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President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, revealed that he would “welcome” a discussion with Pope Leo XIV amid the administration’s ongoing spat with the Vatican over disagreements on immigration policy and the Iran conflict.
Differing from Vice President JD Vance, who said that “in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality,” Homan said he is “open to discussion with any of them.”
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Homan, a “lifelong Catholic,” said, “I wish they’d stay out of immigration, they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
However, Homan asserted that the pope’s opinion would change if he understood that “illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.”
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Trump administration Border Czar Tom Homan (right) said that he would “welcome” a discussion with the Vatican about immigration policy amid the administration’s feud with the Holy See. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; Matteo Pernaselci – Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)
“If they wore my shoes for 40 years, and talked to a 9-year-old girl that got raped multiple times, or stood in the back of a tractor trailer with 19 dead aliens at my feet, including a 5-year-old boy that baked to death, if they understood the atrocities that happened on the open border, I think their opinion would change,” he said.
Trump’s border czar went on to say that despite intense criticism over the president’s immigration policy, “He’s saving thousands of lives a year because he has a secure border.”
“Where President Trump had the most secure border in the lifetime of this nation, right now, lives are being saved,” he emphasized.
In light of this, Homan said, “I welcome discussion with any of them, because they don’t understand illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.”
“Human traffickers are out of business, right? The cartels are going bankrupt because of that secure border. I wish they’d understand that,” he lamented. “Because if they did, I think they’d have a different opinion.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Holy See for comment.
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Split of the pope and Trump (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Leo has said that “no one has said that the United States should have open borders” and stressed, “I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.” However, he has also taken a critical tone of the administration’s interior immigration enforcement tactics.
“When people are living good lives, and many of them for 10, 15, 20 years, to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful, to say the least, and there’s been some violence, unfortunately, I think that the bishops have been very clear in what they said. I think that I would just invite all people in the United States to listen to them,” the pope has said.
Trump criticized the pope’s positions on Sunday in a scathing rebuke on Truth Social.
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump began in a lengthy post.
“Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church,” he concluded.
Regarding the Iran conflict, Trump told reporters, “We don’t like a pope that’s going to say that it’s okay to have a nuclear weapon.”
“We don’t want a pope that says crime is okay in our cities. I don’t like it,” Trump added. “I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime.”
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Pope Leo XIV met with Vice President JD Vance on May 19, 2025, in Vatican City. (Vatican Media/Vatican Pool – Corbis/Getty Images)
In response, Leo told reporters on Monday, “I have no fear of the Trump administration.”
“The things that I say are certainly not meant as attacks on anyone,” he also said, adding, “I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing. I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems.”
“Too many people are suffering in the world today,” Leo added. “Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there’s a better way.”
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For his part, Vance, who has been very vocal about his conversion to Catholicism, told Fox News’s Bret Baier Monday, “I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality … and let the President of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.”
Vance, who has visited the Vatican twice as vice president, dismissed the feud, saying, “We certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican, but we’re also [going to] disagree on substantive questions from time to time. I think that’s a totally reasonable thing.”
