Maria Shriver has strongly condemned President Donald Trump for his scathing criticism of Pope Leo XIV.
“We all deserve better, and we all can speak up and demand better,” Shriver, 70, wrote via Instagram on Monday, March 13. “The job of President requires composure, compassion, and the ability not to react to anything and everything you do not like. We deserve better!”
Trump unleashed a verbal attack on Pope Leo XIV, 70, via his Truth Social social media platform on Sunday, April 13, calling the religious leader “weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy.” (Leo — formerly known as Cardinal Robert Prevost — became the first American pope in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history in March 2025.)
“[The pope] talks about ‘fear’ of the Trump Administration, but doesn’t mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart,” Trump, 79, complained on Sunday.
The president continued, “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.”
Shriver — a devout Roman Catholic — has been a frequent critic of Trump over the years. In this case, she not only took issue with President Trump’s dustup with the Pope but also his decision to post an AI image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. (The AI photo was widely condemned by Trump’s political opponents and it was later removed. President Trump subsequently claimed that he thought the photo showed him “as a doctor and had to do with [the] Red Cross.”)
“I was enraged about the picture and I was also stunned that [Trump] was attacking the Pope, a deeply religious man [and] a deeply peaceful man,” Shriver explained via Instagram on Monday. “[The Pope] has used his voice in a socially conscious way, in a peaceful way, in a way that rises above the noise, in a way that makes us all think about the cost of war, the price of war and whether this is something we really want to be involved in, which is his job.”
(The Pope urged the Trump administration to end the war in Iran during his Easter message on April 5, calling the conflict a “delusion of omnipotence” and a “discourse of death.”)
“I know many people who voted for this President and I know they didn’t vote for this,” Shriver insisted. “I know many of them to be good and kind people. … This is clearly a person who is dangerous, unreliable. ‘Unhinged’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
Shriver argued that America is strongly in need of a wartime leader “who is calm [and] knows how to manage their emotions.”
“This is a plea to the people who are also [working] with him,” Shriver went on. “Come on! Are you not concerned about what is going on? The whole world is concerned … You can do something to stop this. You can do something to teach someone about emotional regulation, about the fact that this isn’t all about him. This is about all of us.”
She declared, “We deserve so much better. Those who voted for this man and those who didn’t! … We deserve a person in this job who is safe, who is consistent, who is reliable and who will manage their emotions. And who doesn’t depict himself as Jesus Christ.”
Amid ongoing hostilities between the White House and the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV assured reporters on Monday that he will not be intimidated.
“I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do,” the Pope said.
For this part, Trump has refused to back down from his criticism of Pope Leo XIV during a brief press conference at the White House on Monday.
“[The Pope] was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran, and you cannot have a nuclear Iran. Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result,” Trump told the White House press pool. “I think he’s very weak on crime and other things so I’m not [going to apologize].”
Us Weekly has reached out to the White House for a comment on Shriver’s video.
