{"id":48258,"date":"2026-04-18T15:04:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T15:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=48258"},"modified":"2026-04-18T15:04:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T15:04:32","slug":"pope-leo-downplays-feud-with-trump-says-not-in-my-interest-to-debate-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=48258","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo downplays feud with Trump, says ‘not in my interest’ to debate him"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pope Leo\u00a0sought to downplay his feud with USPresident\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0on Saturday, saying reporting about \u200bcomments he has made so far during his Africa tour “has not been \u200caccurate in all its aspects”.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in English aboard his flight to Angola for the third leg of his\u00a0ambitious 10-day Africa tour, the first US pope said comments he made \u200btwo days earlier in Cameroon decrying that the world was being “ravaged by a \u200bhandful of tyrants” were not aimed at Trump.<\/p>\n

That speech, said Leo, “was \u2060prepared two weeks ago, well before the president ever commented on myself and \u200bon the message of peace that I am promoting”.<\/p>\n

On\u00a0Sunday, as Leo prepared to embark \u200bon his tour, Trump called him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a post on Truth Social. Trump also posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus-like figure, drawing \u200bwidespread criticism even from some religious conservatives who typically support him. The post \u200bwas removed on Monday morning.<\/p>\n

Read More: ‘Handful of tyrants’ ravaging world: Pope<\/p>\n

Trump appeared to be responding to Leo’s growing criticism in recent weeks of the US-Israeli \u200cwar \u2060against Iran.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo told Reuters on Monday that he would keep speaking out about the war, and Trump reiterated his criticism on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

On\u00a0Thursday, Pope Leo blasted leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of \u200btyrants”, though he did \u200bnot mention Trump \u2060directly again.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it happens, it was looked at as if I was trying to debate the president, which is not in \u200bmy interest at all,\u201d the pontiff said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Leo, originally \u200bfrom Chicago, \u2060kept a relatively low profile for a pope in his first 10 months but has debuted a new\u00a0forceful speaking style in Africa, sharply denouncing war, inequality and global leaders.<\/p>\n

His Africa \u2060tour \u200bis one of the most complicated ever arranged \u200bfor a pontiff, with stops in 11 cities and towns in four countries, traversing nearly 18,000 km (11,185 miles) \u200bover 18 flights.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo\u00a0sought to downplay his feud with USPresident\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0on Saturday, saying reporting about \u200bcomments he has made so far during his Africa tour “has not been \u200caccurate in all its aspects”. Speaking to reporters in English aboard his flight to Angola for the third leg of his\u00a0ambitious 10-day Africa tour, the first US pope said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}