Leo XIV is trying to ease tensions with Trump

Vatican and USA

Leo XIV is trying to ease tensions with Trump

The US President and the Pope are engaged in a heated battle of words that is making headlines around the world. Now Leo is conciliatory. And Trump?

Pope Leo XIV has tried to ease the tension in the dispute with US President Donald Trump. Some of his statements were not interpreted “correctly in all aspects,” said the head of the Catholic Church during his trip to Africa on the flight to Angola. “It was taken as if I wanted to contradict the president. That is not my intention at all.”

Trump and Leo had a heated exchange of words from a distance, which made headlines around the world. The US President accused the Pope of having a “terrible” foreign policy after a series of peace appeals from the Vatican. Shortly afterwards, he posted an AI painting of himself as a savior online.

Leo replied: “I’m not afraid of the Trump administration.” Later, without naming individual politicians, he spoke of a “handful of tyrants who are destroying the world.” This has often been linked to each other.

The leader now told journalists on the plane that the speech with this statement had already been prepared two weeks earlier – “that is, before the President said anything about me and the message of peace that I am spreading.”

Leo added: “Much of what has been written since then has been comment after comment trying to interpret what was said. That was taken as me trying to contradict the president.” His goal remains to spread a message of peace and justice in the world. Trump initially had no comment on the Pope’s recent statements.

After landing in Angola’s capital Luanda, Leo condemned continued exploitation of the continent by other countries and international corporations. He criticized a supposedly “development model without alternatives that discriminates and excludes. How much suffering, how many deaths, how many social and ecological disasters are caused by this logic of exploitation!”

The pope made the comments during a meeting with President João Lourenço. The former Portuguese colony is rich in raw materials and is also an important economic partner for Germany – especially as a supplier of crude oil and gas. However, many of the approximately 37 million inhabitants still live in poverty.

In addition, the population is still suffering from the aftereffects of almost three decades of civil war after independence in 1975. The conflict left hundreds of thousands of victims and a country with destroyed infrastructure. More than 90 percent of the residents are Christians – and around half of them are Catholics. Leo’s visit is considered a major national event.

The first pope from the USA also criticized the fact that Africa is still looked at “in order to take something away”. “This chain of interests that reduces life to a commodity must be broken.” But the African countries themselves are also challenged: “Africa must urgently overcome the conflicts and hostilities that are tearing apart the social and political fabric of so many countries and fueling poverty and exclusion.”

Before visiting Angola, the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics had already been to Algeria and Cameroon. The last stop on the trip will be Equatorial Guinea after the three-day stay in Angola. Africa is one of the regions of the world where the Catholic Church is growing. There are currently around 290 million Catholics living there – now even more than in Europe and many of them are young.