Steve Bannon discussed plans to “take down” Pope Francis with Jeffrey Epstein, according to new files shared by the Department of Justice.
“Will take down [Pope] Francis,” Bannon appears to have written in a message to the pedophile financier in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”
Bannon, a former presidential advisor to Donald Trump and who reportedly identifies as a Roman Catholic, was highly critical of Francis, viewing his progressive global agenda as contrary to his own “sovereigntist” stance. In a 2018 interview with The Spectator Bannon described the Pope as “beneath contempt,” and accused him of “siding with globalist elites.”
The exchange with Epstein appears to show Bannon trying to further his plans, asking whether the financier has read In the Closet of the Vatican, a 2019 book by French journalist Frédéric Martel that included the bombshell claim that 80 percent of the clergy working in the Vatican are gay.
Bannon had previously appeared to have expressed interest in turning the book into a film, telling Epstein “you are now exec producer of ‘ITCOTV’.” It is unclear how serious that offer was.
The financier replies saying “Chomsky asking when film,” in apparent reference to intellectual Noam Chomsky with whom Epstein was known to be close with.
Elsewhere in the files, documents show that Epstein emailed himself on April 1 2019 a message reading “in the closet of the Vatican,” and also sent Bannon an article titled “Pope Francis or Steve Bannon? Catholics must choose.”
“Easy choice,” Bannon replied.
The Independent has contacted representatives of Steve Bannon for comment.
Bannon is not the only MAGA acolyte to have run-ins with Pope Francis. Though he paid tribute to the pontiff following his death last year, describing him as “a good man, [who] worked hard and loved the world,” Donald Trump also had historic disputes with Francis.
Ahead of Trump’s first presidency in 2016, Francis criticized the incoming president over this vow to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S., saying “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
In January last year, one day before Trump’s second inauguration, Francis spoke out about the Republican president’s plans to carry out mass deportations.
“If it is true, it will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill for the imbalance. It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things,” the Pope wrote.
The Pope also clashed with Vice President JD Vance, who is a Roman Catholic. In an interview Vance had put forward an idea known as ordo amoris, saying: “There’s this old school – and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way – that you love your family and then you love your neighbour and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world.”
Francis contradicted the idea that there should be a hierarchy of love, writing: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.”
Vance later met the pontiff during his trip to Rome, meeting with him on Easter Sunday last year and sharing a homily with him. Pope Francis died a day later on April 21 2025.
