Leo XIV’s dedication to migrants and the poor will put him at odds with MAGA.
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The newly elected Pontiff, Pope Leo XIV is seen for the primary time from the Vatican balcony on Might 8, 2025, in Vatican Metropolis, Vatican.(Christopher Furlong / Getty Photos)
Robert Prevost, elected on Thursday to be pope and now taking the identify Leo XIV, was near his predecessor Pope Francis, and amongst their shared traits was a powerful ideological aversion to Vice President JD Vance. Whereas each Leo XIV and Francis had been cradle Catholics, Vance is a beginner within the church. A descendant of “hillbilly” Scot-Irish Protestants, traditionally among the many most anti-papist individuals on earth, Vance transformed to Catholicism in 2019 as a part of an mental journey towards his present politics of right-wing anti-modernism. Studying the thinker Rene Girard helped nudge Vance towards the church.
Regardless of his Catholicism’s being solely as previous as a baby beginning grade faculty, Vance made a provocative theological intervention earlier this yr by citing the idea of “ordo amoris” (as developed by St. Augustine) to defend his opposition to immigration. In response to Vance, “There’s a Christian idea that you simply love your loved ones and you then love your neighbor, and you then love your neighborhood, and you then love your fellow residents, after which after that, prioritize the remainder of the world.”
Vance’s declare, which fits towards the universalism that undergirds Christianity and plenty of different religions, earned a rebuke from Francis, who addressed the problem in a February letter to American bishops. Though not naming Vance, Francis clearly had the vice chairman in thoughts when he wrote“Christian love will not be a concentric enlargement of pursuits that little by little prolong to different individuals and teams. In different phrases: the human individual will not be a mere particular person, comparatively expansive, with some philanthropic emotions!” Sarcastically, Vance, who made a visit to the Vatican over the Easter weekend, was one of many final individuals to see Francis alive.
Robert Prevost, then a cardinal, appears to have shared Francis’s anger at Vance’s use of theology as a protection of selfishness. On February 3, a Twitter account below the identify Robert Prevost posted“JD Vance is mistaken: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” The tweet contained a hyperlink to an article important of Vance. (The Vatican hasn’t confirmed that this Twitter account belongs to Leo XIV, however Rocco Palmo, a really well-regarded journalist on church affairs, has written that that is certainly Leo XIV’s account.)
Given this tweet and different progressive views on the brand new pope’s Twitter feed, far-right provocateur Laura Loomer posted that Leo IV is “anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a complete Marxist like Pope Francis.” Extra succinctly, Loomer additionally lamented that now we have a “WOKE MARXIST POPE.”
It’s tempting to answer Loomer’s characterization by shouting out, “Reward the Lord!” However each Loomer and plenty of different commentators, together with many progressives, make a mistake to see the church’s politics within the slender trendy spectrum of left/proper (or the much more constricted classes of “liberal” and “conservative”).
Present Concern
The Catholic Church is almost 2,000 years previous, whereas the left/proper spectrum solely dates to the French Revolution, a bit over 200 years in the past. The accretion of church educating over the centuries—to not point out the traditionally distant context of such historical texts because the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, and the writings of the early church—make the church concurrently very conservative and really radical. Each Francis and Leo XIV, just by being mainstream Catholic clerics, have views which can be properly exterior the norms of American public opinion on a bunch of points that don’t simply map on to the left/proper spectrum: Francis, though usually loosely described as a “progressive” pope, opposed reproductive freedom and homosexual rights (whilst he known as for respect for homosexual individuals). However Francis additionally known as for a degree of financial equity, openness to migrants, and environmental concern that will make him much more radical than nearly any elected official in America or many different nations.
The Catholic Church, for higher or worse, stands exterior of modernity and gives a stark rebuke to the political shibboleths of any standard politics.
Leo XIV provides each indication of constant on the trail of Francis, which implies each a powerful dedication to social justice but additionally minimal shifts on social points. Reporters are at present going to Robert Prevost’s Twitter account and different data to tease out the politics of Leo XIV. From the Twitter account, it does appear that Leo XIV, like Francis, provides a excessive precedence to look after migrants and the poor. Leo XIV additionally supported the Black Lives Matter motion and has been pleasant to gun management. However he’ll additionally possible proceed to carry quick to traditionalist gender norms and the pure legislation doctrine that makes the church hostile to LGBTQ rights. Additional, Leo XIV has a ardour for canon legislation, which makes him unlikely to reform or modernize church doctrine. There are additionally, as with many different church figures, long-standing controversies about his dealing with of clerical baby abuse instances.
What’s politically important is that right-wingers corresponding to Vance have tried to co-opt the church alongside partisan traces. This try and create a right-wing church itself makes Leo XIV a pure opposition determine for Vance and different ideologues. Leo XIV may lend ethical help to the political proper on social points, however he may also be a foe on issues of the economic system, migration, and battle. The selection by the Faculty of Cardinals of the primary American pope as somebody with a file of opposing xenophobia may in actual fact have a aware political dimension: It’s a rebuff of the try by figures like Vance to fake that they alone personal the church—an establishment that has a worldwide attain and a various membership.
The Catholic Church has lengthy been nettlesome to ideologues of all types, however the political proper was extra sincere about their disagreements with Vatican educating. In 1961, Pope John XXIII issued the encyclical Mom and trainera powerful rebuke to the degradation of unchecked capitalism and an affirmation of the church’s help for the poor and oppressed. The conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr.—a religious Catholic but additionally an equally ardent supporter of unfettered capitalism—responded to the encyclical with an editorial describing it as a ”enterprise in triviality.“ Buckley’s journal Nationwide Evaluate later quipped, “Mater si, magistra no” (in different phrases, the church is our mom, not our trainer).
Buckley’s dismissal of Catholic social educating was too glib, however he was correct in considering that lay individuals have a proper to criticize and problem these teachings. This was some extent made with nice power by Buckley’s protégé Garry Wills within the guide Politics and Catholic Freedom (1964) The one downside with Buckley’s place is that Nationwide Evaluate conservatives not often wished to hearken to Catholics who challenged the church on abortion, patriarchy, and homophobia.
A greater path ahead can be to acknowledge that few Catholics adhere to the church’s educating on all points. Those that choose and select doctrine are generally dismissed as “cafeteria Catholic.” However in actuality nearly all lay Catholics (and maybe various clerical Catholics) are “cafeteria Catholics.” Revising Buckley, one may argue that for believers the church is each a mom and a trainer—however that nobody ever absolutely listens to both their mom or their trainer. As for JD Vance, as a Catholic for less than the final six years, he ought to notice that it’s extra applicable for him to take the position of scholar quite than trainer. Earlier than Vance will get into one other battle with the pope, he ought to positively spend extra time studying concerning the true depth and complexity of Catholic social thought.
Jeet Lord
Jeet Heer is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He additionally pens the month-to-month column “Morbid Signs.” The writer of In Love with Artwork: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Artwork Spiegelman (2013) and Candy Lechery: Evaluations, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for quite a few publications, together with The New Yorker, The Paris Evaluate, Virginia Quarterly Evaluate, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
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