Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) called on President Donald Trump to apologize to Pope Leo XIV, arguing the president has treated the pontiff as a political figure rather than a religious leader.
“I, for one, think apology is an underused art in politics,” Tillis said in a Wednesday interview with NBC News. “When you’re wrong, you’re wrong, or if you made a mistake, or maybe it was just a misconception, just get past it. Move on. This president has done so many positive things that I want to focus on.”
Tillis also pushed back on Trump’s Sunday Truth Social post, calling the pope “weak on crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.”
“To say soft on crime or soft on the border, that’s what you say to an opponent in the next election,” Tillis said. “Or, you know, maybe a presidential or prime minister candidate in some other country, but not to the pope of the Catholic Church.”
Tillis acknowledged that while the pope might be a political figure at some level, Leo is still the leader of the Catholic Church.
“He is speaking the very same things that he would speak at church, whether or not this Iranian conflict was going on,” Tillis said.
Tillis also spoke about the artificially generated image Trump posted in which he resembled Jesus, which gathered backlash from the president’s closest allies. Trump denied that the image depicted him as Jesus and later removed the post.
On Orthodox Easter, President Trump attacked the Pope because the Pope is rightly against Trump’s war in Iran and then he posted this picture of himself as if he is replacing Jesus.
This comes after last week’s post of his evil tirade on Easter and then threatening to kill an… pic.twitter.com/mq27jxJEnt— Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@FmrRepMTG) April 13, 2026
“I worry less about the post,” Tillis said. “I think he took it down, and I think that’s an acknowledgment that it was probably something that should have never been posted. I’ll take at face value his confusion with it being a doctor.”
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Tillis, who is set to retire at the end of the year, said he would tone down his language if he were running again.
“If I were running for reelection, I’d probably use a few different words, try to communicate the same thing, like I did in Trump 1,” he said. “But I just don’t have to deal with that filter.”