Trump Slams Pope Leo XIV in Late-Night Rant After Spotting Brandon Johnson at the Vatican

President Donald Trump launched a late-night online tirade against Pope Leo XIV on Saturday after seeing images of the pontiff meeting Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson at the Vatican earlier this week, sharply criticising both the pope and the mayor in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The news came after Johnson, who has sparred publicly with Trump over immigration enforcement and co‑operation with federal authorities, travelled to Rome with a sizeable Chicago delegation. On Thursday, the 50‑year‑old mayor met Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and presented him with a carefully curated gift box heavy on symbolism as well as civic pride.

A Chicago Grudge Match

Trump, 79, appeared to be watching the visit closely. In one Truth Social post, he shared some of Johnson’s own photos from Rome, implying that his staff — or the president himself — had been tracking the mayor’s social media activity.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump in a post moments ago on TruthSocial: “Someone should explain to the Pope that the Mayor of Chicago is useless, and that Iran cannot have a Nuclear Weapon! President DONALD J. TRUMP” pic.twitter.com/5CIJlS4OjT

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) May 30, 2026

‘Someone should explain to the Pope that the Mayor of Chicago is useless, and that Iran cannot have a Nuclear Weapon! President DONALD J. TRUMP,’ he wrote, folding a personal jab at Johnson into a familiar line about foreign policy. The president did not explain what connection he believed existed between the papal audience and Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The clash did not spring from nowhere. For context, Trump and Johnson have been at loggerheads for months over immigration, policing and the role of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Chicago. The president has repeatedly accused the city of undermining ICE operations and, at one point in October, claimed without evidence that Johnson ‘should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!’

Chicago’s response has veered towards mockery. In a citywide competition to name snowploughs over the winter, residents christened one vehicle ‘Abolish ICE’ and another ‘Pope Frio XIV,’ a nod both to the administration’s immigration policies and to the pontiff himself. The names were lighthearted, but they underlined the distance between Trump’s Washington and Johnson’s Chicago.

Symbolic Gifts and Subtle Message

Pope Leo XIV’s meeting with Johnson at the Vatican was, on the surface, rooted in civic ceremony. The mayor brought the pope a box of Chicago‑themed gifts: baseball caps from the Cubs and the White Sox, local honey and a key to the city.

Woven into that assortment, though, were items likely to catch the president’s eye. Johnson included a hat emblazoned with ‘Immigrants Make America Greater’ and a sanctuary city pin, a clear statement of his support for policies that limit local co‑operation with federal immigration authorities. The gift also reportedly contained letters from families of detained migrants and a pin from one of Chicago’s ‘ICE Watch’ groups.

Johnson later posted on X a set of photographs from the audience, writing that it was ‘an honor to share time with a magnificent human, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, yesterday.’ The mayor did not mention Trump, but his choice of words — and especially his choice of gifts — read as a quiet rebuke to the president’s approach on immigration and border enforcement.

Trump’s own statement, by contrast, was briefer and more combustible. He offered no supporting evidence for describing Johnson as ‘useless,’ nor did he expand on why he believed the pope needed to be ‘explained’ the mayor’s alleged failings. The White House did not immediately release a fuller statement, and there was no official read‑out from the Vatican addressing the president’s remarks.

Wider Disputes

The dust‑up over a single Vatican audience sits on top of a deeper tension between Trump and Pope Leo XIV that has built over the course of the president’s term.

In April, Leo tried publicly to distance himself from earlier comments that had been widely read as an implicit criticism of Trump. Even so, he has repeatedly re‑entered debates that cut close to the president’s policy agenda. Just hours after the US Justice Department announced it was ending a moratorium on federal capital punishment and reintroducing firing squad executions, the pope released a video message sharply condemning the move.

‘The Catholic Church has consistently taught that each human life, from the moment of conception until natural death, is sacred and deserves to be protected,’ Leo said. That line — direct, doctrinal and unambiguous — sat awkwardly beside an administration moving to expand the use of the death penalty.

Leo has also spoken out about the invasion of Venezuela and the treatment of immigrants by the Trump administration. His interventions have not named the president directly, but they have clearly targeted policies that define Trump’s political brand.

The Vatican has not commented on the president’s latest late‑night broadside, and there was no indication on Sunday that Pope Leo XIV planned to respond publicly. For now, the only official record of the episode is a short, spiky Truth Social post, a handful of Vatican photos and a mayor of Chicago who appears content to let his gifts — and his hashtags — do the talking.

Originally published on IBTimes UK