{"id":50342,"date":"2026-04-21T12:01:01","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T16:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?p=50342"},"modified":"2026-04-21T12:01:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T16:01:01","slug":"did-60-minutes-bait-president-trump-into-feud-with-pope-leo-xiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2026\/04\/did-60-minutes-bait-president-trump-into-feud-with-pope-leo-xiv.html","title":{"rendered":"Did “60 Minutes” Bait President Trump into Feud With Pope Leo XIV?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
60 Minutes \/ YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some conservatives are accusing CBS\u2019s \u201c60 Minutes\u201d of purposely airing interviews with anti-war Catholic bishops to bait President Trump into his recent tiffs with Pope Leo XIV. The show featured a segment<\/a> with three Cardinals who the show presented as \u201cinfluential\u201d in the Catholic church. The Cardinals- Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago; \u00a0Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C.; and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, NJ- criticized the Iran conflict as well as ICE policies.<\/p>\n

Cardinal Robert McElroy said the conflict is \u201cnot a just war.\u201d \u201cYou can\u2019t go for a variety of different aims. You have to have a focused aim, which is to restore justice and restore peace. That\u2019s it,\u201d he said. While admitting that the Iranian regime is \u201cabominable,\u201d he expressed his concern that the US\u2019s approach would result in \u201cthe possibility of war after war after war.\u201d Cardinal Cupich took issue with how the White House has presented the conflict on social media. \u201cWe\u2019re dehumanizing the victims of war by turning the suffering of people and the killing of children and our own soldiers into entertainment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Appearing on Fox News\u2019s <\/em>\u201cThe Prayerful Posse\u201d with Raymond Arroyo, Father Gerald Murray and author Robert Royal pushed back on whether the three men\u2019s views really reflected the overall opinion of the Catholic church. \u201cThe three of them are billed as so-called influential, but none of them hold offices in the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, and they have never been elected,” Royal said. He compared them to the so-called \u201cSquad,\u201d a group of left-leaning politicians in US politics, calling the men \u201ca very definite and pretty left-wing group of just three.\u201d Murray pushed back against the claim that the war wasn\u2019t just. \u201cI think it is a just war precisely because the nuclear threat from Iran is a proven danger to us. It\u2019s not an imaginary, \u2018Maybe it\u2019ll happen\u2019 thing. If they have a nuclear weapon, they\u2019re [going to] use it,\u201d he said. Arroyo suggested the show manufactured the situation to get a reaction from the President. \u201cThey were trying to get Trump to overreact, and he did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Relations between the Pope and President Trump have continued to be tense. Pope Leo XIV made comments<\/a> that \u201c[Jesus] does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood,\u2019\u201d during a mass reading before Easter. Although he did not name President Trump specifically, the President\u2019s critics jumped on the comments as a rebuke from the Pope.<\/p>\n

The President has responded by calling the Pope \u201cweak.\u201d \u201cPope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. He talks about \u2018fear\u2019 of the Trump Administration, but doesn\u2019t mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart,\u201d President Trump wrote in a long response on Truth Social<\/a>. He criticized Pope Leo XIV for meeting with \u201cObama sympathizers\u201d and that he needed to \u201cfocus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.\u201d The Pope has responded that he does not fear the President.<\/p>\n

The rift is putting Catholic Trump supporters in an awkward position. \u201cI like Donald a lot, but he needs to calm down,\u201d Lola Reese told CNN<\/em><\/a>. \u201cI am disheartened that the president chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father,\u201d said Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. \u201cPope Leo is not his rival; nor is the pope a politician.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some conservatives are accusing CBS\u2019s \u201c60 Minutes\u201d of purposely airing interviews with anti-war Catholic bishops to bait President Trump into his recent tiffs with Pope Leo XIV. The show featured a segment with three Cardinals who the show presented as \u201cinfluential\u201d in the Catholic church. The Cardinals- Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago; \u00a0Cardinal Robert…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":50345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-television"],"yoast_head":"\nDid "60 Minutes" Bait President Trump into Feud With Pope Leo XIV?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"CBS faces backlash as Catholic leaders, Trump clash over war remarks, fueling debate on faith, politics, and media influence.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2026\/04\/did-60-minutes-bait-president-trump-into-feud-with-pope-leo-xiv.html\" \/>\n<meta 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