ROME − A priest celebrates a weekday mass for a couple of dozen faithful at the Basilica of St. Augustine, the main Augustinian church in the Italian capital. The congregation’s thin voices echo amid scaffolding for repairs and the shuffling of tourists passing through to photograph the 400-year-old Caravaggio masterpiece "Madonna of Loreto" and Raphael's 500-year-old fresco "Prophet Isaiah."
It’s a contrast as old as Augustine himself, the early Catholic saint whose teachings led to the founding of the priestly order Pope Leo XIV belongs to: the tensions of the secular and religious worlds pushing against each other.
Today, Leo, the quiet and scholarly Chicago-born pope and the world’s most famous adherent of Augustine’s teachings that promote charity, truth, humility and unity, is fostering the same contrast in an increasingly heated squabble with a fiercely combative, prideful and outspoken political leader from New York.
But this war of words between the pope and President Donald Trump is about far more than an argument about deep-dish versus thin-crust pizza. It has also sparked strong backlash from religious leaders, as well as Trump’s conservative and Christian MAGA supporters and former allies, potentially worsening an already difficult 2026 election cycle for congressional Republicans, as he risks alienating an important segment of his base.
