Days after his visit to the Vatican, Church leaders came out to question the president.
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On April 9, Pope Leo XIV received David Axelrod, campaign manager and chief advisor to Barack Obama, at the Vatican. Just a few days later, the Pontiff himself and several Catholic Church leaders came out to openly criticize Donald Trump, sparking strong political controversy in the United States
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The meeting was officially confirmed by the Vatican in its hearing schedule, and what initially seemed to be a protocol took on another dimension after the Pope's criticism of Trump for Iran and the appearance of three cardinals in 60 Minutes questioning the president. The sequence fueled suspicion of a strategy driven by the Obama environment to erode the Republican Catholic base and condition the papal visit to
the United States. Cardinals Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy and Joseph Tobin came out on CBS defenestrating the administration.
Axelrod was Obama's campaign manager and his main political advisor for years, in addition to being one of the most important operators of the Democratic apparatus in the United States. His arrival at the Vatican, in the midst of an extremely sensitive international scene, ignited and threw speculations on
the table.
Just days after the meeting, Pope Leo XIV himself came out to openly question Trump for his policy towards Iran, marking a position aligned with the discourse of multilateralism and the criticism of military escalation.
The offensive didn't stop there. At the same time, several representatives of the Catholic Church began to multiply their criticism against the American president, in a series that attracted attention due to its simultaneity
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The strongest point of the offensive came when three American cardinals - Blase Cupich (Chicago), Robert McElroy (Washington) and Joseph Tobin (Newark) - appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes program and launched direct criticism of Donald Trump. In their interventions, they questioned their foreign policy, described the war against Iran as “unfair” and pointed against
migration policy.
During the program, McElroy was forceful in pointing out that a war can only be justified if it aims to restore peace, in an implicit criticism of Trump's strategy. The coordinated appearance of the three cardinals in one of the most influential spaces on American television reinforced the perception of
deliberate political intervention.
In Washington, the political reading was immediate. The coincidence between Axelrod's meeting with the Pope and the subsequent discursive alignment of sectors of the Church fueled the hypothesis of a strategy driven by the Obama environment: The objective would be to weaken the link between Trump and the Catholic electorate, in the face of the early mid-term elections.
In this context, versions began to circulate about a possible attempt to cancel the Pope's visit to the United States scheduled for July 4, which would further increase tension with the White House. Far from backing down, Trump responded harshly and made it clear that he does not intend to give in to criticism
