April 14, 2026 09:08 AM UTC

Archbishop Aquila Has Left The Building

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• by: Colorado Pols

President Donald Trump turned his social media ire on Pope Leo XIV over the weekend, denouncing the leader of the Catholic Church considered infallible by 1.4 billion faithful across the globe as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” having apparently forgotten that Christians espouse–at least they’re supposed to, anyway–such woke ideals as “forgiveness” and “peace.”

As the Denver Post’s Lauren Pennington reports, the new Archbishop of Denver James Golka is not taking Trump’s shocking swipe at the Patriarch of the West lying down:

“I join my brother bishops in stating clearly that the recent remarks directed at Pope Leo by President Trump are not acceptable,” Denver Archbishop James Golka said in a statement. “Such language fails to reflect the respect owed to the Successor of Peter and does not serve the common good.”

Pope Leo appointed Golka as the sixth archbishop of Denver on Feb. 7.

The back-and-forth between the pope and the president has escalated in recent weeks, and Trump lashed out at the pontiff on social media on Sunday night. That response was sparked by a Saturday evening prayer service at St. Peter’s Basilica, during which Leo said that a “delusion of omnipotence” was fueling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran. The comments came the same day that the United States and Iran began face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan during a fragile ceasefire.

Yesterday, the Pope himself responded:

“I will not enter into debate. The things that I say are certainly not meant as attacks on anyone. The message of the Gospel is very clear: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’” Leo said. “I will not shy away from announcing the message of the Gospel and inviting all people to look for ways of building bridges of peace and reconciliation, and looking for ways to avoid war any time that’s possible.”

This morning, Vice President JD Vance, who calls himself Catholic, brusquely told the Holy Father to butt out of American policy. You have to wonder how that’s going to go over in his next confession:

“I don’t think that it’s particularly newsworthy, but I certainly think that in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic Church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy,” he said.

Notwithstanding the fact that many Protestant evangelical Christians sincerely believe Catholics are going to Hell, there’s no question that Catholics are an important component of the religious right bloc of voters that Republicans depend on, regularly locking them in on wedge morality issues. The problem is there are plenty of other values that Christians hold that do not comport with the MAGA worldview, like not hurting the poor to enrich the richest, opposing violent mass deportation campaigns, and opposing one war after another perhaps most of all–especially after Trump won votes in 2024 by promising no more “endless wars.”

The only other thing we can add is that James Golka’s predecessor as Archbishop of Denver, Samuel Aquila, earned his own reputation for political activism, wading into debates over abortion and LGBTQ+ rights while trying not to appear too hypocritical as the church fought giving victims of sexual abuse by priests the right to sue. Aquila’s retirement has coincided with what seems to be a political shift among American bishops that began with Trump taking office and has accelerated under the first American pope.

If this means the world’s largest Christian denomination is refocusing on the values Jesus actually preached about, that’s a win for everyone not named JD Vance.