Given the meaning of the word “Catholic”, the Pope has always been the planet’s pope. But I’m happy to see Rolling Stone appreciating him. Evangelists for 2000 years would call that a win.
But the people most outraged and offended by that are the ones who consider themselves the Greatest Catholics of All Time[TM]. They see their mission as driving away the riff raff, pouring boiling oil from the ramparts of the Church on all who approach and driving out all the vermin within the Church who do not measure up to their rigorous standards of purity, beginning with the pope himself.
It’s hilarious to me that decent people all over the planet have found themselves deeply attracted to the gospel thanks to Francis and Leo, while the people who hate these popes the most are not atheists nor even Fundamentalist Protestants, but the Catholics sent by God (as they suppose) to deliver the Church from the Holy Father and replace him with disgraced, deported, jailed, excommunicated, grifting nuts and schismatics like this pack of MAGA weirdos they elevated to their alternative magisterium five years ago:
The pope haters in MAGA have been so wrong about so much so many times for so long that only an utter fool would trust their judgment. And the most incredible part is that even at this late date their pride blinds them from admitting the slightest error.
Meanwhile, in October 2025, Pope Leo XIV quietly handed a letter to a group of visiting U.S. bishops. While Trad Catholics seethed over their petty concerns about smells, bells, and the fine point of liturgical aesthetics, Episcopalians saw and appreciated Leo’s efforts to live out the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, writing of that letter:
Inside were messages from migrants families separated by deportations, children afraid to sleep and one unmistakable command:
“You must speak. You must not remain silent.”
According to Vatican officials and border clergy, Leo told the bishops to publicly confront Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, calling it “inhuman” and “morally indefensible.”
This is the first time the new pope has explicitly addressed Trump’s second-term raids — and he didn’t hold back.
“Where the world sees threats,” Leo said, “the Church sees children. Where walls are built, she builds bridges.”
That line, delivered to stunned bishops, echoes through his new 104-page exhortation Dilexi te (“I Have Loved You”), a sweeping document about dignity, inequality, and the moral cost of indifference.
Leo’s warning is clear: A society that treats compassion as weakness is already in decay.
He called the growing cruelty toward migrants “a test of our humanity,” adding that a nation that forgets mercy “falls into a cesspool.”
The message is not subtle.
It’s a direct challenge to Trump’s so called “Christian nationalism” a movement that claims to defend life while supporting family separations, mass deportations, and detention camps.
“Someone who says they are against abortion but supports the inhuman treatment of immigrants,” Leo said, “is not really pro-life.”
That single line has conservative Catholics scrambling and MAGA media fuming. But
Leo isn’t here to please politicians, he’s here to call their bluff.
His tone is fatherly but firm.
Where Trump demands obedience, Leo calls for conscience.
Where Trump trades empathy for applause, Leo reminds the Church that silence is complicity.
This bears repeating: “Either we regain our moral and spiritual dignity,” he writes, “or we fall into a cesspool”
Again and again, Leo (like his predecessor) demonstrates the truth of Jesus’ observation about his own rejection by the Pharisees:
“A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. (Mk 6:4–6)
Some people have the notion that Christians believing God became man is a boast that man is extra-specially deserving over all the Vulcans, Klingons, and other sentient races that (they believe) populate the universe. But, of course, what drew the Son to us in the Incarnation was not our wonderfulness, but our wretchedness.
Relatedly, Americans who imagine God gave us an American pope because Americans are especially awesome are like cancer patients who imagine God gave them an oncologist as a reward for being the Healthiest Patients Ever.
We have an American Pope because we are the most dangerous and toxic society on the planet and we pose an extinction level threat to the entire human race. Leo is given to the whole Church, of course. But he is given to the whole Church because America and the MAGA American Church are a deadly menace who, given a choice between Peter and an orange antichrist, chose antichrist. That the Cult cannot see what a gift he is a great tragedy. I hope the Cult lives long enough to appreciate him.
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