White House Rejects Pope Leo XIV’s Palm Sunday Rebuke — Sparking a MAGA Meltdown
The pope quoted Isaiah 1:15 on Palm Sunday. The White House press secretary responded with patriotic platitudes — and MAGA media piled on.
Dear friends —
On Palm Sunday, Pope Leo XIV stood before tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square and quoted the prophet Isaiah directly at the warmakers: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.”
By Monday, the White House had rejected him, and a coordinated MAGA meltdown was underway — with conservative commentators calling Isaiah 1:15 “unbiblical.”
Today’s essay covers the full scope of the pushback: from Karoline Leavitt’s response at the White House podium to the pile-on from Buzz Patterson, Allie Beth Stuckey, the Babylon Bee, and Robby Starbuck — and why everyone of them got the Bible wrong.
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Karoline Leavitt stood at the White House podium on Monday and rejected Pope Leo XIV’s claim that God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.
“Our nation was a nation founded 250 years ago almost on Judeo-Christian values,” Leavitt told reporters. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with our military leaders or with the president calling on the American people to pray for our service members overseas.”
Leavitt’s plain mischaracterization of Leo XIV’s words wasn’t alone. Within hours of Pope Leo’s Palm Sunday homily, a coordinated pushback had erupted across MAGA media.
Buzz Patterson, a former military aide to President Clinton turned MAGA commentator, quote-tweeted a summary of the pope’s remarks with two words: “This isn’t Biblical.”
Allie Beth Stuckey, the conservative podcast host, wrote that “there is absolutely no biblical basis for this whatsoever,” arguing that “all throughout the Old Testament God calls for war in defense of His people.”
The Babylon Bee published a satirical headline mocking the pope’s claim by invoking King David.
Robby Starbuck said that “God literally sanctions wars in the Bible.”
The problem with all of it — the White House response, the social media pile-on, the satirical deflections — is that Pope Leo was quoting scripture verbatim.
On Sunday, before tens of thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo declared that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”
That last line is Isaiah 1:15. The prophet Isaiah wrote it roughly 2,700 years ago. When Buzz Patterson says, “This isn’t biblical,” he is claiming the Book of Isaiah is not in the Bible.
Stuckey’s assertion that there is “absolutely no biblical basis” for what the pope said runs into an obvious obstacle: the passage appears in every Bible ever printed.
Pope Leo’s homily was not a freelance political commentary. He built the entire address around Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey — fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy of a king who comes in peace, not on a war horse. He referenced Jesus rebuking the disciple who drew a sword in Gethsemane.
He closed with a plea drawn from every layer of the biblical witness: “Lay down your weapons! Remember that you are brothers and sisters!”
The sermon arrived on the thirtieth day of coordinated U.S.-Israeli military operations against Iran.
Approximately 2,000 people have died, including 230 children. Days before Palm Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prayed publicly for “overwhelming violence” against Iran while carrying a Bible stamped with “Deus Vult” — the medieval Crusader battle cry.
Pope Leo constructed his homily as almost a direct theological answer to that prayer.
This is now the third major MAGA meltdown over Pope Leo XIV’s public teaching in the past six months.
Last fall, the trigger was his statement that you cannot claim to be pro-life while supporting the mistreatment of migrants. Earlier this month, MAGA figures dismissed him as a Marxist after he called for a ceasefire in Iran.
The pattern holds: every time the pope articulates a position rooted in Catholic social teaching, the same constellation of commentators, officials, and satirists mobilize to discredit him — not by engaging his theology but by insisting he has no right to speak.
Leavitt’s response at the podium is the clearest example of this reflex.
Rather than engage with Isaiah 1:15 or acknowledge that the pope was quoting a prophet revered across Judaism and Christianity alike, she pivoted to patriotism: the nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values, service members appreciate prayers, and the president has every right to call the country to prayer.
None of that addresses what Pope Leo actually said.
The pope never questioned whether Americans should pray. He said God rejects the prayers of those whose hands are full of blood. The distinction matters — and Leavitt’s refusal to engage with it tells you everything about where this administration stands in relation to the moral tradition it claims to represent.
The Babylon Bee’s invocation of King David deserves a sentence. Yes, David was a warrior. David was also forbidden by God from building the Temple precisely because his hands had shed blood (1 Chronicles 22:8). The Bible they claim to defend already made the pope’s case for him.
What happened on Palm Sunday and the day after represents something larger than a policy disagreement between the Vatican and the White House.
The Trump administration has now spent a month rejecting every peace overture from the Holy See — from the pope’s initial ceasefire call to the Secretary of State’s declaration that the war violates Catholic teaching to this week’s biblical rebuke.
At every turn, the White House has met each overture with deflection, patriotic platitudes, and coordinated social media pile-ons.
The coordinated nature of the pushback matters.
Patterson, Stuckey, the Babylon Bee, Starbuck, and the White House press secretary all delivered the same essential message within a 24-hour window: the pope has no authority to say this, and what he said isn’t even Christian.
When the pope quotes the prophet Isaiah, and the response from Christian America is “this isn’t biblical,” the meltdown has moved beyond politics. These are people choosing a battle over the book they say they believe in.
Pope Leo closed his Palm Sunday homily with the words of Christ: “Lay down your weapons! Remember that you are brothers and sisters!” On Monday, the White House told him to mind his own business.
On the first day of Holy Week — the week the Church remembers the state execution of an innocent man — the leaders of the most powerful nation on earth rejected the Gospel’s demand for peace.
That is the real meltdown. The most powerful government on earth invoked Christ to sanctify a war that has killed 2,000 people — and when the pope quoted the prophet Isaiah to challenge them, a political movement that built its identity on biblical authority told him the Bible was wrong.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with Pope Leo XIV and the millions of Catholics — and countless others of goodwill — who believe that quoting the prophet Isaiah should not be a controversial act.
We exist because someone has to say plainly what the White House refused to engage with on Monday: that a war killing thousands of people, including hundreds of children, cannot be sanctified by prayer, and that a political movement calling itself Christian cannot reject the words of the prophets whenever those words become inconvenient.
This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for a faith that refuses to be conscripted into any nation’s war machine.
They want the Gospel whole — Isaiah and Zechariah and the Sermon on the Mount — not the Bible with the uncomfortable parts torn out.
If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for the full witness of scripture against those who would weaponize only the parts they like — I am asking you to join us.
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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
Rejecting the actual words of scripture from a book they all claim to know so well -- this is cognitive dissonance in action. Do not let up, Pope Leo! So many of us agree with you completely.
The MAGA movement is heretical and based on worship of a false idol, Donald Trump. It’s time that MAGA Catholics decide what is more important Donald Trump or their souls?
This false accommodation has got to end!