A Pope for This Moment

A pivot point in history?

The first Midwestern pope.

“History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme”

— Seamus Heaney

On hearing the news of the first American pope, my first thought was of the election of the first Polish pope.

In 1978, Poland — and all of Europe — was on the brink when the cardinals selected Karol Józef Wojtyła, who became John Paul II.

It’s 2025 and America is on the brink, and the Church has chosen Leo XIV.

In 1978, Poland was facing an aggressive, if declining, Soviet Union, and it is hard to overstate the importance the Polish pope played in the fall of that empire. His selection was one of the great pivot points of history; a reminder of the power of moral authority and courage.

So I thought about the rhyming of history.

Happy Friday.

A reminder that we can’t do this without you.

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An American Pope

Until yesterday, an American pope was unthinkable. So why now? What moment is the Church meeting with this choice?

We can’t know everything that went into their deliberations, but it seems as if — in this moment — they decided that the Americas were the epicenter of the world’s moral crisis. Surveying the spiritual, social, economic, and political challenges facing the world, they decided that this was the moment to select an American pope, who could confront the humanitarian and moral challenges posed by the United States and its president.¹

So this is a potentially pivotal moment in our history.

Will this matter? As Joseph Stalin once snarked, the pope has no army, no divisions, no tanks. But Stalin wouldn’t have understood the power of John Paul II.

The new pope, of course, faces different challenges than his Polish predecessor. Trump/Vance and MAGA have wrapped themselves in the cloak of Christianity and preen upon the stage as defenders of Christendom. But now they have a formidable counterweight, and maybe, just maybe, this new American pope can call Christians back to the roots of their faith and their humanity.²

A note of caution for our progressive readers: Do not be surprised to discover that the new pope remains a Catholic — staunchly pro-life, skeptical of gender ideology, and theologically conservative.

But his choice of name signals a focus on social justice, and while it is a mistake to see his selection solely through the lens of American politics, Leo XIV has made it abundantly clear that he is willing to take on Donald Trump and JD Vance and their bent theology of cruelty.

This is what I told a New York Times reporter last night: “Donald Trump bestrides the world as the ugly American, and now we have another prominent American who is able to confront him.”

Via the NY Post:

His final X post before being elected by the Conclave in the Sistine Chapel was a retweet of a message from Philadelphia-based Catholic commentator Rocco Palmo, who on April 14 slammed Trump’s partnership with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele on deportation of illegal migrants.

“As Trump & Bukele use Oval to [laugh emoji] Feds’ illicit deportation of a US resident… once an undoc-ed Salvadorean himself, now-DC [auxiliary bishop] Evelio [Menjivar] asks, ‘Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?'” the tweet reads.

Unlike some of his predecessors in the Holy See, Pope Leo’s message has been unambiguous and direct. As recently as February, he was calling out JD Vance for distorting Christian doctrine:

**

This was not an outlier (Hat tip: Yashar Ali):

Nota bene that the new pope retweeted his fellow American cardinal, Blase Cupich, who condemned Trump’s first-term family separation policy:

“There is nothing remotely Christian, American, or morally defensible about a policy that takes children away from their parents and warehouses them in cages. this is being carried out in our name and the shame is on us all.”

This new American pope also retweeted Father James Martin, who wrote:

“We’re banning all Syrian refugees? the men, women, and children who *most* need help? What an immoral nation we are becoming. Jesus Weeps.”

That same year, he also retweeted a post from Rocco Palmo condemning Trump’s use of the term “bad hombres” to describe migrants.

In May 2020, he wrote:

“We need to hear more from leaders in the Church, to reject racism and seek justice.”

Exit take: Think of the new not simply as anti-Trump, but as The Anti-Trump — humble, self-effacing, and morally serious. Everything the Orange God King is not.

ICYMI: I had some thoughts last night

A Never Trump pope?

MAGA melts down

On cue…

Sean Hannity ripped the new pope’s views on immigration. Sean Davis, the serially deranged founder of the Federalist did not disappoint, tweeting that “the new pope seems to be anti-Trump and pro-open borders.” Rick Santorum complained that he parrots “left-wing buzzwords.” Catturd is deeply unhappy, and Mike Cernovich railed that the new pope was an “open borders globalist.” And, of course, Charlie Kirk weighed in with his deep theological insights, upbraiding the new pope for “retweeting George Floyd propaganda.”

And then, there was Trump’s bizarre BFF, Laura Loomer, who called Leo XIV a “MARXIST POPE” because he once tweeted “May all hatred, violence and prejudice be eradicated.”

The producers of “Idiocracy” should sue for plagiarism

NOT A PARODY: Trump appoints Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as top prosecutor in DC

Pirro has been a longtime ally of Trump, dating back to her time as a prominent prosecutor in New York. She was an early supporter of his 2016 campaign and publicly defended him during the "Access Hollywood" tape scandal.

Following Trump's loss in the 2020 election, Pirro pushed false allegations of election fraud involving voting machines and was later among the Fox News employees named in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false claims about the company. Fox News eventually settled for $787.5 million and admitted the statements were false.

In 2019, Pirro was reportedly suspended by Fox News after she questioned the loyalty of Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar to the U.S. Constitution, citing Omar's Muslim faith.

FFS.

Quote of the day

Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of ‘killing’ children with USAID cuts

The co-founder of Microsoft, and once the world’s richest man himself, said the abruptness of the cuts had left life-saving food and medicines expiring in warehouses and could cause the resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV and polio.

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he told the Financial Times.

Gates said Musk had cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, that prevents women transmitting HIV to their babies, in the mistaken belief that the US was supplying condoms to Hamas in Gaza in the Middle East. “I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” he said.

Nota Bene

Jonathan Chait: The Hypocrisy of Fetterman’s Defenders - The Atlantic

[Looking] the other way as Biden’s mind was slipping was not a shortcut to defeating Trump. It was an act of self-sabotage. Although conservatives may take longer to pay a price for failing to restrain their mad king, their policy of dismissing all doubts about the mental fitness of their leaders and allies of convenience—a habit now causing them to rally behind Fetterman—is a shaky foundation upon which to build a movement.

Matt Labash: Push Back Against the Monsters

But do we even have the capacity to recognize horrible mistakes in real time anymore? Things that cut against everything we’ve pretended to stand for? Because increasingly, that’s all we’re doing, is coasting on fumes, still paying lip service to freedom, rule of law, honesty, a moral universe not just bent on advancing our own narrow partisan interests, but a greater good – while our leaders and those who enable them come close to rejecting all of the above on the ground. We’re losing it, and in record time.

And this is just one example I could pick from 100 or so in the last 100-plus days.

Every day, a fresh assault by this administration on what we used to think of ourselves as standing for. Which seemingly doesn’t want us to think of ourselves in those terms anymore. As aspiring authoritarians often don’t. Their power comes from shattering all former notions of yourself. Rather, they want you to think of yourself as they think of themselves, as a people capable — as they have proven again and again — of much greater cruelty.

Willing and even eager to ignore our conscience and our Constitution and our Sermon on the Mount.

Friday dog

Six months ago, my French dog, Zok helped me get through election night…

1. Writes Nate Silver: “[While] I don’t want to speculate on this too much, Prevost’s anti-Trump stances… were at the very least not a disqualifier for the College of Cardinals. America’s relationship with the rest of the world has profoundly changed during Trump’s second term. If Trump completely upended the Canadian election, maybe he negatively polarized the College of Cardinals, too?”

2. This post last night revealed that lots of MAGA folks don’t know any Latin: