Conservative critics are raising alarms over a recent "60 Minutes" segment that elevated three outspoken Catholic cardinals who attacked President Donald Trumps immigration and Iran policies, despite holding no formal leadership roles within the American hierarchy.
According to Fox News, Father Gerald Murray and Catholic author Robert Royal joined Raymond Arroyo on "The Prayerful Posse" to assess whether the broadcast was designed to manufacture a clash between President Trump and Pope Leo XIV, a confrontation many on the right see as politically convenient for the left. The "60 Minutes" feature presented the trio as representative voices of the Church, even as Royal stressed that they lack elected positions within the U.S. Bishops Conference and do not speak for the broader episcopate.
Royal dismissed the networks framing of the prelates as major power brokers, noting, "The three of them are billed as so-called influential, but none of them hold offices in the U.S. Bishops' Conference, and they have never been elected," a pointed reminder that media narratives often inflate progressive Catholic figures who align with liberal policy goals. He went further, likening the group to the far-left bloc in Congress, saying they resembled "The Squad" in U.S. politics and calling them "a very definite and pretty left-wing group of just three."
The cardinals used their national platform to denounce several pillars of Trumps second-term agenda, including enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the administrations hard line on Irans Islamist regime. Cardinal Joseph Tobin accused ICE agents of acting in a way to "terrify people," a characterization that dovetails neatly with progressive talking points that portray border enforcement as inherently cruel rather than a basic function of national sovereignty.
On foreign policy, Cardinal Robert McElroy asserted that under Catholic teaching, the conflict with Iran is "not a just war," implicitly rebuking the administrations efforts to deter a regime that has long sponsored terrorism and threatened American allies. Father Murray rejected that assessment, citing intelligence that Tehran was nearing the threshold for a nuclear weapon and arguing that moral theology cannot be divorced from hard realities.
"I think it is a just war precisely because the nuclear threat from Iran is a proven danger to us," Murray said, emphasizing the gravity of the situation. "Its not an imaginary, Maybe itll happen thing. If they have a nuclear weapon, theyre [going to] use it."
Arroyo, a frequent critic of liberal media spin, suggested the entire episode was orchestrated to lure the White House into a public brawl with the Vatican, a tactic he dubbed "pope-a-doping." "They were trying to get Trump to overreact, and he did," Arroyo said, arguing that the segment functioned less as journalism and more as political theater aimed at undermining a conservative president.
The exchange quickly escalated after the broadcast, with President Trump and Pope Leo trading public barbs that highlighted the widening gulf between nationalist and globalist visions within both politics and the Church. "Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy," Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding, "I dont want a Pope who thinks its OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
Trump followed up with another post urging Americans to "tell Pope Leo" about the Iranian regimes brutal suppression and killings of protesters earlier this year, underscoring his argument that moral leadership requires confronting tyrannical regimes, not accommodating them. For his part, Pope Leo attempted to distance himself from the political storm, telling reporters that he neither fears the Trump administration nor sees himself as a partisan actor.
"The message of the church, my message, the message of the Gospel: Blessed are the peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political, a politician," he added, even as his allies on "60 Minutes" advanced positions that closely mirror the priorities of the secular left on borders, security, and foreign affairs.
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