'Nationalism on steroids:' Trump, Catholics battle over morality
- - 'Nationalism on steroids:' Trump, Catholics battle over morality
Marc Ramirez, USA TODAYJanuary 22, 2026 at 10:39 AM
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The rift between President Donald Trump and the Catholic church's leadership is reaching biblical proportions.
This week, the country’s highest-ranking Catholic archbishops took the rare step of issuing a joint statement rebuking United States’ foreign policy, saying recent and ongoing events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland have called into question the country’s “moral role in confronting evil around the world.”
Their statement on Monday came a day after Timothy P. Broglio, the Catholic archbishop for U.S. military forces, told the BBC troops would be morally justified in disobeying orders that betrayed their conscience. Addressing President Donald Trump’s threats to forcefully occupy Greenland, Broglio said he feared for military personnel “because they could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something which is morally questionable.”
The public stances taken by the church’s most senior U.S. leaders marked the latest salvos in what has become an increasingly contentious relationship between the Catholic Church and President Trump’s administration, among the most strained Vatican-U.S. relationships in the post-Vatican II era — especially when it comes to foreign policy.
“It’s deeply fractured among moral and theological lines, especially regarding war, nationalism and the use of force,” said Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “What we are witnessing is not routine policy disagreement but a clash of world views — one rooted in Catholic social teaching and multilateralism, the other in transactional power politics.”
Since starting his second presidential term a year ago, Trump’s policies and actions have drawn ire on multiple fronts where disagreements have typically featured less drama, from laid-off park rangers seething after being abruptly let go via email or Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey telling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “get the f— out” of the city after a 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by one of its agents.
But Monday's foreign policy statement by the archbishops, all of them appointed cardinals, reflected not just a rare case of U.S. Catholic leaders explicitly framing presidential policy as morally disordered but the degree to which the Church and Trump's administration are at cross-purposes.
“This is no mere minor statement but a major unanimous statement from all three actively serving U.S. cardinals challenging the trajectory of Trump's foreign policy and its use of military force — not in self-defense, but for partisan political and economic self-interest,” said Jonathan Tan, a professor of Catholic studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Tan said the statement aligned with Pope Leo XIV in “issuing a clear and unambiguous call to the Trump administration to reverse course on its global political ambitions and its use of military force to achieve those ambitions.”
A parishioner prays at St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church in New York City as President Donald Trump prepared to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15, 2025.
Chesnut said the cardinals’ statement signals their belief that Catholic moral principles – just war, human dignity and devotion to conscience – are being seriously threatened.
“When cardinals publicly intervene at this level, it suggests they see silence as complicity and believe pastoral responsibility now requires public resistance rather than quiet diplomacy,” he said.
Dissent over immigration policy
The Trump administration's heightened immigration enforcement has also sparked opposition from the Catholic Church. Before his death last April, Pope Francis clashed with Vice President JD Vance over Trump’s mass deportation policies and issued a letter to U.S. bishops saying the moment offered an opportunity “to reaffirm not only our faith in a God who is always close, incarnate, migrant and refugee, but also the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person.”
In November, Pope Leo XIV, who became the first North American pope when he succeeded Francis, said he was troubled by the U.S.’ treatment of immigrants.
“When people have lived good lives — many of them for 10, 15, 20 years — treating them in a way that is, to say the least, extremely disrespectful, and with instances of violence, is troubling," the pope said.
Pope Francis meets with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Easter Sunday at the Vatican, April 20, 2025. Vatican Media/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY.
More recently, Archbishop Broglio, former president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, criticized U.S. assaults on suspected drug smugglers at sea, particularly the killing of survivors of such an attack off the Venezuelan coast.
“No one can ever be ordered to commit an immoral act, and even those suspected of committing a crime are entitled to due process under the law,” Broglio said in a statement last month. “Our Nation has a long tradition of responding to injustice, liberating the oppressed, and leading the free world. We cannot tarnish that reputation with questionable actions that fail to respect the dignity of the human person and the rule of law.”
US' Vatican envoy sparks backlash
The ongoing friction has been evident even in diplomatic relations: Earlier this month, the U.S.’ Vatican Ambassador drew backlash for downplaying Pope Leo XIV’s concerns over military action in Venezuela in a post on social media, with some calling it an “unprecedented” misrepresentation that could undermine future diplomatic relations with Rome.
Brian Burch, the country’s ambassador to the Holy See, told followers in a brief summary posted Jan. 5 on X that the pope was following developments in Venezuela and was praying for peace: "He emphasized the need to work together to build a future for the Venezuelan people based on cooperation, stability and harmony,” Burch wrote.
Pope Leo XIV leads the Angelus prayer from the window of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace on January 4, 2026. Afterward, the pope delivered a short statement about the US' Jan. 3 raid in Caracas, Venezuela, that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, expressing his desire to see Venezuelan sovereignty protected.
Critics said that was only part of the story, noting that the pope’s address had cited Venezuela’s guaranteed right to self-rule as among his major concerns.
The post “seems to be willfully misrepresenting Leo XIV's views, which emphasize non-violence and sovereignty,” said Mathew Schmalz, a professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Eric McDaniel, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, said the post diverged from the manner in which previous administrations have characterized papal disagreements, often underplaying dissent but stopping short of falsely implying agreement.
“I do think this is different,” McDaniel said. “In the past they (presidential administrations) have been willing to say, ‘The pope may not be supportive of everything we’ve done.’ But this administration behaves in a way that is distinct from past administrations.”
Church has clashed with previous US presidents
The tangle between the Church and administration isn’t without precedent, said Michael Pasquier, a professor of religious studies and history at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. While Catholic leaders staunchly supported anti-communism foreign policy in the 1960s and early 1970s, he said, they began to refine their stance as the Vietnam War dragged on, reasserting the Church’s responsibility to encourage peace and human rights.
President Ronald Reagan makes a speech outside 10 Downing Street during a state visit to London, UK, on 9th June 1982. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is standing to the right and US Secretary of State Alexander Haig is behind and to the left of Reagan.
The relationship was further tested with the presidency of Ronald Reagan as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops forcefully opposed the administration’s military activities against leftist guerillas in Central America. For instance, Pasquier said, Bishop John McCarthy of Houston questioned the U.S.’ arming and training of oppressive Salvadoran government military forces “which are obviously oppressing its people.”
By the 1980s, Pasquier said, Catholic leaders in the U.S., at frequent odds over foreign policy with then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig, no longer felt it necessary to prove their national allegiance “by flexing their anti-communist bona fides” when theological and moral standards demanded taking a stand.
“This shift was made evident in the American Catholic hierarchy’s consistent call for nuclear disarmament and demilitarization for the remainder of the 20th century to the present,” Pasquier said.
In the early 2000s, he said, Pope John Paul II strongly and publicly opposed President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq, saying “war itself is an attack on human life.” When the pope met with Bush at the Vatican in 2004, he asked the president on live television to end the war as quickly as possible “in order to ensure a speedy return of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
The pope’s position was backed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pasquier said.
A picture of a fallen soldier adorned with roses sits on a gravesite on Memorial Day at section 60 at Arlington Cemetery on May 28, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. This area of the cemetery is where U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and the Afghanistan war are buried.
“At least since the Second Vatican Council and the Vietnam War, American Catholic bishops had have a rather consistent record of publicly opposing U.S. foreign policy when it conflicted with Catholic social teachings on peace, human rights, and life,” he said.
'A zeal for war is spreading'
Pope Leo’s Jan. 9 address to members of the Holy See’s diplomatic corps swelled with urgency, lamenting that diplomacy built on dialogue and consensus “is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”
“War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading,” he said. “…. 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.”
The U.S. archbishops’ statement Monday reiterated that point, citing situations in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland.
“As pastors entrusted with the teaching of our people, we cannot stand by while decisions are made that condemn millions to lives trapped permanently at the edge of existence,” said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, archbishop of Chicago. “Pope Leo has given us clear direction and we must apply his teachings to the conduct of our nation and its leaders.”
Thousands of people participate in a 'No Wars, No Kings, No ICE' protest and march down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan against the policies of the Trump administration in New York City, New York, on January 11, 2026. Protests broke out in New York City and across the country in response to the Trump administration's recent actions in Venezuela and following the death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good after being shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis.
Added Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, archbishop of Newark, New Jersey: “Escalating threats and armed conflict risk destroying international relations and plunging the world into incalculable suffering.”
“Our nation’s debate on the moral foundation for American policy is beset by polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests,” their statement read. “Pope Leo has given us the prism through which to raise it to a much higher level. We will preach, teach, and advocate in the coming months to make that higher level possible.”
Chesnut, of Virginia Commonwealth, said that with Pope Leo XIV at its helm, the Church “appears prepared for sustained engagement – less a rupture than an extended, uneasy standoff over the soul of American power and its moral limits.”
“This looks more like a prolonged period of moral friction that will persist as long as nationalism on steroids defines U.S. policy,” he said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Nationalism on steroids:' Trump, Catholics battle over morality
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