President Donald Trump has a birthday coming up this weekend.
And the president is reportedly worried that Pope Leo XIV is looking to ruin the whole thing.
To mark his 79th birthday on Saturday, which is also Flag Day in the U.S., Trump will oversee a major military parade in Washington, D.C., marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.
It’s the same day that the city of Chicago will celebrate the ascendancy of its native son, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost, to the throne of St. Peter.
That celebration will be held at Rate Field stadium, home of the pope’s beloved Chicago White Sox baseball team.
The event will feature a remote appearance by Leo from Rome. Tickets for the celebration sold out within hours, Newsweek reported.
The Daily Mail is reporting that Trump thinks that the date for the papal celebration was chosen in order to upstage his own birthday gala.
But Catholic officials said that the date of the Leo event was merely a coincidence.
They said that the date was set on the soonest Saturday that the White Sox would not be in town, thus making their stadium available for the event.
“The choice had nothing to do with celebrations elsewhere,” a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Chicago said.
Trump wanted to hold a similar military parade in 2018, during his first term in office, but scotched the plans after critics complained about the $92 million cost and questioned whether it was appropriate for a U.S. president to hold such an event.
Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that this weekend’s parade is “not necessarily” about him or his birthday, but rather about Flag Day and the Army’s anniversary.
The Second Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Army, which later became the U.S. Army, on June 14, 1775.
The U.S. flag was adopted on June 14, 1777.
