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05-05-2025
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has attracted criticism from some Catholics after posting an AI-generated image of himself as the Pope.
The picture, which was shared by official White House social media accounts, comes as Catholics mourn the death of Pope Francis, who died on 21 April, and prepare to choose the next pontiff.
The New York State Catholic Conference accused Trump of mocking the faith. The post comes days after he joked to reporters: “I’d like to be Pope.”
Trump is not the first president to be accused of making a mockery of the Catholic faith. Former US President Joe Biden caused outrage a year ago when he made the sign of the cross at a pro-abortion access rally in Tampa, Florida.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni declined to answer questions about Trump’s post during a briefing with journalists on Saturday. The Vatican is preparing to host a conclave to choose Francis’s successor beginning on Wednesday.
The image posted by Trump on Friday night features him wearing a white cassock and pointed mitre, traditionally worn by a bishop. He wears a large cross around his neck, and has his finger held up, with a solemn facial expression.
The New York State Catholic Conference, which represents bishops in New York, took to X to criticize the picture.
“There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr President,” the group wrote.
“We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St Peter. Do not mock us.”
Left-leaning Italian former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi also blasted Trump’s post.
“This is an image that offends believers, insults institutions and shows that the leader of the right-wing world enjoys clowning around,” Renzi wrote in Italian on X but the White House rejected any suggestion that the Republican president was making fun of the papacy.
“President Trump flew to Italy to pay his respects to Pope Francis and attend his funeral, and he has been a staunch champion for Catholics and religious liberty,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Earlier, Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing AI-generated fake images of black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican.
BBC Panorama discovered dozens of deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president.
Trump has openly courted black voters, who were key to Joe Biden’s election win in 2020 but there’s no evidence directly linking these images to Trump’s campaign.
The co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a group which encourages black people to vote, said the manipulated images were pushing a “strategic narrative” designed to show Trump as popular in the black community.
A creator of one of the images told the BBC; “I’m not claiming it’s accurate.”
The fake images of black Trump supporters, generated by artificial intelligence (AI), are one of the emerging disinformation trends ahead of the US presidential election in November. Unlike in 2016, when there was evidence of foreign influence campaigns, the AI-generated images found by the BBC appear to have been made and shared by US voters themselves.
One of them was Mark Kaye and his team at a conservative radio show in Florida.
They created an image of Trump smiling with his arms around a group of black women at a party and shared it on Facebook, where Kaye has more than one million followers.
At first it looks real but on closer inspection everyone’s skin is a little too shiny and there are missing fingers on people’s hands some tell-tale signs of AI-created images. (BBC + Int’l News Desk)
