Top photo caption: Pope Leo XIV presides over a Prayer Vigil and Rosary for Peace, in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, April 11, 2026. OSV News photo/Reuters, Remo Casilli
By Kate Scanlon, OSV News
WASHINGTON OSV News – A new poll published the day after President Donald Trump renewed his series of social media and verbal attacks on Pope Leo XIV, showed Americans broadly disapprove.
According to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll published May 6, most Americans disapprove of the president’s comments about the Pope, with even more disapproving of the recently posted and deleted AI-generated image on the president’s social media account appearing to depict himself as Jesus.
The poll, conducted April 24-28, found that Pope Leo has a 25-point net favorable margin among Americans overall, with 41% favorable, 16% unfavorable and 43% saying they have no opinion of the pontiff.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 37%, down from 45% in February 2025.
Two-thirds of Americans, 66%, said they had a positive reaction to Pope Leo asking Americans on April 7 to contact their congressional lawmakers to work for peace and to reject war, while 57% had a negative reaction to Trump posting “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
Among American Catholics, 70% said they had a positive reaction to Pope Leo asking Americans to contact Congress, and 61% said they had a negative reaction to Trump’s post about the Pope and nuclear weapons.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Pope Leo, the first U.S.-born pontiff, supports Iran having nuclear weapons; however, the pontiff never made any such statement and has consistently called for the rejection of nuclear weapons.
By an even larger margin, 76% said they disapprove of Trump’s social media post threatening that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not make an agreement with the U.S. That threat prompted criticism from Pope Leo, who has been a staunch critic of war generally, including the one initiated by the U.S. and Israel against Iran on Feb. 28.
In defense of their combat operations, the Trump administration has argued the Iranian regime presented grave nuclear threats.
U.S. Catholic bishops, in defending the Pope’s position, have pointed to the Church’s just war doctrine, which as stated in the Church’s catechism on “safeguarding peace,” says legitimate defense by military force is only morally permissible under strict conditions that are all present at one and the same time. Those conditions are the “lasting, grave and certain” damage from the aggressor; the exhaustion of all other efforts to end such damage; “serious prospects of success”; and the use of arms such that graver evils and disorders are not produced.
Similarly, 87% said they disapproved of Trump’s post of an AI-generated image appearing to depict himself as Jesus. That image was deleted from his social media account after an uproar, with many people from multiple Christian denominations denouncing the depiction as blasphemous. Ninety percent of Catholics disapproved of that post, the poll found.
In the 2024 election, Trump carried white Catholic voters by a more than 20-point margin. But his approval rating with that group dropped to 49% in the new poll, down from 63% in February 2025. His approval rating among all Catholics is just 38%, similar to Americans generally.
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
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