The Rooster In Flight - A Substack Article
The Pope of Pixels, Profane Power: Trump’s Papal Aspirations in an Age of Artificial Intelligence
By: Wynand Johannes de Kock
May 6, 2025 
I first saw the image early morning, just as Marian and I settled into our daily ritual of coffee before the day unfolded. Steam rising from our cups, sunlight barely cresting the glass doors that opens onto our deck.
"Have you seen this?" Marian asked, turning her phone toward me.
There was Trump’s face-imposed onto the Pope’s white robes. His finger pointed upward in that way that could mean “listen to me” or “God says so.” Hard to tell the difference, which was probably the point. The cross hanging from his neck looked too perfect, too shiny-a dead giveaway of AI artwork. But what really got me was his eyes: empty yet calculating. Like someone trying to look holy while mentally celebrating his genius to dominate the next news cycle.
This wasn’t some random internet meme. The White House-the actual, official White House-shared this image barely a week and a half after Pope Francis died. I nearly choked on my coffee. Talk about being tone deaf. While Rome was preparing to choose a new Pope, here comes this digital bombshell, mixing up symbols of church and state like a spiritual Molotov cocktail.
The image was shared from official channels and Trump’s Truth Social account exactly eleven days after Francis drew his last breath. The cardinals were already packing their red cassocks for conclave, and here was the White House turning what might have been merely tasteless into something deliberately provocative. I set my cup down carefully, watching the storm clouds gather in the comments section, symbols of Rome and Washington colliding like weather systems.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by the image. Just a few days before, Trump quipped in response to his first choice for Pope, “I’d like to be pope, that would be my number one choice.”
From my observations, Trump has never shied from blurring the lines between secular and sacred power. But as I sat there, coffee cooling, a question formed that went beyond my initial reaction: which papal model would Trump actually want to embody?
This question came naturally, since Marian and I recently watched Conclave, in which cardinal-candidates contemplate the deeply symbolic first act of their potential papacy. Would Trump reach for a Pius or an Innocent, names heavy with authority? A John Paul to invoke recent conservative strength? But perhaps one would need to go further back into history to find a worthy contender. Perhaps he would emulate Leo X, who transformed the Vatican into a Renaissance showcase of opulence and power, faith crystallised into marble and gold.
Born Giovanni de' Medici into the prominent political and banking family of Florence, Leo X rose to the papacy with a reputation for both artistic patronage and political savvy. The second son of Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of the Florentine Republic, he was elevated to cardinal at just 13 years old in 1489, before securing his papal election in 1513 through the backing of younger cardinals.
He is famously quoted as saying, “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it.” And enjoy it he did: emptying the papal treasury to fund grand works of art, wage expensive wars, and erect magnificent buildings that immortalised not just the Church, but the Medici name itself. Leo’s Rome was a place where marble and gold did the preaching, where salvation could be bought and splendour was the currency of power. If Trump were to choose a model, I suspect it would be less about the saintly or the austere, and more about the pope who turned faith into festival, and the Vatican into a showroom for divine privilege.
On March 15, 1517, Leo issued indulgences-spiritual promissory notes, a kind of executive order, that released sinners from temporal punishment in purgatory. Half the cash went toward building the magnificent dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which you can still visit today. The other half? It quietly paid off a massive loan from a powerful European banker who had fronted the money for a German archbishop to buy his position in the church. A perfect circle of money and salvation.
And then there is, Johann Tetzel, Dominican preacher extraordinaire, who flogged these indulgences-spiritual promissory notes of the Pope through German towns with carnival efficiency. His pitch was irresistible: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings / The soul from Purgatory springs.” No sin too great, no purse too small.
I think of Tetzel whenever Paula White takes to the airwaves. As Trump's spiritual advisor and leader of the White House Faith Office, White stands firmly within the the Charismatic and New Apostolic Reformation movement — network believing in modern-day apostles who command supernatural forces. In 2020 she called forth "angelic reinforcements" from Africa and South America to secure Trump's reelection, now in 2025 she hawks $1,000 "Passover offerings" with the precision of a Renaissance indulgence-seller. Her spiritual marketplace operates with carnival efficiency, promising seven supernatural dividends: "God will assign an angel to you. He'll be an enemy to your enemies. He'll give you prosperity. He'll take sickness away from you. He will give you long life. He'll bring increase in inheritance, and He'll give a special year of blessing."
Where Tetzel traveled village to village with colourful banners and dramatic tales of souls in purgatory, White commands television studios and livestreams-her carefully produced videos featuring dramatic music, miracle testimonies, and the tantalising promise of Waterford crystal crosses for the most generous donors. The medium has evolved; the transaction remains eerily familiar: divine favour, packaged and priced for convenient purchase, transforming the White House into a strange American basilica where prosperity theology meets political theatre, where the sacred becomes commodity while Francis's legacy of humble service fades like morning mist.
The marketplace of faith stretches between heaven and earth, a space where the mundane and sacred collide in peculiar American fashion. Here, in this strange borderland, people trade not just currency for commodity but also allegiance for assurance. Isn't this the essence of civil religion, of Christian nationalism, the belief that privilege signals divine approval, that success sanctifies? The overused verb "faith" hardly captures this transaction — this is instead a world of strange relations where patriotism and piety blur, where we fashion idols from founding narratives and seek salvation in the dogma of divine national election.
God knows, I participated in that as a boy in Apartheid South Africa. I know this first hand.
But what we are seeing is not just Christian nationalism in full flight, this new civil religion in America is a pilgrim's progress to prosperity.
A spirituality reimagined as an upward mobility of markets, the city upon a hill transformed into gated communities and stock portfolios. The prosperity gospel speaks a universal language, one that slips easily across borders-the language of human longing for security in a world that trembles. What began as American optimism dressed in religious vocabulary has metastasised into a global phenomenon, promising divine intervention to any who will “sow a seed” of faith (and money). Its appeal is not merely American; it is human-the ancient hope that, with the right faith, the right transaction, we might bend God’s providence to our will.
From Nigeria to the Philippines, South Korea to Brazil, this theology has found fertile soil everywhere market capitalism touches down. In post-colonial Africa, prosperity preaching has exploded across neo-Pentecostal-Charismatic churches, with conferences drawing thousands from dozens of countries. When I traveled to Ukraine in the early 2000s, I found Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagin’s books translated into Russian and Ukrainian, sitting prominently on display. Even one of Australia’s former Prime Ministers embraced these teachings.
But America’s true theological gift to the world is not prosperity’s false promise, but the democracy of divine presence, where the disenfranchised and marginalised found dignity.
America is the country that gave the world Pentecostalism, but not the neo-Pentecostalism of stadiums and spotlights, not the slick, televised gloss of miracles for sale. Not in marble cathedrals but in storefront sanctuaries, not among the privileged but the dispossessed-this was faith as raw encounter, as necessary as breath. A little Black girl speaking in tongues, her small body a vessel for something vast and ancient and new.
In 1906, at Azusa Street, William Seymour’s one-eyed vision saw beyond the color line, beyond the tedious taxonomies of race that would later reassert themselves. For a brief, incandescent moment, Black and white worshipped together in that racially integrated mission where the Spirit moved without order of service. Where the son of a slave could be the preacher and the white stately pastor from a segregated congregation in the South his congregant. I can’t imagine Leo X would have been comfortable with such disorder, but I can see Pope Francis, who walked the streets of Argentina, recognising the fire in those eyes, the hunger in those prayers. Here, in America, the Spirit broke loose not in cathedrals but in the humble places, among the least likely, as if to remind us that the kingdom comes not with power, but with promise.
This brings us to Francis-a pope Trump is unlikely to emulate. Francis’s deliberate humility,
He chose not to live in the ornate papal apartments but in a modest Vatican guesthouse, washing the feet of prisoners, and frustrating his security detail by slipping away to visit old friends. This was the same Francis who directly rebuked Trump’s immigration policies, warning that forcefully deporting migrants “damages the dignity of many men and women” and leaves families “in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.” The same pope who, when confronted with Trump’s border wall plans in 2016, famously declared that anyone building walls to keep out migrants was “not a Christian.”
Their clashes extended beyond immigration. While Francis advocated for climate action, Trump championed fossil fuels. When Trump wished a combative Easter to his “opponents,” Francis used his final Easter address to proclaim, “All of us are children of God!” In March 2025, while receiving treatment at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, he wrote that he felt “in my heart the ‘blessing’ that is hidden within frailty, because it is precisely in these moments that we learn even more to trust in the Lord.” Far from projecting strength or power, Francis embraced vulnerability, thanking God “for giving me the opportunity to share in body and spirit the condition of so many sick and suffering people.”
I wish I was wrong, and maybe someone will show the error in my thinking, but I think that if Trump had a choice of who he would emulate, the evidence tips the scales toward Leo X’s Renaissance pageantry rather than Francis’s simple guesthouse humility.
Christianity has always oscillated between cathedral and tent, between permanence and mobility, between institutional power and prophetic witness. Leo X represents the cathedral impulse at its most extreme-faith crystallised into marble and gold, authority made visible in architectural grandeur.
Within the lavishly gilded Oval Office of Trump’s White House, a spectacle worthy of the Renaissance emerges, enough to make Pope Leo X blush in recognition. As the Medici pope once sold indulgences to fund St. Peter’s Basilica, Trump’s spiritual advisor Paula White hawks “Passover offerings” for prosperity, and angelic protection from enemies. I believe, this spiritual mercantilism preys on the vulnerable, exploiting desperate believers who give beyond their means in hopes of a “miraculous financial return.” White’s prosperity gospel reduces God to a “divine vending machine” where blessings are dispensed in exchange for contributions, while shifting focus from reconciliation with God to material prosperity.
Meanwhile, Trump himself peddles the $60 “God Bless the USA Bible”—branded with his name and likeness under paid license—targeting those seeking both divine and national salvation in a single purchase. Critics have condemned this approach for “taking advantage of people’s desperation” by teaching that “God’s blessings can be bought through seed-faith offerings”—a practice that has led to convictions for fraud among other prosperity preachers. The White House has transformed into a strange American basilica where prosperity theology meets political theatre, where blessings are commodified and faith becomes spectacle—all while Pope Francis’s legacy of humble service fades into memory.
The AI-image of Trump as pope makes visible an implicit claim: that he serves as a kind of high priest of American civil religion, mediating between the divine and the national destiny. Its very excess, its kitsch, is part of its appeal.
Yet, perhaps this AI image isn’t just playful manipulation. Maybe it reflects a deeper, unresolved tension in the religious life of many Christians around the world: the pull between faith as a force for inner transformation and faith as a tool for external power. Trump and his advisors aren’t creating this dynamic from scratch-they’re channeling currents that have always run beneath the surface of public faith.
So yes, I believe Trump would model himself after Leo X-not because he shares Leo’s artistic sensibilities or humanist leaning, but because both men recognise how spiritual authority can be harnessed to political ends. Both understand the power of spectacle to awe and inspire. Both connect divine favour with material prosperity.
And so we return to that image: Trump in white robes, finger pointing upward, cross gleaming too perfectly against his chest. What does it reveal?
Trump's AI-generated papal persona isn't just a tasteless joke; it's a window into competing visions of what spiritual authority means. When he tells reporters "Catholics loved it" despite clear evidence to the contrary. When he says, “it is just a bit of fun”, he reveals something essential about our moment: the collapse of shared truth, even about what constitutes respect for sacred traditions.
The cardinals will enter conclave this week to select a successor to Francis, following rituals centuries old. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence generates false prophets with algorithmic efficiency, and we struggle to distinguish authentic faith from its simulations. Perhaps this is our particular wilderness-learning to discern the sacred in an age when everything, even the sacred, can be mocked.
The desert fathers withdrew to caves; we might need to withdraw from screens. Not permanently, but long enough to remember what it feels like to encounter mystery that hasn't been rendered in pixels. Long enough to recall that faith, at its core, has always been about what cannot be seen or sold as a commodity.
Bibliography
News Articles and Digital Media Sources
"Catholic Community Reacts to Trump's AI Image of Himself as the Pope." ABC News, May 4, 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/catholic-community-reacts-trumps-ai-image-pope/story?id=121447607.
"Trump Defends Viral Image of Himself as Pope: 'Catholics Loved It'." Politico, May 5, 2025. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/05/trump-pope-ai-image-catholics-00329231.
"Trump Posts an Image of Himself as Pope." New York Times, May 3, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/us/politics/trump-pope-photo.html.
"WATCH: Trump Says Catholics 'Loved' Fake AI Image of Him as Pope." PBS NewsHour, May 5, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-says-catholics-loved-fake-ai-image-of-him-as-pope.
"Pope Francis to U.S. Bishops Amid Mass Deportations: Dignity of Migrants Comes First." Catholic World Report, February 11, 2025. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/02/11/pope-francis-to-u-s-bishops-amid-mass-deportations-dignity-of-migrants-comes-first/.
"Trump's Faith Advisor Under Fire For Passover Blessing." Vision.org.au, April 3, 2025. https://vision.org.au/read/articles/trumps-faith-advisor-under-fire-over-passover-promises/.
"Paula White's Passover Promises." MinistryWatch, March 30, 2025. https://ministrywatch.com/paula-whites-passover-promises/.7
Encyclopedia and Reference Entries
De Kock, W.J. Out of My Mind: Following the Trajectory of God’s Regenerative Story. Eugene, OR.: Wipf & Stock, 2014.
______ On Being in The Middle: Doing Theology in the Face of Uncertainty. Eugene, OR.: Wipf & Stock, 2024.
"God Bless the U.S.A. Bible." Wikipedia. Last modified March 17, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_the_U.S.A._Bible.
"Johann Tetzel." World History Encyclopedia, July 28, 2022. https://www.worldhistory.org/Johann_Tetzel/
"Johann Tetzel." Encyclopedia Britannica, July 20, 1998. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Tetzel.
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Scholarly Articles
Goodnow, Trischa. "The Visual Presidency of Donald Trump's First Hundred Days: Political Image-Making and Digital Media." In Visual Political Communication, 2019. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f06e698593894ecf88ffb527a59c5b7132613a5f.
Albouy, Séraphin. "The BBC's Framing of Trump's Reaction to the 2020 Election and the Capitol Insurrection." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, March 1, 2024. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/be8390ca6b6df2a10ed102d0c1863eae41dffffd.
Anitsal, M. Meral, Ismet Anitsal, and Tammy Girman. "Sharing and Redefining Power with Vice President Harris: The Visual Framing by the Biden White House." Visual Politics and Popular Culture, March 28, 2023. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/88ed212c51b36c42698e0e9cb0dbbe637b57a5fd.
Additional Quote Sources
Pope Leo X. "Since God has been pleased to give us the Papacy, let us enjoy it." What Should I Read Next? https://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/quotes/authors/pope-leo-x.