Do the papacy and politics mix?
“The idea that a pope should not be political misunderstands the role of the papal office,” said Northeastern religion professor Liz Bucar.
His roles include leader of the Roman Catholic Church, bishop of Rome, head of the Holy See, and, recently, at least unofficially, chief antagonist of US President Donald Trump.
But while Pope Leo XIV has told reporters that “we are not politicians” in the church, religion experts said being political is all part of being a pope.
“Historically, the pope as a public figure has commented on geopolitics, whoever that pope might be at the time,” said Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, assistant professor of religion and anthropology at Northeastern University. “That’s not abnormal.”
Elizabeth Bucar, professor of religion and dean’s leadership fellow at Northeastern, agreed.
“The idea that religion and politics should be separate is a myth in the United States,” Bucar, who describes herself as a “lapsed Catholic,” said. “The idea that a pope should not be political misunderstands the role of the papal office,” said Bucar.
Despite not being Catholic, Trump has shown an interest in the papacy, joking that he’d “like to be pope,” and then sharing an AI-generated image of himself as pope on social media following the April 2025 death of Pope Francis.
But Trump’s tongue went from being in-cheek to barbed recently regarding Francis’ successor, American-born Pope Leo XIV, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” in a social media post.
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And although Riccardi-Swartz called the kerfuffle a “one-way feud” with Trump berating a critic and positioning them as a “political other,” the current pope’s language has also sharpened over time.
The pope initially offered prayers for peace and an end to the Iran War, but has since called the war “unjust” and warned against invoking the name of Jesus for battle, calling such a mission “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”
He also called Trump’s threat to wipe out the Iranian civilization, “truly unacceptable.”
“The pope has never been non-political, and the accusation that he is being too political is just coming from people who don’t like his particular politics,” Bucar emphasized.
In a substack post addressing the spat between the pope and president, Bucar notes that the church has a long tradition of holding political leaders accountable for mass killings of civilians, dating back to 390 C.E. when Bishop Ambrose of Milan denied Emperor Theodosius the Eucharist after the emperor’s forces massacred 7,000 people in Thessaloniki (also called Thessalonica).
True, the church has not been entirely consistent or explicit in this regard, Riccardi-Swartz noted. But Bucar said Pope Leo XIV “is not being radical.”
Instead, “He is being orthodox in the best meaning of that word,” Bucar said.
Indeed, she calls the just war theory – the idea that some warfare is justified by a moral or legal tradition – “one of the most developed frameworks in the history of Christian moral thought,” due to the contributions of church leaders Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in the 4th and 13th centuries, respectively.
“When Leo says there are ‘certainly issues of international law here, but even more so a moral issue’ that’s what he means,” Bucar writes. “He is not freelancing. He is drawing on 1,700 years of Catholic moral theology.”
Riccardi-Swartz concurs, calling the pope’s words “quite banal” and “the status quo of Catholic social teachings.”
Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem like the pope is about to go apolitical anytime soon.
Trump has said he won’t apologize; Pope Leo XIV has downplayed the spat and said he is not trying to debate Trump. But he also said he is not afraid of the Trump administration.
Riccardi-Swartz predicts the antagonists will both revert to form.
“Pope Leo is just going to keep doing what he’s doing, which is steering the ship, the global ship of Catholics everywhere, following Catholic teaching,” Riccardi-Swartz said. “Trump is just going to move on to the next person that he wants to target.”
