(The Jason Jones Show) — Archbishop Paul Coakley, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement yesterday standing up for the victims of the unjust U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Speaking for the nation’s bishops, Coakley echoed Pope Leo’s repeated condemnations of the war, and quoted one of the Holy Father’s most pointed recent statements: that “no one can use” our God, the King of Peace, “to justify war.”
There’s a reason Pope Leo and the U.S. bishops make that point in particular when it comes to this war. Because for all of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s dark warnings about “religious zealots” with an “apocalyptic view of the future,” those words apply as much to the bloodthirsty Christian heretics now at the helm of the U.S. military-industrial complex as to the theocratic regime in Iran.
The ape bishop
But the Holy Father and his bishops in the U.S. have a problem: Rogue MAGA influencer Bishop Robert Barron, who has made a point of making himself arguably the most famous Catholic cleric in the U.S. – and now has decided to make himself chaplain to the Trump administration at the height of its violence.
While most of the Church’s leaders marked the beginning of Holy Week with appropriate expressions of closeness to those with whom Christ most intimately identified Himself – the abused, the violated, the orphaned and widowed – Bishop Barron attended a glitzy “Easter Lunch” at the White House.
READ: Bishop Barron is wrong about Judas – here’s why
There, Barron stood by as Trump Faith Advisor “Pastor” Paula White compared the president to Jesus Christ, saying the two had both been arrested and falsely accused, but then “rose again” (Christ to life, Trump to political power). She also said God had told her that Trump will be “victorious in all that he puts his hand to” – granted victory directly by Heaven. Others at the meeting said God has “raised up” Trump to smite the “wicked.” All of it amounted to a clear endorsement of a war that all the Church’s highest authorities (and her teachings) condemn.
Unbelievable. Paula White is in charge. She says because of Jesus’s resurrection, Trump rose up too. She asks people to stretch their hands towards the President.
She says to Trump: “You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and… pic.twitter.com/iMoges7HzV
— Terri Green (@TerriGreenUSA) April 1, 2026
Franklin Graham: “Let us pray… Father, you tell us in the Book of Esther that the Persians—the Iranians—were wanting to kill every Jew…and do it all in one day…”
“Today, the Iranians—the wicked regime of this govt—wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire,… https://t.co/BHpjQJHPQy pic.twitter.com/kkArPcbkb0
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) April 2, 2026
To be clear, this is a war that shocked the conscience of the world from Day 1 – when a careless AI targeting error resulted in U.S. munitions directly hitting a girls’ school, killing over 150 civilians, mostly children.
Barron said nothing against that.
Disturbingly, it’s also a war led by men like War Secretary Pete Hegseth, a radical dispensationalist ideologue who has called on Israeli settlers to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem – a move his religious faction believes will set end-times prophecies in motion. It’s Hegseth’s rhetoric – constantly invoking God – that has drawn the clearest and most repeated condemnations from Pope Leo.
Barron has said nothing against that rhetoric.
Paula White has played no small role in fomenting the same kind of radicalism, even going out of her way to drive out Carrie Prejean Boller, a Catholic member of the White House Religious Commission who objected to evangelical endorsements of sectarian violence against Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land.
Barron, despite being a member of the same Commission, said nothing about Prejean Boller’s ouster – until he did: he publicly ridiculed and dismissed his fellow Catholic as “preposterous,” jeering at her for “painting herself as a victim.”
It’s also a war that has emboldened the worst and most explicitly anti-Christian actors in Israel, leading to a horrific spike in radical Jewish violence against Palestinian Christians in the West Bank.
READ: Carrie Prejean Boller: Christians remain silent as ‘complete genocide’ unfolds in Gaza
Barron has said nothing to counter even these attacks on the Church in the heart of the Holy Land, leaving entirely to others the public witness of the Church against what are obviously the most urgent moral issues of our time. Just days before he cozied up to Trump at the White House event, his brother Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was barred by Israeli national police from celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Barron said nothing, and it took the outcries of American Catholic laypeople to draw a correction and apologies from Israeli officials.
Bishop Barron: ‘Do immigrants have low IQs?’
Last night, hours after publicly receiving the blessing of Bishop Barron, Trump gave his first address to the nation since the start of the war. In his speech, he confirmed the worst impressions he’d given up to that point, promising to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age, where they belong,” and making no effort to assure the public that “they” meant anything other than the Iranian people as a whole.
But believe it or not, the scandal of Bishop Barron’s closeness to that unmistakable evil gets worse.
After the Easter Lunch, Barron uploaded a video in which he said he was “honored” to be a part of the event, boasting he was “just a few yards” from Trump as he spoke off the cuff for over an hour.
Trump’s longer speech was not open to journalists. Barron likely had no idea it would ever be seen. Thanks to an error by some staffer, however, footage of Trump’s full speech was made public.
In it, Trump speaks slightly more freely. With America’s most famous cleric sitting just “yards away,” the president spoke of immigrants who “have low IQs” (“I can generalize,” he said sarcastically), told Erika Kirk to “sue the *** off” her critics, and much more.
It seems the White House may have uploaded that video unintentionally. It’s now been made private.
But I downloaded it, so here’s the full WH feed of the Easter lunch earlier today.
Trump does sound a bit more candid here than he does in front of reporters. https://t.co/PicD2aCH4e pic.twitter.com/sqPjqur0cc
— bryan metzger (@metzgov) April 1, 2026
It is time for an intervention. For the sake of the integrity of the Church’s witness, Catholics deserve for Bishop Barron to be considered a scandal by his brother bishops – and for them to address that scandal as quickly as possible.
Reprinted with permission from The Jason Jones Show.