President Donald Trump Thursday congratulated Pope Leo XIV, calling it a “great honor” that the Chicago-born pontiff has become the first pope born in the U.S.

“It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country.”

Trump said he looked forward to meeting the newly minted leader of the world’s more than 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.

“It will be a very meaningful moment,” he added.

Despite the praise, Leo has been a fierce critic of Trump’s harsh policies on immigration and took to social media several times in recent months to denounce the new administration’s mass deportations of undocumented immigrants from the U.S.

The former Robert Cardinal Prevost last month retweeted a post from a Catholic scholar who called out Trump for the “illicit deportation” of Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

The post he retweeted trashed Trump for his jocular meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele after Abrego Garcia was improperly deported to his homeland in defiance of a court order and imprisoned without charge.

“Do you not see the suffering,” the post said. “Is your conscience not disturbed?”

The future pope also took aim at Vice President JD Vance for his views on immigration and mass deportations.

Then-Cardinal Prevost reposted a letter from Pope Francis and an opinion piece by a Catholic scholar rebuking Vance after he promoted a controversial theological doctrine called “ordo amoris,” which means “order of love.”

Vance, a convert to Roman Catholicism, suggested in January that “ordo amoris” means people should love their families and communities first before thinking about the rest of humanity, an edict that could bolster his anti-immigrant stands.

“(You) love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” Vance said in January.

But Leo countered by tweeting a piece entitled: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

Vance briefly visited the ailing Francis last month at the Vatican, just hours before his death.

Despite the rift, Vance tweeted congratulations to Leo, saying “May God bless him.”

“I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the church,” Vance tweeted.

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