Israel Defense Forces say the ‘soldiers’ conduct completely deviated from IDF orders and value’

Two Israeli soldiers have been removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in jail after one used a sledgehammer to smash a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon while the other filmed him, the Israel Defense Forces have said.

An image circulating on social media on Monday showed an Israeli soldier using a sledgehammer to strike the head of a statue of a crucified Jesus that had fallen from its cross in a Christian village in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, prompting outrage among Christian communities worldwide.

Aldeas, The Final Dream of Pope Francis is being screened to commemorate the first anniversary of Francis’s death

Martin Scorsese’s documentary about Pope Francis is to have its world premiere in the Vatican today as one of a set of events commemorating the first anniversary of Francis’s death.

The screening of the film, titled Aldeas, The Final Dream of Pope Francis, is being staged by Scholas Occurrentes, an international organisation aiming to “to encourage social integration ‎and the culture of encounter through sports, arts and technology”, which was set up in Argentina by Francis in 2001 while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and made into a foundation when he became pope in 2013.

War is nothing new for America — but the way Pete Hegseth talks about it is. President Donald Trump’s secretary of defense often styles the US’s actions in Iran as being blessed by God. As being holy.

He likened the recovery of a downed Air Force member in Iran on Easter Sunday to the resurrection of Christ. He quoted a Bible verse about God blessing war at a recent press conference on Iran. Famously, he has a tattoo that says “Deus vult,” which is Latin for “God wills it,” and it was a rallying cry for Christian armies during the Crusades. 

The head of Hegseth’s church, Pastor Doug Wilson, told Today, Explained co-host Noel King that “I like the job he’s doing, and I like how he speaks.” Wilson said that he can hear his teachings coming through when Hegseth talks about the war. 

It’s been a long road for Wilson to achieve this level of influence. The evangelical pastor founded Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, in the late 1970s. The church has since spread across the country under the umbrella of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. 

Recently, it opened a branch in Washington, DC: An ideal spot to serve a conservative faithful increasingly warming to Wilson’s ideas around Christian nationalism and Christian theocracy, which hold that the US should be governed by Christians according to Christian principles.

Wilson told Vox that he’s been on the fringes for decades. Now, he’s being invited into the halls of power. He recently led a prayer service at the Pentagon, he’s been on Tucker Carlson and Ross Douthat’s podcasts, he’s spoken at Turning Point USA events and at the National Conservatism Conference. Not so fringe anymore.

In a wide-ranging conversion, Wilson and Noel discussed what his ideal Christian theocracy would look like; his desire to ban abortion, same-sex marriage, repeal the 19th Amendment; and why he thinks Trump is laying the groundwork for his Christian nation.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Right now the seat of power in America is President Donald Trump. Do you like President Trump’s leadership? 

Two thirds of the time, I like it a lot. A third of the time, I think: What is he doing? 

A good thing to compare Trump to is: America’s got cancer and Trump is chemo. Trump is a radical chemo treatment and chemo is toxic. Chemo is a system where it kills the cancer before it kills the patient. 

I like the progress that Trump has made on the cancer. And I’m aware of some of the damage that’s done to the healthy tissues by his management style, his leadership style. But politics is the art of the possible.

I hear you saying: President Trump is getting us closer to the Christian nation that I want. He also acts in ways that contradict what Christ preaches in the Bible. And he is often a bad role model, right? Do you have any reservations, being a pastor, about letting Trump off the hook? 

If I did let him off the hook, then I would have reservations about that. But I really haven’t. The president needs Christ. But we live in a topsy-turvy world, because there are some of his policies that are far closer to the biblical Christian position than some sanctimonious Christians who disapprove of his mean tweets and his behavior. 

In the congregation I pastor, we don’t have any Trumpkin, wild-eyed supporters where no matter what Trump does, it’s always good. When Trump misbehaves, everybody laughs. We budgeted for that. That’s bad. And we know it’s bad and we say it’s bad. But we don’t have Trump derangement syndrome. 

When he does good things that thrill us, we’re thrilled. I don’t mind saying that there are a whole range of issues where Trump’s behavior has thrilled me, and others that I just heartily disapprove of. And I don’t think I’m setting a poor example for our people. When I say what I think for, of, about both of those categories.

Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, attends a Communion of Reformed Evangelical Church. And that’s why I think people mention you in the same breath. 

Correct.

The secretary of defense has had opportunities — ample opportunities of late — to speak publicly in front of the American people. Do you hear your church’s teachings when he speaks? 

Yes. 

How so? 

Let me flip it around. I don’t hear anything from him that contradicts what we teach, and I believe that he’s a consistent Christian gentleman. I like what he’s doing. I like the job he’s doing, and I like how he speaks. I’ve not heard anything that contradicts what we would teach from the pulpit. 

He has spoken of the war in Iran in religious terms. He also suggests that God is on America’s side. God is rooting for America in this war. I think the thing that people struggle with is the idea that God would be on board when you see civilian casualties like this school in Iran with the children — [more than] 150 people killed. 

That happens, and then the secretary of defense says: God’s on our side. Can you help us understand why that feels right to you? 

The first thing I would say is that no answer should try to pretend that war isn’t horrible, okay? In any war, horrible things will happen.

But when you look at a regime that killed, what, 35 to 40,000 of their own people in the last month or so, if you’re looking at a regime where a woman can be executed for having been raped? We have a lot of problems, a lot of moral problems. We are not a moral paragon. But if you put this, the Western civilization that we have and the Islamic Sharia state that they have in Iran, I believe that it’s not a morally ambiguous situation at all. 

The war has certainly divided Christians. Pope Leo wrote, “God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” What do you make of his statements? 

I’d say he needs to read his Old Testament more. Psalm 144:1, “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my fingers for battle.” Pope Leo, before he was the pope, was just sort of an ordinary Democratic leftist critic of Trump. 

Hmm.

And in the recent spat that Trump and the pope had, it was just Trump dealing with a political opponent, which is what the pope was being. I don’t think the pope was acting in the role of a religious leader executing the scripture there. I think he was just stating his political convictions. 

“God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” 

That strikes you as just a political opinion, just a criticism of President Trump?

Yeah, absolutely. Because when you have people who are very selective in their indignation…when you look at the kind of violence that the Iranian regime perpetrates against their own people — like 40,000 people dead — and they did it on purpose as opposed to blowing up a school by accident, and the pope is silent on that kind of thing, and then he turns to go after Trump for conducting this war. I don’t see equal weights and measures there. I don’t think Pope Leo is being honest. 

President Trump posted a meme depicting himself as Jesus Christ. He deleted it, but it struck many Christians, including many conservative Christians, as really appalling. What was your gut reaction to that? And then when you had time to think it through, where did you land on that? 

My first reaction [was] — I tweeted about it, I said: Somebody needs to figure out how to put this picture onto black velvet so that it can be blasphemous and tacky. The picture was blasphemous. The president’s explanation afterward was that he thought it was a doctor figure, not Jesus. 

Do you believe him? 

I find that’s a stretch, but I’m willing to accept it. If he took the picture down and said that portraying himself as Jesus is not what he intended, at least we got that. That was a very good thing. But I think they’ve gotta do better when it comes to social media management. That was a blasphemous image. And blasphemy is no good, no matter who does it. 

What is the penalty for blasphemy? 

It would depend. It’s like first-degree murder down to manslaughter. So there are varying degrees. The worst penalty in the Old Testament for blasphemy was capital punishment. 

Let me ask you one last question. There’s a writer, Tim Alberta. He comes from an evangelical background. He tweeted this the other day in response to President Trump and the image: “My conviction remains: God did not ordain Donald Trump to rescue the American church, or revive the American church, or redeem the American church. God ordained Donald Trump to test the American church. And the American church has failed.” What do you think God is trying to do with President Trump? 

I agree with everything in that tweet right up to the last line. I disagree with the last line. I think that Trump is a test. This goes back to what I said earlier about chemo. I think that the tumultuous times that we’re living in really are a test. But in many ways, I’ve been greatly heartened at how many Christians have gotten to work taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by the chaos of our times. 

I think Tim Alberta’s tweet seemed to indicate that we failed because all the Christians fell in lockstep behind Donald Trump and, and didn’t stand up and challenge him. But in the world I live in, conservative, evangelical leaders are willing to oppose Trump where they think he’s wrong and they’re willing to support him where they think he’s right. And I wouldn’t call that failure.

Netanyahu says ‘harsh disciplinary action’ will be taken after IDF confirms sledgehammer photo is authentic

The Israeli military is conducting a criminal investigation after a soldier was photographed striking a Catholic statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in southern Lebanon.

Israel’s military officials said they had determined that an image circulating on social media showing the incident was authentic. The image appears to show an Israeli soldier using a sledgehammer to strike the head of a statue of a crucified Jesus that had fallen off a cross.

Catholics around Atlanta share mixed feelings on faith and politics as Trump engages in rhetorical war with pope

Alex Sullivan tended to his five children on the lawn after a traditional Latin mass at the Catholic church of Saint Monica in Duluth, Georgia, and contemplated his faith in the light of God and the shadow of Donald Trump.

Sullivan, a self-described conservative who once staffed a libertarian state representative at the Georgia capitol, described his faith as almost medieval.

Manhattan church led by Norman Vincent Peale was known for opposing presidency of JFK – and Catholics in general

Donald Trump’s attacks this week on Pope Leo, for his criticism of the US attack on Iran and the US president’s decision to post an image of himself as Jesus Christ on social media, make a good deal more sense considering Trump attended services as a young man at the Protestant Marble Collegiate church in Manhattan, which was led at the time by an anti-Catholic pastor.

That church’s pastor in Trump’s youth, Norman Vincent Peale, who would later officiate at Trump’s first wedding, is best-known today as the author of the Christian self-help book The Power of Positive Thinking, but when Trump was 14, Peale made national headlines as the leader of a group of Protestant churchmen who loudly objected to the presidential candidacy of John F Kennedy, on the grounds that he was a Catholic.

After the attempted arson attack on a London synagogue, communities remain determined that ‘building higher walls’ will not stem rising tide of antisemitism

“How good and how wonderful it is when friends sit together,” reads a variation on a verse from Psalms painted high on the wall inside Finchley Reform Synagogue (FRS). For the congregation gathering in a cheerful hubbub before its Shabbat service on Friday evening, it felt like an especially apt sentiment.

Three days after the synagogue was the target of an attempted firebombing, hundreds of members made an extra effort to come together in determined, if slightly nervy, solidarity, joined by guests including local politicians, other faith leaders, police officers – and one particularly special group of neighbours.

Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV polarizing the diverse community as faith and politics come to a head

Maryellen Lewicki meets once a week for Bible study with a group of Catholic women in Decatur, Georgia, in a space they try to keep clear of politics. But Donald Trump’s name arises nonetheless.

“We have one person that we pray for during the course of the week,” she said. “What my friend said is that she prays for the president every day, that God will remove that hard heart of his and replace it with a softer one that has love.”

Sarah Mullally urges Anglicans to join Leo’s ‘courageous’ call and says human cost of war is incalculable

The archbishop of Canterbury has said she is standing in solidarity with Pope Leo XIV’s calls for peace amid his public feud with Donald Trump.

Days after the US president objected to comments from the head of the Catholic church suggesting a “delusion of omnipotence” was fuelling the US-Israeli war in Iran, Sarah Mullally urged Anglicans to join Leo’s “courageous” call.

The White House cannot stop fighting with the pope.

On Tuesday night, Vice President JD Vance — who converted to Catholicism in 2019 — accused Pope Leo XIV of not understanding the Church’s stance on war, saying it was “very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” Later in the evening, President Donald Trump continued to berate the pope for not supporting his strikes on Iran.

In Leo, though, they’ve found a feistier opponent than they might have expected. He calmly held his ground, hit back with some jabs of his own — he called the Trump-owned platform Truth Social’s name “ironic” — and, perhaps most importantly, has brought support to bear from prominent right-leaning Catholics in the US. The top Senate Republican sounds unnerved. Trump, who is used to quickly cowing nonpartisan public figures into a more conciliatory stance, is not winning this time.

This isn’t the White House’s first run-in with a pope. Trump, and sometimes Vance, were in a long-running conflict with Pope Francis going all the way back to the 2016 Republican presidential primary, when Francis indirectly suggested that Trump “was not a Christian,” because of his focus on “building walls…and not bridges.” Back then, even Trump’s fellow GOP primary contenders, including Catholics like then-Sen. Marco Rubio, backed him up.

As a result, Trump might be surprised by how much stronger the backlash is this time. Even before he doubled down on his initial Truth Social attacks and posted a controversial (and sacrilegious) AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ, many of his usual allies, including conservative Catholics, were calling him out.

“The statements made by President Trump on Truth Social regarding the Pope were entirely inappropriate and disrespectful,” the Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, a member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission who is popular with conservative Catholics, said on X — a statement emblematic of right-leaning Catholics’ responses. 

Why is the current spat so different? A lot of it has to do with Pope Leo, who starts with a much stronger base of support from American Catholics on the right. After years of sparring with Francis, Trump and Vance may find they’ve messed with the wrong pope this time. 

Traditionalist and conservative Catholics in the US trust Leo a lot more than Francis

Since assuming the papacy, Leo has shown himself adept at leveraging the optics of his office, winning over critics, and building popular appeal to strengthen his hand — all moves that Trump would surely recognize. 

A lot of the goodwill on the right toward Leo has nothing to do with US politics, but with matters of faith: internal Vatican debates about doctrine and the role of the papacy. He’s made significant inroads with traditionalist and more orthodox Catholics, who were far more suspicious of Francis’ approach, and they’re more inclined to take his side as a result.

When Leo was elected pope, American Catholics, who lean more theologically and politically conservative than in other parts of the world, weren’t sure what to make of him. He wasn’t one of the so-called frontrunners, so his election shocked the world.

He was the first American-born pope, from Chicago, but like the Argentine-born Pope Francis had spent decades in Latin America, where the Church had a reputation for sometimes challenging capitalism from the left. He came from the Augustinian order, a more hermetic and austere tradition, as opposed to the more visible and liberal-leaning Jesuit order that trained Francis. Though elevated by the “liberal” Francis through the Vatican hierarchy, Leo was well-liked by both progressive, conservative, and traditionalist clerics in the Church.

Traditionalist and conservative Catholics were cautiously optimistic, and soon saw signs that Leo was rewarding their faith in him. They cheered on his restoration of the elaborate, grand, traditional symbols of the papacy, which Francis had disregarded. During his first public address, he gave a blessing in Latin — traditionalists strongly opposed the Church’s 20th-century turn away from the language — and wore the more traditional garb of the pontiff, including a red mozzetta, or short cape, (as opposed to Francis’s simple white attire).

These and other symbolic moves were a sign that “at the very least he is intentionally not following directly in the footsteps of Francis” the conservative Catholic editor-in-chief of Crisis magazine, Eric Sammons, said at the time.

And sure enough, the overtures that followed allowed a lot of traditionalists to breathe a sigh of relief. Leo was, at worst, a centrist: traditional in style and conservative in dogma, even if he carried on Francis’s tradition of Catholic social teaching. He did not immediately wade into social and cultural debates, instead prioritizing thinking on artificial intelligence, economic justice, and respect for human rights; he spoke spontaneously less often than Francis, who was known for his off-the-cuff remarks; and he did not antagonize those supporters of the Traditional Latin Mass.

He moved back to the pope’s apartments in the Apostolic Palace, which Francis had abandoned during his papacy, and picked back up old traditions, like carrying a cross through the Colosseum on Good Friday this year — something Pope John Paul II used to do. Even now, Catholic observers look for clues and signs of Leo’s theological and stylistic leanings: looking to see what vestments he wears, what regalia he bears, and who he promotes.

And perhaps most importantly, he seemed willing to reconcile and repair differences between promoters of the traditional Latin Mass and the dominant vernacular Catholic tradition that Francis promoted. Leo has gone so far as to allow discussion of the Latin Mass during gatherings of cardinals, opening up the possibility that previous restrictions might be reexamined, and called for “generous inclusion,” of its supporters, though he has reminded traditionalists not to allow their support for the Latin Mass to become a political tool.

A common knock on Francis in America was that he earned praise from secular liberals, but not new converts to counter shrinking Church attendance in the US. Leo is benefiting from the opposite trend: The American Church, in particular, is seeing a cultural revival: Young Catholics are filling pews in big city parishes and posting their experiences online. Catholicism, and its traditional aesthetics, is trendy again. Converts and baptisms are rising again, albeit slowly. Clergy and Catholic influencers are more vocal. And Leo is part of that revitalization.

The Iran war has actually divided conservative Catholics in the US

It’s not just Leo’s base of support that’s coloring the reaction to his argument with Trump; it’s also the issue that’s at the center of it: the war in Iran, and the rising use of military force more broadly. 

Republicans and Democrats have grown used to ignoring or explaining away certain conflicts with the Church that fall along partisan lines — immigration for Republicans, abortion for Democrats. President Joe Biden was denied communion at one South Carolina church over his support for abortion rights, which fit into a longstanding debate about how to punish pro-choice Catholic politicians.

But Leo is speaking up over an issue that is actually dividing conservative Catholics: the joint US-Israeli war in Iran. Polls show disapproval by Catholics of both Trump’s handling of the war, and the fact that the war is even happening — both departures from the double-digit margin of victory Catholic voters gave Trump in 2024, according to exit polls.

These splits aren’t just theological; they also run into cultural and political divides within the party. But Vance’s leaked reservations about the war and the resignation of Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center and a conservative Catholic, show these tensions are present even within Trump’s own White House. 

Francis was seen as the aggressor in his fights with Trump

As mentioned above, popes frequently take principled stands on issues that are divisive in US politics. But they typically try to avoid getting caught up in spats with politicians and keep their critiques more generalized.

As a result, when Francis took on Trump, it was seen by many as a violation of what religion professor Stephen Prothero termed “an unspoken gentleman’s agreement in American politics” that the Catholic clergy steers clear of domestic campaign issues.

In case you need a refresher, back in 2016, Francis took time as he was wrapping up an apostolic visit to Mexico to comment on the news of the day. This was the peak of Trump’s anti-immigrant, nationalistic, “build-a-wall” upstart campaign for the Republican nomination — and just days before the make-or-break South Carolina primary — and Francis injected himself right into the middle of it. 

Though he didn’t use Trump’s name, he responded to a question about the candidate by saying that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” The comments were seen as a direct attack on the candidate. 

Francis came from Argentina, where the Church played a bigger role in commenting on politics, and perhaps didn’t realize how far he was going. He had a knack for spontaneity, which sometimes led him to weighing in on issues on inopportune moments. And perhaps he was a poor fit for doing politics in a polarized time: In singling out a border wall rather than Trump’s more unique takes on moral issues, he named a position widely backed in some form by Republican politicians and even some Democrats. 

Regardless of his intent, it triggered a wave of criticism from Republican Catholics: Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio sided with Trump over the pope: “We should have a strategy to secure our border…that’s not an un-Christian thing to do,” Bush said, while Rubio made the case that sovereign countries have “a right to control who comes in, when they come in and how they come in,” just like Vatican City. 

And of course, Trump fired back, accusing Francis of being a Mexican “pawn” and warning that the Vatican would be “attacked by ISIS” if he were not elected president. And so kicked off the tense and standoffish relationship between the pope and Trump.

By contrast, while Leo has proven willing to respond to Trump, the “feud” this time only really began when Trump launched a lengthy personal attack against him on Truth Social.

In Francis’s case, it also didn’t help that he had already earned skepticism on the right by 2016 for his other forays into politically fraught topics, which made them less inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. His frequent focus on the poor, on immigrants, on the persecuted, and more progressive or nuanced takes on controversial issues like homosexuality, climate change, abortion, and capitalism, all opened him up to attack and dismissal from politically conservative Catholics. 

Taken together, you can see two very different popes: Francis was a trailblazer, but a controversial leader who was viewed as more antagonistic toward politicians and issues conservative American Catholics cared about. Leo has been seen as more temperate and moderate in his stances, giving him more influence when he chooses to speak up, which he has chosen to do on an issue in which he could actually project some sway. 

Trump paid no obvious political price for his fights with Francis. Whether that changes with Leo, either for Trump or for his successor, he’s picked a far tougher foil this time.