Trump’s Israel Ambassador Attacks Pope Leo’s Gaza Envoy, Sparks Rare Catholic Unity
In an unprecedented move, Ambassador Mike Huckabee issued a “Christian Zionist” treatise aimed at Pope Leo XIV’s Holy Land representative. The result? Outrage united Catholics of left and right.
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For the U.S. Ambassador to Israel to wade into church doctrine is virtually unheard of — yet that’s exactly what Mike Huckabee did this week.
Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister and Trump-appointee, responded to a letter by Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs in Jerusalem with a lengthy theological defense of “Christian Zionism.”
In a social media statement, the ambassador professed “bewilderment” that any Christian could fail to support Zionism.
He acknowledged the traditional Holy Land churches with a polite preamble — “I love my brothers and sisters in Christ from traditional, liturgical churches,” Huckabee said— before bluntly warning that “no sect of the Christian faith should claim exclusivity in speaking for Christians worldwide”.
Huckabee’s statement reads like a mini-sermon on Israel’s divine role. He argued that Christians must also be Zionists, asserting it’s simply recognizing the Jewish people’s right to their “Biblical homeland.”
“It’s hard for me to understand why everyone who takes on the moniker ‘Christian’ would not also be a Zionist,” Huckabee wrote, adding that believing in God’s promises to the Jews is part of his faith.
He insisted Christian Zionism isn’t a political endorsement but fidelity to God’s covenant with Abraham. The ambassador even implied that doubting Israel’s chosen status verges on doubting God: if God “can break His covenant with the Jews,” Huckabee argued, “what hope would Christians have” about God’s promises to them?
Observers were stunned.
Diplomats simply do not issue theological broadsides. Huckabee’s job is to represent U.S. policy — not to publicly rebut Catholic patriarchs on matters of Christian doctrine.
As Crux noted, this “highly unusual foray” led many to wonder if Huckabee’s personal faith was driving his diplomacy, and whether his words “represent the official position of the U.S. government”.
More shocking was the target: the Patriarch of Jerusalem and fellow church leaders, whom Pope Leo XIV entrusts with the Catholic flock in Israel-Palestine. Their joint letter had warned that “Christian Zionism” is a “damaging ideology” spread by certain outsiders sowing confusion among local Christians.
These patriarchs — Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant heads of churches in the Holy Land — asserted their sole authority over Christian life in the region, condemning political interference in their communities.
Huckabee’s public rebuttal, essentially defending the very ideology they condemned, landed as a direct affront to the Church’s leadership in the land of Christ.
Catholics Left and Right Cry Foul
The backlash to Huckabee’s letter was swift — and remarkably unified. Across the Catholic world, voices that rarely agree found common cause in condemning the ambassador’s actions.
“How is it the business of the U.S. ambassador to Israel to respond to the churches in Jerusalem?” demanded one incredulous commentator.
Michael Knowles, a prominent conservative Catholic pundit, lambasted Huckabee’s meddling. Knowles, who writes for the right-wing Daily Wire, openly rejected the “Christian Zionist” label himself, arguing that no politician — not even Israel — can replace the Church in God’s plan.
Conservative Catholics were astonished that an American envoy would lecture Catholic bishops on theology, calling Huckabee’s move a “shocking attack on the Church” in language normally reserved for anti-Catholic regimes.
On the other end of the spectrum, progressive Catholics were equally appalled. One self-ascribed progressive Catholic commentator argued that “this reads like an apologetics tract from a televangelist, not a diplomatic communique.”
Perhaps the only silver lining was the rare unity that emerged. Huckabee has done the impossible — he got liberals and radical traditionalists to agree on something.
Indeed, even usually pro-Trump Catholics voiced unease. It did not go unnoticed that Huckabee, a MAGA stalwart, was effectively taking aim at the pope’s man in Jerusalem.
With Pope Leo XIV’s outspoken advocacy for Gaza’s suffering Christians, many saw Huckabee’s manifesto as implicitly rebuking Leo himself. That galvanized Catholics of all stripes to close ranks around the Church.
Even outside Catholic circles, the move raised eyebrows. Some Evangelicals — typically friendly to Huckabee — distanced themselves, wary of a U.S. ambassador stoking religious disputes.
And notably, not one U.S. bishop is backing Huckabee’s intervention. Regardless of their politics, the bishops know an infringement on Church authority when they see it. If anything, Huckabee managed to do what few issues can: unite the Catholic left and right in outrage.
One person who was not outraged, however, was Babylon Bee editor Joel Berry — and that came as no surprise.
Berry, an outspoken Evangelical nationalist, quickly signaled support for Huckabee’s stance. Over the summer, Berry earned infamy — and Catholic ire — by claiming that Gaza’s tiny Catholic community “all support Hamas,” implying they weren’t true Christians.
He did this hours after Gaza’s only Catholic parish was bombed by Israeli forces.
That scandal saw prominent Catholics across the country denounce Berry’s anti-Catholic broadside.
It’s worth recalling that Pope Francis himself called Gaza’s Catholic parish priest almost every night from October 2023 until his death on April 21, 2025.
Berry’s dismissive attitude toward Holy Land Catholics as Hamas sympathizers laid bare a strain of extremist Christian Zionism that scapegoats even fellow Christians in the name of defending Israel.
So it was entirely in character for Berry to cheer on Huckabee. He praised the ambassador’s theological salvo and mocked the Jerusalem patriarchs as out-of-touch.
If Huckabee’s letter was an attack on the Church, Berry happily took up the fight on the ambassador’s flank. His reaction only underscored why the patriarchs raised the alarm about “local individuals” spreading confusion — Berry fits the bill as exactly the type of agitator Church leaders warned against.
Rome’s Stance: No Catholic Blessing for Christian Zionism
In the Vatican’s eyes, Huckabee’s Christian Zionist creed is nothing new — it’s a throwback to a theology the Catholic Church has long deemed untenable.
For decades, the Church has taught that God’s promises to Israel were fulfilled in Christ and the Church, not through modern geopolitics.
Christian Zionism, rooted in a 19th-century dispensationalist interpretation of Scripture, holds that the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948 was the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and a prerequisite for Christ’s Second Coming.
This idea, popular among some American Evangelicals, is foreign to Catholic theology.
The Catholic faith is not Christian Zionism. To Catholics, supporting Jewish people and having a concern for the Holy Land is natural — but baptizing a political agenda as divine will is not.
Church teaching rejects the notion that any temporal state, Israel included, has a blank-check theological mandate. In fact, many Christian Zionist claims smack of the very “dispensationalist heresy” that Catholic doctrine has never accepted.
Even prominent conservative voices agree: Tucker Carlson — no liberal by any stretch — recently called Christian Zionism “a heresy.”
Pope Leo XIV’s stance on the matter is very much in line with Pope Francis and his predecessors.
The Vatican has repeatedly affirmed Israel’s right to exist in peace and security — politically and diplomatically — while rejecting theological claims that God’s plan necessitates any specific modern nation’s expansion.
In the current crisis, Pope Leo has followed Pope Francis’s lead in voicing compassion for both Israelis and Palestinians, and insisting on the protection of innocents.
Since Hamas’s bloody Oct. 7 attack, tensions have been high between Israel and the Catholic Church. As Israel’s military pummeled Gaza in response, Catholic leaders grew more outspoken about the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding.
Pope Francis pleaded for a ceasefire and humanitarian corridors, and he lamented the mounting civilian toll. Israeli officials bristled at the Vatican’s moral objections, at one point even lashing out when a papal diplomat described Gaza as a “vast concentration camp.”
Into this fraught atmosphere stepped the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa — effectively Leo’s envoy to Gaza — who emerged as a courageous advocate for his flock under fire.
When an Israeli shell struck Gaza’s historic Holy Family Catholic Church last July — the only Catholic parish in Gaza — killing at least three people, the Patriarch was “appalled,” and Pope Leo was deeply grieved.
These personal bonds and tragedies inform Rome’s view: Christian lives in the Holy Land are not pawns in an apocalyptic chess game — they are real people whose rights and dignity the Church will not abandon.
That is why the Patriarchs of Jerusalem felt compelled to denounce Christian Zionism as divisive. And it is why Ambassador Huckabee’s very public rebuttal struck a nerve in the Catholic world. To many, it seemed the United States’ envoy was effectively endorsing a fringe theology over the unified witness of the historic churches in Christianity’s holiest ground.
An Unlikely Moment of Catholic Solidarity
If there is a grace note in this bizarre episode, it is the sight of Catholics standing together in defense of their faith’s integrity. In an era of bitter polarization within the Church, the Huckabee affair became a rallying point. Progressive Catholics who often clash with traditionalists found themselves saying “Amen” to the likes of Michael Knowles — and vice versa — in rejecting the notion that Washington should dictate theology.
One might call it a minor miracle: Pope Leo’s flock, from left to right, closed ranks when the Church’s authority was challenged.
The Vatican is expected to handle the matter diplomatically, avoiding any direct war of words with the U.S. Embassy at this point. No one expects Pope Leo XIV to directly confront Huckabee — that is not Leo’s style.
But there’s no doubt the pope is aware and heartened by the unified response of his people. Leo has spoken frequently about the need for Christian unity in witness, and here it was on display.
Across American Catholic media this week, a rare chord sounded: don’t tread on Mother Church. Conservatives and liberals alike affirmed that no political loyalty — be it to Trump, or to Israel, or to any nation — should come before fidelity to the Catholic faith.
We may argue among ourselves, but when you attack the Church, you attack all of us.
For Ambassador Huckabee, the fallout may serve as a caution. He likely intended to bolster support among evangelical constituents back home, many of whom share his zeal for Israel. Instead, he managed to embarrass his office and foster Catholic solidarity against the very ideology he promoted.
The Holy Land’s Patriarchs stood firm by their original statement, and now that stance has been amplified globally by the controversy. Huckabee has inadvertently drawn far more attention to the Church’s warning that Christian Zionism “misleads the public” and “harms the unity of our flock”.
Indeed, by trying to refute that line, he ended up illustrating it.
As the dust settles, Catholics are left with an unexpected sense of unity — and a renewed appreciation for the Church’s voice in the Holy Land. Few would have predicted that a Trump diplomat’s tweet could spark such a moment.
Yet in Providence, good can come from the most unlikely sources.
The Catholic Church in America, often splintered, found itself speaking with one voice to say: Enough.
Whether one leans left or right, the faith is not to be commandeered by politics. And when it is attacked, however subtly, Catholics will stand together to defend their Mother Church.
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If Huckabee wants to be a religious voice in the Israel situation, then he needs to resign his ambassadorship. An ambassador is the representative of the US Government, and not a religious spokesperson. Just shows the world what Christian Nationalists and Christian Zionists put first in their world, and it is not Jesus.
Hi Chris, you wrote:
“Huckabee’s job is to represent U.S. policy — not to publicly rebut Catholic patriarchs on matters of Christian doctrine.”
Things have changed quite a bit over the past twelve months as the Heritage Foundation has assumed the role of President of the USA. Huckabee may very well be representing current U.S. policy, along with Vance and others of their ilk.