When JFK (35) met Pope Paul VI (262)
Sabbath gasbags
That’s what the writer Calvin Trillin called the pundits, panelists and pollsters who appear on the Sunday morning news shows. I expect they’ll be chatting up a storm this morning about the row between President Trump (45/47) and Pope Leo XIV (267).
Are any American Catholics who haven’t made up their minds still trying to decide between supporting the President or the Pope? Trump won most of the Catholic vote in 2016 (52%) and in 2024 (58%). We don’t vote for Pope, but Leo XIV’s Fall 2025 approval rating according to Pew polling among American Catholics was 84% (4% disapproval). Among Catholics attending Mass this morning, it was 95%. What are those numbers now? The lines of support are shifting. It depends on how many American Catholics think Trump went too far this time.
Is this really a fight Trump wants?
Trump’s support drops among Catholics after his Pope Leo remarks,says the headline in The Hill. “For many Catholic voters, the question is no longer confined to partisan preference. It touches on the coherence between faith and political judgment, particularly in matters of war, peace, and the moral limits of power,”said Jorge Enrique Mujica of Zenit.org, an Italian news site that covers the Papacy. In other words, even American Catholics who are hard core Trump supporters are having second thoughts. Here’s some good coverage of the week that the President called out the Pope.
President-Pope meetings go way back
Since 1919, six popes have met with 14 U.S. presidents.The first Catholic American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, visited Pope Paul VI at the Vatican on July 2, 1963. We didn’t know it then, but JFK had less than five months to live. Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Cardinal Montini of Milan had been Pope Paul VI for less than a month; his predecessor John XXIII died on June 3, 1963. The Pope, who would be canonized and become Pope Saint Paul VI in October 2018, is sitting on a throne that's elevated a few inches above JFK's chair. The question going into the meeting with the Pope was whether JFK would bend a knee and kiss the ring. "Would JFK adhere to traditional practice, whereby Catholics, when presented to the pope, kneel, grasp the pope’s right hand, and kiss the papal ring, which is the physical symbol of the Petrine office? Even JFK—ever the political realist—acknowledged the conundrum that faced him. Remembering the religious opposition to his presidential candidacy back in 1960—because of his Catholicism—he remarked: “Norman Vincent Peale would love that.”(America Magazine)
The President didn’t. But his sister Jean did.
His one-on-one meeting with the Pope lasted only 18 minutes. Then there was a statement from the Pope in which he surprised JFK by telling reporters he prayed for the success of the struggles of American Negroes.
What wasn’t reported at the time
We know more now about the way JFK spent time with women other than his wife. Jackie Kennedy had met with Pope John XXIII in 1962 but was not with the President on his trip to Rome in 1963. She was pregnant. The new Pope was to be installed a day before JFK’s visit. POTUS offered to come some other time. The Italian government said, “No. Come now.” So he did. But to avoid Air Force One landing in Rome during the Papal ceremony, it landed in Milan and JFK spent the evening in a villa beds Lake Como alone with “a lady of some note in Europe.” The next day he met the Pope. Source: President Kennedy by Richard Reeves citing Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye by JFK aide Kenny O’Donnell.)
What are the odds of President Trump and Pope Leo meeting?
Have you heard about “prediction markets”? It’s possible to bet on what major news events will happen. So, I checked the odds of a Trump-Pope Leo meeting. They're not good. Kalshi puts the likelihood ot the two meeting at 31%. For comparison purposes, Trump meeting with Chinese leader Xi is 92% and with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un is 25%. (FWIW - The odds of Taylor Swift meeting Pope Leo are just below 8%)
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