The White House on Saturday posted an AI-generated image of US President Donald Trump as the pope, causing a stir among the Catholic faithful, who found it to be in poor taste just days ahead of the conclave to elect the new leader of the Catholic Church.
The post caused considerable outrage online, with the official New York State Catholic Conference account saying in a post on X that "there is nothing clever or funny about this image."
The organisation, which represents New York state bishops, added that the US President should not "mock us".
New York Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan was also critical of the post, saying, "It wasn't good" when asked about it by journalists ahead of the Sunday Mass in Rome. "I hope (Trump) didn’t have anything to do with that," Dolan added.
Cardinal Dolan further said the move was a "brutta figura," a phrase in Italian used to describe someone who did something that made them look bad.
Trump had jokingly said a few days earlier that he would "like to be pope" and originally posted the image on his own social media network, Truth Social, later shared by the White House.
The image was posted by the US president just a few days before the conclave to elect a new pontiff, set to begin on 7 May, following Pope Francis' death on Easter Monday.
The death of a pope and election of another is a matter of utmost solemnity for Catholics, for whom the pontiff is God's representative on Earth.
That is all the more true in Italy, where the papacy is held in high esteem even by nonreligious Italians, so it was not surprising that the Italian press labelled it as "infantile" and indicative of "pathological megalomania," according to newspaper La Repubblica.
The AI-generated image featuring Trump in a white cassock and pointed miter, or bishop’s hat, was the topic of several questions during the Vatican’s daily conclave briefing Saturday. Spanish news reports also lamented its poor taste and said it was offensive, given that the period of official mourning is still under way.
'Staunch champion of Catholics'
When asked to respond to the fallout, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that, “President Trump flew to Italy to pay his respects for Pope Francis and attend his funeral, and he has been a staunch champion for Catholics and religious liberty.”
Trump's visit to the Vatican and Rome to attend Pope Francis's funeral was his first foreign trip of his second term.
Shortly before the funeral began, he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss further steps towards ending Russia's war, as well as a minerals pact that was later signed between the Washington and Kyiv.
Speaking to reporters last Tuesday, Trump joked that he himself would be his "number one choice" for the new pontiff before adding, "I must say we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who's very good."
Trump referred to Cardinal Dolan, one of 10 US cardinals voting in the conclave.
However, the US president's pitch might have cost Dolan support, as the reason conclaves are held in secrecy, with cardinals sequestered for the duration, is to prevent outside secular power from influencing their choice.
