ROME, Italy: After U.S. President Donald Trump directly attacked Pope Leo XIV, the head of the 1.4-billion-member Catholic Church told Reuters on April 13 that he had no intention of getting into a debate with the president, but that he plans ​to continue speaking out against war.

In comments aboard the papal flight to Algiers, where the first U.S. pope launched a 10-day tour to ​four African countries, the pontiff also said the Christian message ​was being "abused".

"I don't want to get into a debate with ⁠him," Leo said as he greeted journalists on the plane. "I don't ​think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused ​in the way that some people are doing."

Speaking in English, the pope said he would continue to speak out stridently against war. He said he would seek to promote peace, dialogue, and multilateral relationships among the states to find just solutions to problems.

He said that too many people were suffering and too many innocents were being killed everywhere in the world. Someone had to stand up and say there was a better way, he added.

Leo, who is from Chicago, has recently become a strong critic of the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran. On Saturday, he spoke out against what he called the "madness of war" during a peace appeal.

In what seemed like a response to the pope's criticism of the conflict and the White House's strict immigration policies, Trump said over the weekend that Leo was "terrible".

"Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.