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

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    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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      Unearthed comments from new pope alarm LGBTQ+ Catholics

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      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

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      ‘Maga Catholics’ are gaining ground in the US. Now their sight is set on the Vatican

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      Once the papal conclave starts, the cardinals choosing Pope Francis’s successor will be strictly shut off from the world until a new pope is named. But the coming days before the conclave begins on 7 May will see competing factions of Catholics, including many laypeople, campaigning in the Vatican and the US to influence the church’s future – none with more urgency than those discontented with Francis’s liberal reign.American Catholics will fight to play a central role. Soon after the news of Francis’s death reached faithful the world over, the American counter-revolution mobilized, Vatican watchers say. Red-eyes to Rome were booked. Long-distance phone calls were made. Various cardinals likely received sudden dinner invitations.No one involved calls it “lobbying” – that would be untoward, and it’s “subtler than what you see in DC”, Philip Lawler, a conservative Catholic writer and the author of a book critical of Francis, said. “But representatives of all points of view, from across the spectrum, will be doing their best to ensure that the cardinals understand their concerns.”“I’m going to Rome on Saturday, and I’m late to the game,” Francis X Maier, a Catholic writer and the former adviser to Archbishop Charles Chaput, said last week. “There are all sorts of people already meeting with bishops and cardinals and trying to create the environment that they want.”For conservative, traditionalist or self-described “orthodox” Catholics, fresh from 12 uneasy years under Francis, this interregnum will be the last chance in a long time to try to reset a church that they believe has drifted too far left. To some, that means pushing for a church that clearly affirms polarizing but longtime Catholic teachings on sexuality, marriage and abortion. Others, many of them associated with the priorities of Donald Trump and his supporters, would go further, and press for a church that is explicitly, politically rightwing – or at least less hostile to the Maga movement’s stances on immigration, social welfare and the environment.Steve Bannon, perhaps the most public and inflammatory voice of rightwing Catholic discontent, has said he intends to organize a “show of force of traditionalists” with confrontational “wall-to-wall” media coverage. Most politicking, however, will take the form of quieter wheeling and dealing.Conservative Catholics have their papal draft picks – Raymond Burke, Gerhard Müller, Péter Erdő and Robert Sarah are often mentioned – though observers are skeptical that the next pope will break Francis’s mold, in part because he appointed most of the cardinals who will choose his successor. Yet conservative Catholic Americans are unusually influential and wealthy, and the Vatican needs “American money and American influence”, said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of religious studies at Villanova University.And while the conservative faction is a minority, it “shouldn’t be dismissed. For them, this conclave is just one battle in a war that lasts decades.”“Do I have time to talk to the Guardian about the fake pope?” Steve Bannon asked when I reached out for an interview. “Of course I do. Always.”For years, Bannon – Trump’s former adviser and a self-described traditionalist Catholic, though he has been divorced three times – has used his massively popular political podcast, War Room, to wage blistering attacks on the Francis pontificate. He has charged the pope with being a Marxist subversive, a globalist anti-American, even illegitimate.View image in fullscreenMuch of conservatives’ anger centers on Francis’s record of pronouncements that seemed to relax or render ambiguous Catholic social doctrines. In 2013, when a reporter asked Francis if there were gay men in the Vatican, he famously remarked: “Who am I to judge?”“‘Who am I to judge?’” Bannon repeated, incredulous. “Yo, dude, you’re the pope. That’s kind of the gig. You’re supposed to be judgmental. This ‘empathy’ is all phony. He brought the therapeutic 20th century into the church. The church is not supposed to be therapeutic.”Devout Catholics have historically been difficult to place in the American political binary. They were often anti-abortion but in favor of immigration and a social safety net. “I believe all the church teaches,” Leah Libresco Sargeant, the author of two books on her Catholic faith, told me. “I try to live up to it. And obviously that makes me a poor fit for either political party.”Still, working-class Catholics were a traditional base of 20th-century Democratic party support, and activist Catholic clergy marched in protests for Black civil rights and against the Vietnam war. Yet the legalization of abortion drove some prominent Catholics who had previously supported leftwing causes to the conservative movement.While the stereotypical Christian conservative of popular imagination may be a Bible-thumping southern Protestant, Catholics have for years dominated the intellectual leadership of the American right. Five of the US supreme court’s six right-leaning justices are Catholic, despite the fact that Catholics account for only about a fifth of the US population. JD Vance – the vice-president who earlier this year sparked a feud of sorts with the Vatican about immigration and compassion and also met briefly with Francis shortly before his death – converted to Catholicism in 2019.Although borderline sacrilege by normal Catholic standards, Bannon’s fulminations against Francis have found a ready audience among a demographic that the New York Post has coined “Maga Catholics”: Catholic Americans who are militantly conservative, both theologically and politically, and see no tension.Francis did a favor to a resurgent Catholic right, Bannon argues: “His reign of terror has been nothing short of disastrous. And that’s why you’re having a massive reaction, particularly in North America, where he rejuvenated the traditional church here.”View image in fullscreenGregory A Smith, who studies religious demography at Pew Research Center, noted that polling shows that most American Catholics – including most Catholic Republicans – viewed Pope Francis favorably throughout his pontificate. Yet starting around 2018, an ideological gap began to open, with Catholic Republicans reporting less favorable views of Francis than Catholic Democrats.Pointedly referring to Francis mostly by his secular, pre-papal surname, Bergoglio, Bannon outlined numerous grievances.Among his arguments: that the pope was hostile to the old-fashioned Latin mass liturgy beloved by some American Catholics, did not hold alleged abusers in the clergy fully accountable, muddled longstanding doctrines about sexuality and marriage, undermined US sovereignty by celebrating mass immigration, and betrayed persecuted Christians abroad by allowing the Chinese communist government control over the church there.“He’ll burn in hell just for that,” Bannon said of the agreement with China. He admitted that his stance was probably not representative of the average person in the pew.Yet many of these complaints, in more respectful form, are common to the orthodox Catholics who are the church’s most engaged, influential and financially generous constituency.While disagreeing with some of the conservative characterizations of the state of the church, Faggioli said that American detractors of Pope Francis have momentum, to some extent, on their side. American priests starting their vocations today are on average more conservative, not less, than their older peers, he noted.Latin masses are popular where they are offered. And the past couple years have seen a surprise influx of young adults converting or reverting to Catholicism, many of whom seem to want “smells and bells” and moral certitude, rather than the casual Catholicism they associate with their parents’ generation, or the rainbow flag-adorned progressivism of many mainline Protestant churches.“The living and vibrant parts of the US church are not those who were most enthusiastic about the Francis pontificate, but those who have embraced the ‘all-in’ Catholicism of John Paul II and Benedict XVI,” George Weigel, a neoconservative Catholic writer, told me by email as he traveled to Rome. “In the main,” he argued, “Francis’s most vocal supporters were the ageing and shrinking parts of the American church.”He contrasted the Anglican church. “[A] lot of the most engaged Catholics in the United States don’t think of the Church of England as a very impressive model of Christian vitality, and they rightly attribute its decline to its embracing a lot of contemporary culture, rather than working to convert that culture.”His views echo outside the US, as well. Recent data suggests that Catholics may soon outnumber Anglicans in Britain for the first time since the 16th-century Reformation, with the change driven in large part by gen-Z churchgoers, even as British society as a whole continues to become more secular.View image in fullscreenNot all conservative or orthodox Catholics were unhappy with Francis.In the magazine First Things, the conservative writer Sohrab Ahmari, who converted to Catholicism in 2016, argued recently that the substance of Francis’s preaching was often “far more ‘trad’ than critics appreciated”. Yet he was dogged by “the emergence of a veritable anti-Francis cottage industry” that worked to “prime a subset of Catholics against the pope”.In an email, he told me: “I personally loved the late Holy Father, and generally tried to relate to the Vatican as a medieval peasant might: pay, pray and obey.”Catholics For Catholics is one of the political faces of a newly militant Catholic right. In March, the organization hosted a prayer event at Mar-a-Lago for the second year in a row. The organization also worked to mobilize Catholic swing-state voters for the Republican party last fall, with a particular focus on millions of “low-propensity” Catholics who don’t regularly vote.John Yep co-founded Catholics For Catholics two and a half years ago, he told me, to “advocate for Catholics in the public square, and to just reaffirm our beliefs and present them to our politicians so that they are aware of them and respect who we stand for and what we believe”.The organization is well to the right of the average Catholic, by most metrics, and perhaps even to the right of the average conservative Catholic: it published a book by Bishop Joseph Strickland, a Texas clergyman who was removed from office in 2023 after becoming one of Francis’s fiercest critics.Faggioli, the Villanova professor, believes that traditionalists overreacted to Francis. “Conservative Catholics got used to a certain kind of papacy and a sympathy for their causes during the 35 years of John Paul II and Pope Benedict, and some of them thought that history was over,” he said.But Yep’s political instincts about Catholics as a voting bloc may be apt. According to an AP analysis, Trump won 54% of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, a four-point improvement on 2020, when he and Biden received roughly equal shares of the Catholic vote. And although white Catholics support Trump at higher rates than Latino Catholics, Trump also benefited from a swing in the Latino Catholic vote.Bannon believes that a rupture between traditionalist North American Catholics and the larger church is coming – and even welcomes it. Observers are skeptical of that idea, in part because most Catholics, regardless of their ideological stripe, would find the prospect of a 21st-century schism with the mother church in Rome unthinkable. But either way there seems to be a growing gap between a Catholic community in the US that is becoming more conservative and a church leadership in Rome that is open to new ideas.Faggioli believes that “in some sense, this church is already in a situation of soft schism”. But he doesn’t think a full-blown schism is in the cards.“The real goal of [most] neo-traditionalist voices is not to break away and make their own small church,” he said. “Their project is to win back the entire Catholic church, in the long term, to what they think is real Catholicism.” More

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      JD Vance had ‘exchange of opinions’ with senior cardinal, Vatican says

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      The US vice-president, JD Vance, had “an exchange of opinions” with the Vatican’s secretary of state over current international conflicts and immigration when they met on Saturday, the Vatican has said.The Vatican issued a statement after Vance, a Catholic convert, met Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. There was no indication he met Pope Francis, who has resumed some official duties during his recovery from pneumonia.The Holy See has responded cautiously to the Trump administration, in keeping with its tradition of diplomatic neutrality.It has expressed alarm over Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and cuts in international aid, and has called for peaceful resolutions to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.Those concerns were reflected in the Vatican statement, which said the talks were cordial and that the Vatican expressed satisfaction with the administration’s commitment to protecting freedom of religion and conscience.“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” the statement said.“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged.”The reference to “serene collaboration” appeared to refer to Vance’s accusation that the US conference of Catholic bishops was resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to obtain federal funding. Top US cardinals have pushed back strongly against the claim.Parolin told La Repubblica on the eve of Vance’s visit: “It is clear that the approach of the current US administration is very different from what we are used to and, especially in the west, from what we have relied on for many years,.”As the US pushes to end the war in Ukraine, Parolin reaffirmed Kyiv’s right to its territorial integrity and insisted that any peace deal must not be “imposed” on Ukraine but “built patiently, day by day, with dialogue and mutual respect”.Vance was spending Easter weekend in Rome with his family and attended Good Friday services in St Peter’s Basilica after meeting Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. On Saturday, after the Vance family’s introduction to Parolin, they had a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.It was not immediately clear where they would celebrate Easter. Pope Francis, for his part, according to official liturgical plans released on Saturday, indicated he hoped to attend Easter mass on Sunday, which usually draws thousands to St Peter’s Square.The pope and Vance have tangled over immigration and the Trump administration’s plans to deport people en masse. Francis has made caring for those who migrate a hallmark of his papacy and his progressive views on social justice issues have often put him at odds with members of the more conservative US Catholic church.The pope also changed church teaching to say that capital punishment was inadmissible in all cases. After a public appeal from Francis just weeks before Trump took office, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row. Trump is an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, identifies with a small Catholic intellectual movement that is viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings and often described as “post-liberal”.Post-liberals share some longstanding Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. They envision a counter-revolution in which they take over government bureaucracy and institutions such as universities from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting upon their vision of the “common good”.Just days before the pope was admitted to hospital in February, Francis criticised the Trump administration’s deportation plans, warning that they would deprive people of their inherent dignity. In a letter to US bishops, he also appeared to respond to Vance directly for having claimed that Catholic doctrine justified such policies.Vance had defended the administration’s America-first crackdown by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as ordo amoris. He said the concept delineated a hierarchy of care – to family first, followed by neighbour, community, fellow citizens and, last, those elsewhere.In his 10 February letter, Francis appeared to correct Vance’s understanding of the concept.“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the good Samaritan, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”Vance has acknowledged Francis’ criticism but has said he will continue to defend his views. During an appearance on 28 February at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Vance did not address the issue specifically but called himself a “baby Catholic” and acknowledged there are “things about the faith that I don’t know”. More

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      ‘We create gods because the world is chaos’: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci on celebrity, sin and papal thriller Conclave

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      Faith, death and vengeful vaping: of all the Oscar contenders this year, Conclave is the one that best combines chewy religious inquiry and lavish side-eye. Adapted by Wolf Hall screenwriter Peter Straughan from the Robert Harris novel, Conclave has been directed by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger as a heavy-breathing battle for hearts, minds and power.Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal Lawrence, who, after the sudden death of the pope, must park his own religious doubts to wrangle the 113 cardinals who have descended on the Vatican. These men will be sequestered until they can elect one of their number as the new pontiff. Among them are the gentle progressive Bellini (Stanley Tucci) and smooth traditionalist Tremblay (John Lithgow). Both have secrets. But are they as lethal as those of their friends – and rivals?The film was shot in Rome 20 months ago; triangulating the actors’ schedules for a reunion seemed to take almost as long. Fiennes is completing work on a new Alan Bennett adaptation and zombie follow-up 28 Years Later; Tucci shooting the Russo brothers’ latest and promoting his new memoir; Lithgow stars at the Royal Court in new play Giant, as Roald Dahl, railing against accusations of antisemitism.In the end, they all dialled in early one morning from different parts of London. Fiennes was in a tasteful kitchen and vast cardie, Tucci his home office, teetering with books and sketches, while Lithgow beamed from a creamy Chelsea rental.View image in fullscreenCatherine Shoard: Did any of you find or renounce God while making the film?John Lithgow: No. But we were in Rome, so taking a warm bath in Renaissance Italian art, which is as Christian as you can get. And we were working on something that really felt worthy. So it was a spiritual experience.Stanley Tucci: I was raised Catholic but broke with the church. It just never made sense to me. It was a myth I had great difficulty believing. But as John said, being in Rome is always incredibly moving. I remember as a kid living in Italy and being profoundly moved by the experience of going into a church, simply because of the art and the amount of time and energy that was devoted to creating it – and sustaining the myth. But it didn’t sway me one way or the other.Ralph Fiennes: I feel a bit differently. My mother was a committed Catholic, but quite enlightened. She had brothers and a great uncle who had been priests. My great uncle, Sebastian Moore, is quite a well-known theologian. So God was not unfamiliar to me. Questions about faith were something I grew up with.I rebelled against my upbringing when I was 13. I said to my mother: “I’m not going to mass.” I didn’t like the heaviness. There was a very claustrophobic, dominant feeling from the church in Ireland, where we then were living, in the early 70s. I hated the sense of compulsion and constriction.I don’t think of myself as a practising anything, but I’ve never stopped having a curiosity about what it is to have faith. I’m also very moved by what we can encounter with the art the church has produced. Not just the Catholic church. I was in Thessaloniki recently and went to a museum of icons there, which was profoundly moving. What is it that makes us want to build these churches and shrines? Faith is a huge, potent thing that mankind seems to want to have, even if the forces of logic and science and reason go against it. I’m curious about that energy.CS: Why are people drawn to faith?RF: It’s about looking for answers. Life is messy. Life is shitty. Life is unpredictable. I think human beings want a sense of coherence in their inner selves. And often faith does contain helpful guidances or moral rulings. Of course, the Catholic church has done terrible things. It’s full of twisted and dark corners, but all power structures will go that way. I think the precept of a faith brings people together and gives communities a sense of coherence.Christ was teaching at a time when tiny communities were held together by messengers on horseback or on ships, taking letters or preaching vocally. They didn’t have mass communication. So in a small community, how you cohered was really important. I have some experience with visiting Inuit peoples in northern Canada, where they worship animals and have a real respect for the elements. Their communities have been totally shattered and wounded by encounters with the Christian churches. But they have their stories which help them survive and cohere.ST: I think that this sense of camaraderie and community is something we all long for and there’s no question that the church does that. But we create these ideas of God, or gods, because the world is chaos. It’s to dispel our fears. We have no control over our lives and that causes anxiety. Fear of death is the most potent; we’ve created all these constructs to make ourselves feel better about when we or a loved one dies.View image in fullscreenEach society has their own construct to dampen those fears, to make it OK. If we think about religion as making order out of chaos, it’s exactly the same thing that art does. And yet so much art has been created by the church. Of course all of these incredible artists could only paint religious subjects. I have faith, I have faith in art. That’s where my faith lies.JL: What they said! It’s such a deeply thought-out film. What’s fascinating about telling a story like this is the context of a political event – the election of a new pope – and examining the electorate. The college of cardinals are all men who’ve been drawn to religion by a longing to commit their lives to faith. And so wholeheartedly that they are at the top of the food chain of a great big religious construct.But when it comes right down to it, they all have to vote and compete. There are rivalries and betrayals and deceptions and jealousies and ambitions and aspirations, all of which go counter to the entire reason they’re there: a devotion to Christ and the idea of the Catholic church. Any story with that tension between virtue and sin is automatically great. I think that’s why people are responding so fervently to this film. They see these tensions: men who went into something for deep personal reasons that have gradually been eroded by ambition.CS: Do you think there’s anything unhelpful about the drama of elections? Are we addicted to horserace narratives?JL: It’s inevitable when a leader is chosen that it’s going to get political. But it’s just an incredibly interesting moment for this film to arrive. While we were shooting the film, there was the great fight in the US House of Representatives for the House speaker. There were 15 ballots before Kevin McCarthy finally survived the process – it was just like what we were acting out.View image in fullscreenThat was uncanny event No 1 – the second is what happened two weeks ago. Had the only voters in that been the cast and crew of Conclave, there would’ve been the opposite result. There’s a great liberal tradition in film – and the great example is Mr Smith Goes to Washington. The forces of corruption and money in politics fail at the end and the simple man prevails. That’s very much the movie paradigm. And Conclave basically follows those rules. It’s just amazing the tide has turned so much in the last few weeks. It makes our movie into a kind of wish-fulfilment story – which I think is another reason people have been attracted to it.ST: The film does follow a certain trope, in a way, as the book did. But it’s a fascinating one – and not an easy one. So often movies are made just to make us feel better. That’s why there are so many happy endings in movies, because there are so many unhappy endings in life.CS: In the film someone pointedly says that the papacy is a heavy burden for an older man. Should there be an upper age limit on positions of power? Or even voting for them? In real life, cardinals can’t vote once they’re over 80.RF: It would be a great guideline in the current US government: 80 as a signoff. We’d have two years of Trump but not four.JL: I don’t think it would pass Congress at the moment.RF: But maybe that’s a good idea, to have an age limit on any electoral governmental ruling system. I’m sure that’s smart, but who decides whether it’s 75, 80, 70? There are plenty of people with alert minds working vigorously into their early 80s. But the patriarchal element seems to me one of the looming themes, that begs all kinds of questions. Stanley’s character, Cardinal Bellini, articulates the very, very vital issues of how the church should go forward in relation to gender and sexual identity and diversity. Mostly the film has been well-reviewed. Some people seem to think it’s a bit simplistic, but I think it puts on the table quite coherently and intelligently big themes that could be discussed without it being an attack on the church.View image in fullscreenThe Catholic church is riven with it. That’s why it’s very frustrating to read Saint Paul: he preaches love, but his strictures on women are just horrendous. It’s so conflicted. It needs a good clean out. And yet these patterns of behaviour do seem to appeal to all the world. People love the ritual. They love the tradition. It’s kind of a conundrum, isn’t it? The church is so potent. Clearly it does good. It does lots for suffering peoples and the poor, but it’s also got this other side where it’s so backwards in its conventions and thinking. Its traditions are holding it back.CS: What can the church do to change?ST: Priests should be able to get married. That changes everything. And nuns. Why can’t you be devoted to God and love someone at the same time? I don’t understand that. Priests used to be married many years ago but the Catholic church stopped that. The excuse was that priests needed to devote themselves to God. But really it was because when they died, everything went to their wives. It wasn’t about devotion but money. And I think that’s a problem. Priests being able to be married would ground them in reality and only enhance their spirituality. Let’s just start with that.CS: Yet in the US the democratic process recently embraced a return to patriarchy. Why are people drawn to institutions and leaders who seek to roll things back?View image in fullscreenRF: I think it comes back to a story and how it’s put out. Trump told a story. The way he described the problem with America and what he could do, was a story. He has a remarkable gift for talking and accessing people’s deeper gut feelings. And the story in its simplicity appealed. Whatever you think of the horror of the language and the racism and sexism that we all identify on the liberal side, it speaks to people. He’s the man in the bar who says: “I’ll get rid of this shit. We’ll make your lives better.” His win was a visceral response to a man saying: “I’m going to sort it for you.” Basically, his story won. It’s not my country, but it seems to me that the Democrats were increasingly perceived as a sort of removed elite. Theirs wasn’t a story that I think was put across very strongly. Trump told the best story, whether you like it or not.JL: He also told the story of the Democrats. He dominated the narrative with a much bolder, louder voice, and with the support of a huge amount of the media. Story is a very potent word in in this conversation. The Democrats couldn’t get their story out, or whatever was persuasive and compelling about their story couldn’t rise above all the noise.ST: By simplifying everything, he distilled it down to ideas that were very easy for people to grasp.JL: And that’s how tyranny operates.ST: He just played on everyone’s fears and he did what so many fascistic-minded people do, which is find a scapegoat: immigrants. It’s always the other. So people go: that’s why I have no money, because of that guy. It’s not true, at all. But it works. It’s worked before and it worked again.RF: It seems the rate of inflation in America has wrong-footed a lot of people; the price level people are used to dealing with suddenly went up.JL: Well, there was a simple story to tell there that never got articulated: inflation was substantially a result of the huge crisis of Covid and it had been coming down steadily for months. The Biden administration was doing a very good job at handling an inflation crisis, but that story never got told. And it doesn’t matter how many graphs you see in a newspaper, it still feels like prices are too high. But prices are too high because the country suffered a traumatic economic episode. It was being handled. God knows what’s gonna happen now, with tariffs being the new go-to solution. They’re gonna create inflation.ST: How are tariffs gonna help? I don’t know.CS: Conclave is a very theatrical film. Does all the smoke and bling and the costumes attract certain people to the pulpit? Someone like Trump – embraced by the religious right – is used to being immediately judged on his performance.View image in fullscreenRF: The spoken word in the space to a body of people is the business we’re all in. There’s John every night embodying Roald Dahl with extremely toxic views. In a way that’s a pulpitian provocation. That’s what the theatre does – and Giant is a fascinating, compelling play. As actors, when we speak on a stage and we have our audience, that’s a potent thing that’s created. I don’t know that people are drawn to the church so that they can always be speaking, but clearly if you are a priest, there is that moment when you get up and you deliver your homily for the week. You have to put across a view or a lesson or a teaching or an idea that is meant to send your community out with, hopefully, questions to improve their moral wellbeing or the way they engage with life.My memory of listening to homilies is that they are sort of provocations based in the religious text that say: think about this or think about that. How we listen as a congregation is fascinating. That’s why I love what the theatre is.JL: There’s something in all of us three – actors, not men of the cloth – that is mainly interested in impact. We just wanna reach people, and we’re playing roles and we’re telling stories that are not our personal stories. But the three of us have had hundreds of experiences of reaching people, throttling them with theatrics, making them laugh or cry or scream out in horror.RF: Or go to sleep.JL: Our great ambition is to wake them up and to startle them and get huge rounds of applause. There are two major, beautifully written speeches in our film that have an extraordinary impact on the college of cardinals. That’s why we are in the game. We understand the thrill of succeeding at making an impact.RF: And we understand that crushing disappointment when you realise you haven’t made the impact you’d hoped.JL: Oh, it’s awful!CS: The characters you play are trying to emulate God and falling short. As actors who are public figures, are you more conscious of being treated like quasi-gods – and of your own failings coming under more scrutiny?JL: Different types of actors are treated very differently. I’m a strange actor who’s gone off and done extremely peculiar roles. I’m the go-to psychopath or hypocrite or villain from time to time. I guess all three of us are character actors in a sense. My whole game is surprising people. I have a sort of perverse enthusiasm for upending people’s expectations of me. People don’t go to me for political wisdom. I come off very pretentious if I get anywhere near that kind of talk. But my acting is completely surprising and sometimes revolting. I just go for it.View image in fullscreenST: These people are trying to emulate God and yet they created God. So that’s weird. But without question, people in the public eye are always under more scrutiny. You’re larger than life. But I think that’s changed over the years. You used to see actors on stage, from a distance, in a proscenium. Then you saw them in movies, but still in this big rectangle. Everybody was big and what they did was big. Over the years things got smaller and smaller and now you can put me in your pocket.That changes the way we look at people. It used to be only posthumously that you’d find out somebody in Hollywood was a sexual deviant or a terrible drinker or whatever. In life, it was like: let’s just leave them alone. And everybody did. Television altered how much access to people you were allowed. But now, you can watch me on like your wristwatch and that changes the way you look at me. So people realise that yes, actors are just people. But they still want them not to have these faults. Yet they can’t wait to find out about them.JL: It’s interesting to hear you talk about this, Stanley, because of the three of us people have come to know you the best.ST: Because I made that food show.JL: But that food show is very much the Stanley show and the world has got to know you so well and like you so much. In Rome you were virtually worshipped in that wine shop.View image in fullscreenST: That was really funny. I remember when we went to a grocery store. You were always able to hide behind a persona or a character. So it’s odd because it’s the first time I’ve ever just been myself. And I was very uncomfortable with it at first, even though it was my idea. I don’t know what I was thinking, and now I’m more comfortable with it. I know the idea of connecting through food makes people so happy, so that makes me happy. I just think it’s a nice thing. But I’m never eating Italian food again …RF: I don’t know if priests are emulating God. I think they’re meant to be conduits or shepherds for the message. We’re all sinners – even priests. I think priests or nuns are mostly just answering a calling to preach the message. But of course, if you are preaching the message and you’re in the pulpit, naturally people will expect that you are going to be an example. Cinema is very potent in how it puts an actor’s face on screen. We are conduits for a playwright or a character, we’re not there necessarily preaching a religion or political idea or any kind of philosophy. We’re just drawn to roles. We’re drawn to the drama. The workings of cinema are so keyed into key myths that we want to keep telling ourselves. So audiences will project on to actors huge things, and the media massages the sense of projection. So you suddenly can feel very exposed. People in all forms of entertainment can suddenly realise that there’s an expectation of them as a private person. I think that’s troubling.CS: There are two lines in the film I want to ask your opinion on. The first is: “Things fall apart. The abyss calls out.” Which is a warning from one cardinal about what will happen if the church embraces liberalism. Where do you see the church in 50 years’ time? The second is Stanley’s character’s line that to not know yourself at his age is shameful. Is it, and do you?ST: I’m still learning about myself and trying to make myself better. I don’t always succeed. Sometimes we know ourselves and sometimes we just don’t. I don’t fully know myself. I worry that I’m going to have an epiphany about myself on my deathbed. Then I’ll just die sad.CS: What might it be?ST: Suddenly it’ll occur to me that I really just don’t like myself at all. And then it’ll be over. I’d have no time to rectify it.View image in fullscreenJL: You’d have time for a phone call, Stanley.ST: But I’d wanna go back and change things and make things better and I’ll just be dead.JL: By now, I have settled into a strong sense of myself as a good actor. I wouldn’t work all the time if I weren’t good at it. What I love about the profession is also what makes me feel a little guilty: it seems the most irresponsible thing you can do. Your lines are written for you. Everyone takes good care of you lest you miss a performance or lose a shooting day. You’re treated like a much bigger deal than you actually are. But I think the more you are content with that self-image, the better off you are.RF: I would like to think the church will evolve by dialogue within itself. That it can be a force for good. But I think the evolution of the church is going to be difficult and hard. Our journey through life is a constant evolution with relation to ourselves and in relation to others with whom we connect. There are always traps for us as individuals with our egos and our sense of anxiety. The best of the church or any faith, or any structure, or just your therapist, is in helping each other deal with the world.View image in fullscreenThe acting community at its best is wonderful at supporting each other. The experience where I thought this, at its best, is a fantastic profession to be in, was a production of King John, directed by Deborah Warner at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. The sense of ensemble and community was so fantastic in that production. Everyone flowered in their parts and within themselves as a group. The best the church can be is as a fantastic group. And the energy and the positivity of the group reaches out, and groups everywhere are wonderfully self-supportive of each other.ST: That’s the ideal, but I worry that this right-leaning ideology that’s taking over so much of the world will once again make the church retreat. And that’s really scary.RF: But at the end of our film, the group celebrates the person who seems to me to carry the spiritual depth and coherence and integrity that is needed. Going forward in the world now, we’re very frightened of what might come at us because of what’s happened. But we mustn’t lose sight of the power of what we can have. We must keep intact our aspiration to an ideal. More

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      Anti-abortion US priest Frank Pavone defrocked by Vatican

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      Anti-abortion US priest Frank Pavone defrocked by VaticanPavone had been investigated for placing an aborted foetus on an altar and posting a video of it online The Vatican has defrocked the anti-abortion US priest Frank Pavone for what it said were “blasphemous communications on social media” as well as “persistent disobedience” of his bishop.A letter to US bishops from the Vatican ambassador to the US, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, said the decision against Pavone, who heads the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, had been taken and that there was no chance for an appeal.Pavone had been investigated by his then diocese of Amarillo, Texas, for having placed an aborted foetus on an altar and posting a video of it on two social media sites in 2016. The video was accompanied by a post saying that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party would allow abortion to continue, and that Donald Trump and the Republicans wanted to protect unborn children.Pavone remains a firm supporter of Trump. His Twitter handle features him wearing a Maga hat with a background photo featuring the former US president, whom many conservatives praise for his supreme court nominees who overturned the landmark decision guaranteeing a constitutional right to abortion in the US.Pavone was defiant in a tweet on Sunday, comparing his fate to that of unborn children. “So in every profession, including the priesthood, if you defend the unborn, you will be treated like them! The only difference is that when we are ‘aborted’ we continue to speak, loud and clear.”His supporters immediately denounced the measure, including the bishop of Tyler, Texas, Joseph Strickland, who referred to Joe Biden’s support for abortion rights as “evil”. Pavone had appealed to the Vatican over restrictions placed on his ministry in 2011 by the Amarillo bishop, succeeded in getting the restrictions eased and relocated away from Texas while remaining active with Priests for Life.In his letter, Pierre cited information from the Congregation for Clergy that Pavone had been found guilty in a canonical proceeding “of blasphemous communications on social media and of persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop”. The letter was first reported by Catholic News Agency.The statement said Pavone was given “ample opportunity to defend himself” as well as to submit to his bishop. The statement concluded that since Priests for Life is not a Catholic organisation, it would be up to the group to determine whether he could continue his role “as a layperson”.Laicisation, or being reduced to the lay state, is one of the harshest sanctions in the church’s canon law. TopicsVaticanAbortionHealthWomenTrump administrationCatholicismReligionnewsReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on liberal Christians: is this their moment? | Editorial

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      “No one is saved alone,” writes Pope Francis in Let Us Dream, a short book of Covid-related reflections published last month. Those words carry an obvious Christian resonance. But the meaning that the pope intends to convey is primarily secular. The pandemic, he believes, has underlined our shared vulnerability and mutual dependency. By shocking us out of everyday indifference and egotism, our present troubles can open up the space for a new spirit of fraternity. A fresh emphasis on looking out for each other, claims the pope, can become the theme of a more generous and caring post-pandemic politics.Let Us Dream is a pastoral, spiritual book that aspires to address a lay audience as well as a religious one. In its emphasis on civic solidarity, tolerance, concern for the poor and the environment, it is also the latest attempt by Pope Francis to shift the dial of 21st-century Christianity away from the culture wars that have consumed it.There is an obvious temptation to respond wryly: “Good luck with that.” In a number of high-profile ways, 2020 was another depressing year for liberal-minded Christians. The Polish Catholic church worked hand in glove with the state in an attempt to effectively ban abortion and trample over LGBTQ+ rights. The strong disapproval of a majority of Poles, who have no wish to live in a theocracy, cut no ice. In neighbouring Hungary, the Reformed, Lutheran and Catholic churches kept stumm as Viktor Orbán’s government continued to bully minorities in the name of “illiberal Christianity”. During the lead-up to November’s US presidential election, Donald Trump’s cynical weaponisation of the abortion debate helped ensure strong Christian backing for the most profane, religiously illiterate president in the country’s history. And this week, Pope Francis himself indicated his disapproval of the legalisation of abortion in his native Argentina.But this stark summary of the church at odds with the liberal world does not tell the whole story. In Britain, as elsewhere, Christian churches, alongside mosques and synagogues, played a frontline role in the community activism that kept people and families afloat during months of acute uncertainty and hardship. It is from that wellspring of fellow feeling and altruism, the importance of which is suddenly front and centre in our lives, that Let Us Dream believes a “new humanism” can emerge. For those who share that aspiration, whether secular or religious, there are genuine grounds for hope in 2021.A liberal CatholicThe election to the White House of Joe Biden, a Democrat who is also a practising Catholic, is the best news liberal Christians have had for a long time. In a book published last month, the conservative Australian cardinal George Pell said Mr Trump was “a bit of a barbarian, but in some important ways he’s ‘our’ (Christian) barbarian”. The end of that cynically transactional relationship between Mr Trump’s White House and the religious right signals new possibilities. In his victory speech, Mr Biden quoted from Ecclesiastes, saying that for a divided America, “it was a time to heal”. When he has discussed his faith, the president-elect has tended to talk about altruism, decency and personal integrity, steering clear of provocative dividing lines.Mr Biden has backed access to abortion and same-sex marriage. He will, as a result, be relentlessly targeted by conservative Catholic critics and evangelicals. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, José Gomez, has convened a working group to address the “difficult and complex” situation of dealing with a liberal Catholic in the White House. But the Catholic vote was split evenly between Mr Biden and Mr Trump. And, crucially, Pope Francis is likely to have the new president’s back.This relationship could constitute an important new axis of liberal influence in the west. After a recent phone call between the two, a statement from Mr Biden’s transition team said the president-elect “expressed his desire to work together on the basis of a shared belief in the dignity and equality of all humankind, on issues such as caring for the marginalised and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities”. This was to more or less tick off the list of priorities the pope has attempted to set, while under constant assault from religious conservatives. The disruption of the recent alliance between Christianity and rightwing populism carries significant implications not only for America, but for the battle against global poverty, the climate emergency and the migration crisis.Fraternity as the new frontierMr Biden’s election is not the only hopeful sign for Christians who long for their leaders to look beyond the narrow preoccupation with reproductive rights and sexuality. Last year was marked by two significant theological documents, one from the eastern church and one from the west. Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church, published during Lent, is a radical clarion call for Orthodox Christians to engage with deepening inequalities in developed societies, and to confront wealthy nations with their moral obligations to refugees. The tone is set by the opening words of the text: “Our spiritual lives … cannot fail to be social lives.” Endorsed by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox church, the document recalls that “[the] early and Byzantine church had a bold voice on social justice”. This, it states, must be revived and renewed. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), was written in the same spirit. Ideas of fraternity and friendship are developed as a necessary complement to the familiar political categories of liberty and equality. The argument is summed up in Let Us Dream, where the pope writes: “Without the ‘we’ of a people, of a family, of institutions, of a society that transcends the ‘I’ of individual interests, life … becomes a battle for supremacy between factions and interests.”Intriguingly, variations on this theme have been explored in a string of recent publications, both secular and religious. In his valedictory work Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, the late chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, criticises the modern priority of “I” over “we”. Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing and Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit both attempt to map out a civic territory that avoids the twin dangers of selfish individualism and illiberal populism.In recent years, Christian leaders have too often been silent, complicit or cravenly proactive, as the Bible has been deployed as a weapon in conservative culture wars. The image of Trump marching through teargassed streets to brandish a bible outside a Washington church encapsulated a kind of capitulation. But in the new year, liberal Christians have grounds for cautious optimism. In the necessary project of carving out a new space for a less polarised, more fraternal public square, they have a vital role to play. More