Pope Leo brushes off Trump attack as a Chicago Catholic leader says president is ‘waking up a sleeping giant’

Catholic leaders, along with Gov. JB Pritzker and his gubernatorial rival Darren Bailey, are defending Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV — as President Donald Trump faces backlash for calling the head of the Catholic church “terrible for foreign policy” and posting a since-deleted AI-generated image of the president as Jesus.

“I think that he’s going to rally people of faith to say, ‘Thank God he’s standing up,’ and that we stand with him,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church. “I think Trump unconsciously is waking up a sleeping giant... I think [the Pope is] he’s going to be a very strong voice, and he’s not going away. He’s not going anywhere.”

Trump on Sunday night posted a lengthy social media post criticizing Leo as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”

“...And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States,” Trump said in a post that also mentioned Democratic strategist David Axelrod’s visit with the Pope at the Vatican last week.

Read the full story at chicago.suntimes.com.