama won the catholic vote.” This does not necessarily stem from a religious viewpoint, as with evangelicals, but from social identity: Catholics in the United States tend to be white, working-class and dispersed across key states.
“I’m not saying that’s why JD Vance converted to Catholicism,” she added, “but it’s an interesting time for Catholics in America – there is something of a schism between the far-right American Catholics and Pope Leo.”
It appears these messages relating to growing Christian displeasure with Israel are already permeating and having an effect on Israel’s right-wing leadership. For one, Minister Bezalel “There’s no such thing as Jewish terror” Smotrich wrote in the Makor Rishon weekly on March 27 that “we must not ignore the fact that there are indeed fringe phenomena of violence that endanger the entire settlement enterprise.” On the same day, Hagai Segal, a resident of the settlement of Ofra and former editor of Makor Rishon, published his own article mentioning “abhorrent abuse… the area is burning, and this time the match is Jewish.” His son, journalist Amit Segal, also admitted there was evidence of “nationalist crime.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, himself a graduate of a yeshiva in Kiryat Arba, even uncharacteristically acknowledged the existence of violent settlers recently and demanded their arrest. “Where are the rabbis of the Yesha Council?” he told Yedioth Ahronoth. “Where are the heads of the Yesha councils? They are not only tarnishing the settlement enterprise, they are tarnishing the entire State of Israel.” To this, Kach movement activist Noam Federman responded sarcastically in a post on X: “Shall I tell what Yechiel Leiter did in Hebron in his youth?”
Source: HAARETZ
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