From The New York Times:
From the article:
President Trump on Tuesday had a ready answer when reporters asked who he would like to see become the next supreme pontiff. “I’d like to be pope,” he joked to reporters at the White House. “That would be my number one choice.”
He took the joke a step further on Saturday, sharing on social media what appeared to be an A.I.-generated photo of himself wearing the traditional vestments of the pope. The photo depicts him in a white cassock with a cross around his neck, his face solemn as he raises a pointed finger.
The origins of the photo were not immediately clear, and Mr. Trump did not include any commentary in his post. He shared the image on Truth Social, Instagram and X, and the White House reposted it on its official Instagram and X accounts.
From The Hill:
The president was asked about Catholics disapproving of the image, such as New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who said the late Friday post “wasn’t good.”
“You mean they can’t take a joke. You don’t mean the Catholics, you mean the fake news media. Not the — the Catholics loved it,” Trump said.
He said, "the Catholics loved it."
Which Catholics, exactly?
How about these Catholic bishops?
Then there's this from the BBC:
The backlash continued on Sunday, as New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan - who has been friendly with Trump for years - told reporters that he disliked the image.
"It wasn't good," he said, after attending a Mass in Rome. "I hope he didn't have anything to do with that."
Switching to Italian, he called it a "brutta figura", a phrase meaning a bad or embarrassing impression.
Bad. Embarrassing.
And then from the Catholic News Agency, there's this:
[Bishop Thomas Paprocki], who is the bishop of Springfield, Illinois, said on X that the photo “mocks God, the Catholic Church, and the papacy.”
“This is deeply offensive to Catholics especially during this sacred time that we are still mourning the death of Pope Francis and praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the election of our new pope,” Paprocki wrote. “He owes an apology.”
An apology? From Donald Trump?
And then there's this from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
"I guess I find it to be an unfortunate thing," said Milwaukee Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob in an interview with the Journal Sentinel May 4 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist.
"In my own understanding just of what it means to be a Christian and a person of good will is to be respectful of other people's circumstances," Grob said. "The church, Catholic Church, is in a period of mourning over the death of Pope Francis, and now it's a pivotal moment, looking into the future.
"And so, it's a very serious time. And whoever it is, wants to quip and make fun, be it Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam. ... We've lost great respect for moments like this. And so it is what is, I guess, but it's very unfortunate."
The Catholics loved it!
