Last week, just days after Pope Francis was laid to rest in Rome, Trump was asked by reporters if he had anyone in mind for the next pope. His answer: “I’d like to be pope. That would be my No. 1 choice.” Days later, Trump’s TruthSocial account shared an AI image of the president in papal regalia—a mitre on his head and a gold cross around his neck—with the official White House X account following suit.
The photo caused a quick backlash, with New York Archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, no critic of the president, commenting “Well, it wasn’t good.” In addition, various Catholic leaders from the US and around the world denounced the image as infantile and offensive, especially given the fact that many of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics were (and are) still mourning the pope’s death.
Vice President JD Vance—himself a recent Catholic convert and one of the very last people to meet with the pope before his death—defended the image as a joke, while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the AP that “President Trump flew to Italy to pay his respects for Pope Francis and attend his funeral, and he has been a staunch champion for Catholics and religious liberty.” But on Monday, when asked about it at a press conference, Trump claimed that “the Catholics loved it,” but also that he “had nothing to do with it” despite the fact that it was shared from his official accounts.
Nevertheless there’s a general consensus from all but the most virulent MAGA influencers that this stunt somehow went too far, including the New York State Catholic Bishops who tweeted “There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President… Do not mock us.” But who or what is Trump mocking: a beloved religious figure who just died, the Catholic hierarchy, the Catholic faithful, or all three? And more importantly, why would he? It’s worth thinking carefully about why exactly the president’s failure to grasp the offensive nature and timing of his actions are so troubling.
Mirroring what many have assumed, Massimo Faggioli argues that Trump did it in part because “he knew he could get away with it” among the Catholic right wing. Faggioli’s point is well taken; Trump has indeed co-opted large sections of American Catholicism and stacked both his cabinet and the US Supreme Court with far-right Catholics who now owe their loyalty to him. But there’s more at work here. Beyond his support among the Catholic Right there’s also a long visual history of anti-Catholicism that helps explain why Trump felt he could get away with it.
The AI-generated image of Trump as pope is a type of political cartoon—and it’s one with a precedent. In the 19th century, cartoonist Thomas Nast of Harper’s Weekly, along with a number of others, depicted the perceived threat of Catholicism in cartoons, often portraying Catholic prelates as predatory reptiles crawling across the ocean to invade and destroy the sacred institutions of the United States. In one of the best known examples, “The American River Ganges” the papal mitre becomes a crocodile’s mouth, opening wide to devour the American nuclear family.
In the 20th century, “Chick Tracts,” evangelical comics sometimes found on park benches or in gas station restrooms ask “Are Roman Catholics Christians?” (spoiler alert: no) and warn of the “Death Cookie” (aka: the eucharist). These tracts, created by cartoonist Jack Chick, inevitably feature caricatures of the pope wearing a huge mitre, just as Nast’s did. Trump’s AI image is only a joke in the way that Nast’s and Chick’s comics were jokes in that they reveal what their creators really think of Catholicism: that it’s a dangerous perversion of authentic Christianity—something to be feared and beaten back.
It’s worth remembering that until very recently many Protestants took it as a matter of basic dogma that the pope was the Antichrist. In fact the WELS Lutheran Synod, with almost 350,000 baptized members in the US, still identifies the papacy as the Antichrist on its “What We Believe” page, citing Martin Luther’s Smalcald Articles (1537):
This teaching [of the supremacy of the pope] shows forcefully that the Pope is the very Antichrist, who has exalted himself above, and opposed himself against Christ.
John Calvin, too, taught that the pope was the Antichrist and devoted an entire book of his Institutes to this premise. His Puritan followers in the colonies agreed wholeheartedly.
Trump knows exactly what Pope Francis thought of him and his administration. In February, Pope Francis deplored and condemned Trump’s immigration policies and publicly rebuked JD Vance’s theology. He also rebuffed a meeting with Vance on Holy Saturday, sending a delegate instead before finally agreeing to meet with him in person on Easter Sunday, just hours before he died. Trump in turn demonstrated his contempt for the pope by wearing a bright blue suit to the funeral (in defiance of the dress code) and checking his phone and apparently sleeping throughout the funeral Mass.
Even if (or perhaps because) he sees it as a joke, Trump’s AI “mockery” is a form of revenge against a pope who, despite a complicated legacy, will be remembered for his compassion towards the marginalized and for his joy—qualities utterly lacking in the US President. But the image should also serve as a reminder that, for many Americans, Catholicism isn’t authentic Christianity—it’s an aesthetic that can be caricatured and used “for fun” at the drop of a (papal) hat.
