“We’re going to bring down Pope Francis. The Clintons, Xi, Francis, the EU, come on brother.” This appears to be what Steve Bannon said in a June 2019 message to financier Jeffrey Epstein. New documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice reveal that Steve Bannon allegedly discussed plans to “overthrow” Pope Francis in communications with Jeffrey Epstein.
The message exchange with Epstein appears to be connected to Bannon’s efforts to advance his schemes, as he asks if Epstein had read the 2019 book “In the Closet of the Vatican” by French journalist Frédéric Martel. The book contained the explosive claim that 80% of clergy working in the Vatican are homosexual. Bannon reportedly expressed interest in turning the book into a film, writing to Epstein: “you are now executive producer of ‘ITCOTV’,” though it’s unclear how serious this proposal was.
In response, Epstein wrote: “Chomsky asks when the movie will be made,” in apparent reference to intellectual Noam Chomsky, with whom he was known to maintain a close relationship. In other parts of the files, documents show that Epstein sent himself a message on April 1, 2019, with the phrase “in the closet of the Vatican,” while also sending Bannon an article titled “Pope Francis or Steve Bannon? Catholics Must Choose.” “Easy choice,” Bannon reportedly replied.
Jeffrey Epstein: New revelations about Steve Bannon and Pope Francis
Steve Bannon, former presidential advisor to Donald Trump and self-identified Roman Catholic, had repeatedly expressed fierce criticism toward Pope Francis, believing that his progressive and globalized agenda contradicted his own “sovereigntist” worldview. In a 2018 interview with The Spectator magazine, Bannon had characterized the Pope as “beneath contempt,” accusing him of “siding with globalized elites.”
Steve Bannon is not the only MAGA movement supporter who had conflicts with Pope Francis. Although he paid tribute to the Pontiff after his death last year, calling him “a good man who worked hard and loved the world,” Donald Trump also had historic confrontations with the Pope. Before Trump’s first presidency in 2016, Francis had criticized the then president-elect’s promise to build a wall on the Mexico-U.S. border, stating that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
In January of last year, one day before Trump’s second inauguration, Pope Francis intervened again, referring to the Republican president’s plans for mass deportations. “If it’s true, it would be a disgrace, because it makes the poor unfortunates who have nothing pay the price for the imbalance. This won’t work. This is not the way to solve things,” he wrote characteristically.
The Pope had also clashed with Vice President J.D. Vance, who is also Roman Catholic. In an interview, Vance had developed the idea of ordo amoris, saying: “There’s this old school and I believe it’s a very Christian concept, according to which you love your family first, then your neighbor, then your community, then your fellow citizens and your country, and then you can focus on the rest of the world.”
Pope Francis countered the notion that there should be a hierarchy of love, writing: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that gradually extends to other persons and groups.” Vance later met with the Pontiff during his trip to Rome on Easter Sunday last year and shared a speech with him. Pope Francis passed away one day later, on April 21, 2025.
