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    Maga Catholics are on a collision course with Leo XIV. They have good reason to fear him | Julian Coman

    In the outer reaches of the Magasphere, it would be fair to say the advent of the first pope from the US has not been greeted with unbridled enthusiasm. Take Laura Loomer, the thirtysomething influencer and conspiracy theorist, whose verdict on Leo XIV was as instant as it was theologically uninformed: “Anti-Trump, anti-Maga, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis.” Also doing the rounds on X was a short summary of Leo’s supposed transgressions before ascending to St Peter’s chair: “Trashed Trump, trashed Vance, trashed border enforcement, endorsed DREAMer-style illegal immigration, repeatedly praised and honored George Floyd, and endorsed a Democrat senator’s call for more gun control.”So far, so tedious. The comic-book casting of the new pope as a globalist villain in the US culture wars is traceable back to his predecessor’s impact on liberal opinion a decade ago. Pope Francis’s sometimes lonely championing of progressive causes, such as the rights of migrants, gave him a kind of liberal celebrity and led Time magazine to name him “person of the year” in 2013. Pope Leo, born in Chicago, has been pre-emptively caricatured by much of the Maga right as a continuity pontiff who will, in effect, front up the religious wing of the Democratic party.Leaving the simplistic conflation of religious perspective and political positioning aside, the truth is far more interesting than that. It may also be more challenging for Catholic Maga luminaries such as the vice-president, JD Vance, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump’s sometime adviser Steve Bannon if they are serious about their faith.Bannon and Vance – a Catholic convert – are representatives of a traditionalist movement in the church, which sought to undermine Francis’s papacy at every turn and has become a kind of theological vanguard for the “America first” era. In January, Vance notoriously invoked St Augustine to justify the Trump administration’s decision to cut international aid and impose a brutal immigration crackdown. One of Francis’s last acts was to refute the vice-president’s reduction of the Augustinian concept of neighbourly love to a version of “charity begins at home” (though delivering a papal rebuke was not enough to spare him from a visit from Vance the day before he died).But it would be too easy (and too reminiscent of their own performatively aggressive approach) to simply dismiss the Maga Catholics as theologically beyond the pale. Many Catholics might, for example, legitimately sympathise with Bannon’s analysis of the neglect of working-class interests in 21st-century western liberal democracies. The deepening inequality and corrosive individualism of our times is seriously at odds with Catholic social teaching, which has historically promoted the dignity of labour, social solidarity and a just wage.The problem is that, in the absence of a leftwing economic populism to challenge the injustices of the globalised era, a rightwing version has filled the gap in the US and beyond. Its form of solidarity is nationalistic and insular, its cultural outlook is xenophobic and its political style is authoritarian and deliberately confrontational. The Maga critique of “globalism” is not limited to the neoliberal economic world order, also condemned by the last three popes; it extends to a repudiation of the foundational Catholic commitment to universality, expressed through compassion for the stranger and a sense of the world as a shared common home.Enter Pope Leo. The most geographically diverse conclave in church history was surely aware that in choosing an American to succeed Francis, it was setting up a potential showdown between the Vatican and Trumpian nationalism. The new pope’s choice of name is a sign that he recognises the scale and the novelty of the challenge that the rightwing populist turn represents.The last Leo, a patrician Italian elected to the papacy in 1878, made it his mission to confront the ruthless laissez-faire economics unleashed by the Industrial Revolution and the emerging Marxist response to its cruelties. In Rerum Novarum, his groundbreaking 1891 papal encyclical, Leo XIII laid out swingeing criticisms of the greed that placed profit before people and allowed extreme divides in wealth to undermine the common good. At the same time, in terms that were to prove tragically prescient, he identified in early communist movements a dangerous idolatry of the state and a lack of respect for individual autonomy and rights.Last weekend, before his first mass in St Peter’s Square, Leo XIV explicitly set himself the task of following in his 19th-century predecessor’s footsteps. That would mean, he told a Rome conference, addressing “the dramatic nature of our own age, marked by wars, climate change, growing inequalities, forced and contested migration, stigmatised poverty, disruptive technological innovations, job insecurity and precarious labour rights”.The daunting length of that list, and the interlocking, global nature of its crises, should be viewed as an early critique of the Maga worldview. In Leo XIII’s day, the burgeoning Marxist movement incubated a totalitarian strain that would go viral in the 20th century. The success of Trumpian nationalism is also in part a response to the depredations of capitalism, this time in the context of globalisation. But its authoritarian evangelists have hijacked the working-class cause to inflict new injustices on migrant “invaders” and have lost sight of the need for global cooperation to prevent an environmental catastrophe that threatens the poor most of all. The strategy has proved electorally astute. But as Leo will surely make clear, it has nothing to do with Catholicism.In a column published at the weekend, the American Catholic commentator Sohrab Ahmari referenced a sermon by Leo from last year, in which the future pope acknowledged that the issue of migration “is a huge problem, and it’s a problem worldwide” that needed to be solved. This recognition, Ahmari suggested, could at least open up the possibility of fruitful future dialogue with the Maga Catholics in and around the White House.He failed, however, to quote the sermon’s next passage: “Every one of us, whether we were born in the United States of America or on the North Pole, we are all given the gift of being created in the image and likeness of God, and the day we forget that is the day we forget who we are.” Words for Vance and Rubio, who met Leo after Sunday’s inaugural mass in Rome, to ponder.

    Julian Coman is a Guardian associate editor More

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    An American has become pope. Will he be the moral leader we desperately need? | Arwa Mahdawi

    America is back, baby. Not only has the Gulf of Mexico been successfully Americanized, the Vatican is now officially US territory. OK, fine, not officially, but, on Thursday, the Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost was announced as pope. The 69-year-old, who has taken the papal name Leo XIV, is the first clergyman from the United States to lead the Roman Catholic church.While Prevost was a frontrunner for the papacy, his victory seems to have taken many experts by surprise. There has long been resistance to an American pope for a number of reasons, including the fact that it might make it appear as if the Vatican is aligned with the world’s strongest economic and military power.“If the Catholic church were also run by an American, the global dominance of the US would be simply pervasive and overwhelming,” Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a watchdog group that tracks clergy child abuse cases in the Catholic church worldwide, told ABC News recently.I’ll tell you who doesn’t seem particularly overwhelmed by the first American pope: Donald Trump. The president has spent the last few days posting AI-generated pictures of himself as the pope and generally mocking the Catholic church. Still, Trump was on his best behaviour when the official announcement came through, and posted a fairly restrained message on Truth Social, congratulating the pope and saying it was a “Great Honor for our Country”.Just give it a few days, though, and I’m sure Trump will be on Fox News taking credit for the new pope and announcing that the Vatican is going to get rid of all their dusty old Bibles and replace them with the Trump God Bless the USA Bible. Only $99.99 for the platinum edition and a bargain $74.99 for the pink and gold edition!Vice-President JD Vance, one of the last people to see Pope Francis alive, also posted a diplomatic message of congratulations, saying he was “sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for [Pope Leo’s] successful work leading the Church”.I am not an American Catholic. Nor am I Protestant, Episcopalian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or anything else. I am an atheist, although not a terribly devout one. But I am certainly praying as hard as I can that Pope Leo will be the moral leader that the world so desperately needs at this moment.For most of my life I have not been particularly interested in who the pope is. And I have had very little faith that the Vatican, which covered up systemic sexual abuse, could ever be a real force for good. But – and I know I am not alone when I say this – the past 19 months has fundamentally changed how I see the world. I used to believe in things like international human rights law. I used to believe that while the arc of the moral universe may be extremely long, it bends toward justice. I used to believe that universities would stand up for free speech. And I used to believe that no matter how craven western world leaders might be, they wouldn’t go so far as to enable the livestreamed genocide unfolding in Gaza. That western leaders wouldn’t stand by and cheer as Israel, whose total blockade on Gaza has entered its third month, starves children to death.During a time when international law has been dealt a deadly blow, when might is right and decades of progress seem to be unravelling, the late Pope Francis made an impression on non-Catholics like me for his moral clarity towards many marginalized groups and his advocacy for peace everywhere from “martyred Ukraine” to Gaza. Of course, his legacy is not perfect: many abuse victims have questioned whether he went far enough in acknowledging children sexually abused by clergy. But Pope Francis undoubtedly fought for the most vulnerable in society.Pope Francis also understood what many newspaper editors and politicians don’t seem to be able to comprehend: that there is no “both-sidesing” atrocities. That there are times where you must take sides because, as Desmond Tutu said, “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”In 2023, for example, Pope Francis went on a historic trip to South Sudan and told churches in the region that they “cannot remain neutral” but must speak up against injustice and abuse of power.Pope Francis also visited the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, where he criticized the “poison of greed” driving conflict in the region. “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hands off Africa. Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” Francis said.When it came to Gaza, Pope Francis spoke clearly and powerfully. He would call the only Roman Catholic church in Gaza almost nightly after this iteration of the conflict broke out. When so much of the world seems to have turned away from Gaza’s suffering, Pope Francis let anguished civilians know he cared. One of his last wishes was that his popemobile be turned into a mobile health clinic for children in the Gaza Strip.And Pope Francis was not shy about criticizing the US – consistently speaking up for immigrants and refugees. “We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories,” he told the US Congress in September 2015.We do not yet know how Pope Leo will undertake his duties but he is widely considered a centrist who was aligned with Francis on a number of social issues. Notably, in February Leo tweeted an article that disagreed with Vance’s views on immigration, headlined “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others”. In April, he also retweeted commentary criticizing Trump deporting a US resident to El Salvador.Whether Pope Leo will remain outspoken, whether he will continue Francis’s demands for a ceasefire in Gaza, remains to be seen. But the world desperately needs strong moral leadership at the moment. May Leo be the light we need in the current darkness. And, for his own sake, may he stay away from Vance.

    Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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    Unearthed comments from new pope alarm LGBTQ+ Catholics

    After years of sympathetic and inclusive comments from Pope Francis, LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed concern on Thursday about hostile remarks made more than a decade ago by Father Robert Prevost, the new Pope Leo XIV, in which he condemned what he called the “homosexual lifestyle” and “the redefinition of marriage” as “at odds with the Gospel”.In a 2012 address to the world synod of bishops, the man who now leads the church said that “Western mass media is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel – for example abortion, homosexual lifestyle, euthanasia”.In the remarks, of which he also read portions for a video produced by the Catholic News Service, a news agency owned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the cleric blamed mass media for fostering so much “sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyles choices” that “when people hear the Christian message it often inevitably seems ideological and emotionally cruel”.“Catholic pastors who preach against the legalization of abortion or the redefinition of marriage are portrayed as being ideologically driven, severe and uncaring,” Prevost added.He went on to complain that “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children are so benignly and sympathetically portrayed in television programs and cinema today”.The video illustrated his criticism of the “homosexual lifestyle” and “same-sex partners and their adopted children” with clips from two US sitcoms featuring same-sex couples, The New Normal and Modern Family.The cleric also called for a “new evangelization to counter these mass media-produced distortions of religious and ethical reality”.After some of the comments were reported by the New York Times, American LGBTQ+ Catholic groups expressed alarm but also cautious optimism that the papacy of Francis had moved the whole church forward.“We pray that in the 13 years that have passed, 12 of which were under the papacy of Pope Francis, that his heart and mind have developed more progressively on LGBTQ+ issues, and we will take a wait-and-see attitude to see if that has happened,” said Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ+ Catholic group, in a statement. “We pray that as our church transitions from 12 years of an historic papacy, Pope Leo XIV will continue the welcome and outreach to LGBTQ+ people which Pope Francis inaugurated.”DignityUSA, a group that represents LGBTQ+ Catholics, also expressed “concern” with the pope’s previous comments but wrote in an online post: “We note that this statement was made during the papacy of Benedict XVI, when doctrinal adherence appeared to be expected. In addition, the voices of LGBTQ+ people were rarely heard at that level of church leadership. We pray that Pope Leo XIV will demonstrate a willingness to listen and grow as he begins his new role as the leader of the global church.”Perhaps the best-known of the sympathetic statements made about LGBTQ+ Catholics by Pope Francis was a comment he made to reporters in 2013, when he was asked about his observation that there was a “gay lobby” inside the Vatican hierarchy.“I have yet to find someone who introduces himself at the Vatican with an identity card marked ‘gay’,” the pope joked. “But we must distinguish the fact that a person is gay from the fact of lobbying, because no lobbies are good.”“If a person is gay,” he added, “and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?”DeBernardo, the New Ways Ministry director, referenced those remarks on Thursday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The healing that began with ‘Who am I to judge?’ needs to continue and grow to ‘Who am I, if not a friend to LGBTQ+ people?’” DeBernardo said.“Pope Francis opened the door to a new approach to LGBTQ+ people; Pope Leo must now guide the church through that door,” he added. “Many Catholics, including bishops and other leaders, remain ignorant about the reality of LGBTQ+ lives, including the marginalization, discrimination, and violence that many still face, even in Catholic institutions. We hope that he will further educate himself by meeting with and listening to LGBTQ+ Catholics and their supporters.”Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA, told the Washington Blade in a text message from St Peter’s Square shortly after Leo XIV’s election that the new pope “hasn’t said a lot since early 2010s” on the subject, adding “hope he has evolved”.Father James Martin, an American Jesuit and the founder of Outreach, an LGBTQ+ Catholic resource, sounded a note of optimism in a video message from Rome, calling the new pope a “down-to-earth, kind, modest” man and “a great choice”.In 2023, Martin was able to bless a same-sex couple for the first time, after Pope Francis said he would allow such blessings.In 2020, Pope Francis said that he supported civil-union laws for same-sex couples. “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” he said.“Pope Francis did more for LGBTQ people than all his predecessors combined,” Martin wrote last month. “He wrote letters of welcome to Outreach conferences for LGBTQ Catholics. He approved the publication of ‘Fiducia Supplicans, a Vatican document that permitted priests to bless same-sex marriages under certain circumstances – and weathered intense blowback from some parts of the church. And, perhaps most surprisingly and least well known, he met regularly with transgender Catholics and spoke to them with warmth and welcome.” More