Press title for the National catholic Reporter’s article;
Pope Leo XIV speaks to journalists aboard a flight on his way to Luanda, Angola, April 18, 2026. On the flight from Cameroon to Angola, the pope pushed back against a media narrative that has pitted him against President Donald Trump since the start of his 11-day apostolic journey to Africa. (OSV News/Luca Zennaro, pool via Reuter
I think this is fair and balanced. What do you think? The first half hour is dedicated to the unprecedented brouhaha we are witnessing which is not unifying Catholics but causing more polarization. And yes, the media and politicians are seizing it for their own political reasons, pernicious as these may be:
In my most humble experience, I know that the celebration of the older liturgies of the Church can coincide with the modern and both can have a gravitational pull on the other.
But, and not to sound too clerical, celebrating the older Liturgies helps the modern priest formed in the modern liturgies to celebrate the modern liturgies better, meaning by the book, reading the black and following the red! This can be done in a human or non robotic way.
The greatest problem or conundrum for Pope Leo really isn’t the ancient Mass as thorny as it is for him. It is how horribly the Modern Mass is being celebrated.
Let me offer a codicil here. If the modern Mass is celebrated well, it means using its options in a judicious way and the priest-celebrant not hijacking the Mass’s introductory and concluding rites by being a Chatty Kathy! This kind of chattiness, very secular in nature, completely destroys the trajectory of the Prayer begun before Mass begins but officially starting with the Entrance Chant. To negate the trajectory of prayer, by a casual “good morning, how are you” after the prayerful greeting and then launching into a mini homily or an examination of conscience or whatever is not in the Roman Missal, destroys the ethos of prayer of the Mass and at the very beginning!
Just say, after the religious greeting: “Let us acknowledge God’s mercy so as to prepare ourselves to celebrate the Sacred Mysteries.” No hellos, no chattiness, just prayer continuing!
One priest suggests that the introduction to the penitential act should be officially stricken, simply, after the “The Lord be with you” begin the Confiteor or any option for the penitential act. I like that—what do you think?
But the other conundrum for the Pope is the poor quality of music imposed on the Mass or the use of secular tunes with religious words. Also the variety of instrumentation that makes sacred music sound delightful to secular ears. Other than mandating Gregorian Chant for the Propers, which should never be substituted by something else, I don’t know a remedy for corrupted music used in the modern rites.
I don’t know either, what to make of inculturation, especially as it regards music and bodily movements, what some might call liturgical dance. I have no way of judging the quality of liturgical inculturation of the Masses celebrated in Africa by Pope Leo. Are there African voices that are concerned about the liturgical inculturation they experience in Africa. I would like to hear pros and cons and how this inculturation respects Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium’s clear mandate to preserve some Latin and Gregorian Chant?
At any rather this is what Pope Leo said at a Mass in Cameroon on April 16. It has implications for inculturation in the Mass but in other ways too, especially with devotions. Would Pacchamamma be included in Pope Leo’s concern?
This is what Pope Leo said in his homily at an inculturated African Mass His Holiness was celebrating:
Brothers and sisters, consolation for broken hearts and hope for change in society are possible if we entrust ourselves to God and God’s word. We must, however, always keep the Apostle Peter’s exhortation in our hearts and bring it to mind: obey God, not human beings. To obey him, because he alone is God. This calls us to foster inculturation of the Gospel. It also calls us to be vigilant, even regarding our own religious practices, so as not to fall into the trap of mixing the Catholic faith with other beliefs and traditions of an esoteric or Gnostic nature, which in reality often serve political and economic ends. Only God sets us free; only his word opens paths to freedom; only his Spirit makes us new people capable of changing this country.
Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh
The two greatest Commandments of Jesus Christ are complete love of God and love of neighbor. These two sum up the 10 Commandments. Only three are needed as it concerns loving God but 7 are needed as it concerns loving neighbor.
On blogs run by Catholics, be they clergy or laity, the love of neighbor, needing 7 Commandments, is often ignored. How many times do we see commenters and bloggers denigrating not just the positions of other commenters but then resorting to name-calling in the most sophomoric way. And what world leader is leading the way down this wide path to hell? President Donald J. Trump. He is the Trump of name-calling and denigrating those with whom he disagrees or who dare critique his policies and morals.
In the current and unprecedented brouhaha that is going on between the President of the USA and the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, Catholics properly catechized and formed in the Faith and Morals of the Catholic Church know that they must be obedient to the pope when His Holiness teaches the Faith and Morals of the Church and even when His Holiness develops those morals described in high documents such as papal bulls and encyclicals. We must be obedient to canon laws, even those purely man-made, for the sake of order and stability in the Church.
Currently in the tensions between the pope and the president, are the moral teachings of the Church that affect not just the sexuality of individual people, but the politics of people and their affiliations. These teachings become specific in the areas of social justice, the distribution of wealth, just war, abortion, the death penalty and a whole lot more. Like the Church’s sexual morals, which touch a person’s personal sex life and challenges it in may cases, so too does the Church’s social teachings touch our politics in a very personal way challenging or confirming various aspects of our political positions and how these affect people, especially the poor, the innocent, the guilty and the unborn.
There is nothing Pope Leo has said or hasn’t said that should offend any Catholic. Even what a Pope might not say on the spot, popes have said it, as well as bishops in union with the pope and who the pope has appointed.
There is no defense for the manner in which the President of the USA and our Vice President have gone after Pope Leo for making them feel uncomfortable about their politics and how their positions are affecting the innocent and guilty, especially the wars being waged that have led to the slaughter of not just combatants and terrorists but thousands of innocent civilians—collateral damage.
Where I might offer respectful suggestions to Pope Leo and I did this in another post, is that His Holiness would be wise not to engage President Trump by name or inflame an easily inflamed President whose tweets and words are dangerously offensive to nations and institutions.
If Pope Leo is to bring unity to the Church and in specific countries, His Holiness would do well not to allow the divisions already existing within the bishops of the USA to be exacerbated. Three progressive Cardinals, Cupich, McElroy and Tobin should not be encouraged to sideline the USCCB and its president in order to promote themselves. These three are polarizing figures and do little to unite Catholics in these polarized political times in the Church. In addition to their politics, they have also proven themselves to be pushing the envelope toward heterodoxy in terms of women’s ordination and the embrace of LGBTQ+++ ideologies as promoted by Jesuit Father James Martin—coming as close as he can to heterodoxy in the manner in which he offers pastoral care to those who embrace that ideology.
I link those two ideologies together, woman’s ordination and LGBTQ+++, because these are interrelated and connected and are promoted to bring about the collapse of the Church’s use of natural law and the anthropological roots of our sacramental system, quite pernicious to say the least.
That’s my 2 cents worth, or shall I say a nickel. Holy Father, don’t engage President Trump in a “tit for tat”! President Trump has no morals when it comes to treating his perceived opponents in a charitable way.
Maybe this is the best approach! Any other parishes doing something similar?
Saint Anne Church, Richmond Hill, Georgia:
It’s one thing for an adolescent to post these kinds of AI images! It’s quite another thing when the President of these United States does it and he himself is doing it, not his political lackeys!
Houston! We have a problem!
It’s interesting that those who once clamored for the return of the tiara for the pope to put political powers in their place are no longer doing so! I hope God has a sense of humor….
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Tiara [Updated: 03.04.2001]
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The Triregnum (the Papal Tiara formed by three crowns symbolizing the triple power of the Pope: father of kings, governor of the world and Vicar of Christ) from the XVIII Century, with which the bronze statue of Saint Peter is crowned every June 29th, the feast day of the Saint. |
Vice President JD Vance waves to the audience during a stop on the Turning Point USA Tour held at the Akins Ford Arena in Athens, Georgia, on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo/Katherine Davis; @kat_clicks)
On JD Vance, Theological Hubris, and the Gospel He Has Yet to Learn
There is a particular arrogance that takes root in the newly converted — the zeal of the autodidact who, having just discovered the tradition, mistakes enthusiasm for mastery. JD Vance, who received baptism into the Catholic Church in 2019 at the age of thirty-five, has now committed the singular error of instructing the Bishop of Rome to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
We should sit with the full weight of that sentence.
The Vice President of the United States — seven years a Catholic, formerly an evangelical, before that a self-described atheist — stood before a Turning Point USA audience in Georgia and publicly admonished Pope Leo XIV about theological precision. “If you’re going to opine on matters of theology,” Vance informed the successor of Peter, “you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth.”
The audacity is breathtaking. The irony is almost comic.
While Vance was dispensing theological warnings from a stage in Georgia, Pope Leo XIV was standing at the archaeological site of Hippo in Algeria — the episcopal see where St. Augustine served as bishop until his death in 430 A.D. Vance, who claims Augustine as his patron saint and frequently invokes him in speeches, was lecturing on Augustinian just war theology to a political rally audience. The pope he was lecturing — who served as Prior General of the Order of St. Augustine for more than a decade and holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas — was planting an olive tree at the very ground where Augustine lived, prayed, wrote, and died. If God governs history with a sense of irony, this moment surely pleased Him.
The occasion for Vance’s correction was Pope Leo’s statement that “God is never on the side of those who wield the sword.” Vance responded by invoking the thousand-year tradition of Just War theory as if the pope were unaware of it. But Leo did not say war is never permissible. He said God is not simply enlisted as a combatant on any nation’s side. That is not a negation of Just War doctrine. That is its foundation. The Catechism at §2309 is unambiguous about the conditions that must all be simultaneously met for a war to be just. Archbishop Broglio stated plainly on Easter Sunday that the war against Iran does not meet those criteria. Cardinals Cupich, McElroy, and Tobin, along with Archbishop Coakley, have spoken with notable unanimity. Cardinal Tobin put it plainly: Pope Leo “will continue to speak clearly against war and other offenses against human dignity and to call for authentic dialogue, because the Church’s witness is grounded in the peace of Christ, not in partisan interests.” That is episcopal fidelity. What Vance offered was its precise opposite.
The deeper problem is not merely that Vance is wrong about just war. It is the ecclesiological framework he is importing from American Christian nationalism into a tradition that explicitly rejects it. Vance told Fox News that “in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic Church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating public policy.” Let that formulation stand naked for a moment. The pope — who holds a universal pastoral office precisely because the Gospel speaks to every dimension of human life — is being instructed to confine himself to the sacristy, while the president is assigned the role of “dictating” the political world. This is not a Catholic understanding of faith and public life. Catholic Social Teaching from Rerum Novarum onward has always insisted that the Gospel is not a private spiritual comfort but a public moral claim. When Vance tells the pope to stay in his lane, he is not defending Catholic doctrine. He is betraying it.
JD Vance’s forthcoming book on his Catholic faith is titled Communion. Its cover features a United Methodist church. I do not say this merely to mock. Symbolism matters in Catholic theology, and the symbolism here is telling. A book about Catholic unity, bearing Protestant ecclesial architecture on its cover, written by a man who publicly contradicts the pope on Just War doctrine — this is not communion. This is confusion dressed in piety. Archbishop Coakley said it plainly: “The Pope is not Trump’s rival, nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.” Communion, in Catholic theology, is not a feeling of spiritual warmth. It is a participation in the Body of Christ that carries radical obligations — to the poor, the stranger, the enemy, to peace. It is a table the powerful do not preside over. They are guests at it, like everyone else.
A seven-year Catholic who tells the pope to watch his theology, while defending an administration that posted an AI image of the president as Jesus Christ and refused to apologize, is not in communion with the tradition he claims to be writing about. He is in communion with power. And that, as Augustine himself understood deeply, is a very different thing.
Jacquelyn Martin / POOL / AFP via Getty; Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP via Getty
No matter what political affiliation a person claims, if you are a post-Vatican II Catholic, heterodox left or heterodox right, chances are that a post Vatican II Catholic might raise their politics, right or left, higher than the Church and her moral teachings.
We see that with Catholics who are democrats and how they resent the Church, meaning the pope and bishops, interfering with abortion rights in this country.
And now we are seeing heterodox right Catholics telling Pope Leo to stop interfering with the war mongering policies of the current administration and to stick to morality! This is not just coloring book Catholicism, but educational ignorance which is so prevalent in both the religious and secular world today and for the past 50 years!
In addition to that, coloring book Catholics turn to the political talking points of their political affliation to make their points, not against their political party and favorite political idols, but against the pope and the Church—Catholics are doing this at the lead of non-Catholics!
Vice President JD Vance, a post-Vatican II Catholic convert and political operative makes his coloring book Catholicism very explicit by the manner in which he uses political talking points to denigrate the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church.
Fortunately, those who long for the pre-Vatican II Church know that this kind of excrement would not have been tolerated in the 1950’s The nuns would crack your knuckles and priest refuse you Holy Communion! Oh! For the good old days!
And to emphasize their coloring book Catholicism, they wanted President Biden denied Holy Communion for his abortion politics, but they themselves want Holy Communion all the while denigrating in a public way the pope for teaching Catholic morals as it concerns war and the promotion of peace!!!!!
The concluding point of Müller’s statement is the most direct: “It must be said clearly that no one has the right to criticise the Pope when he faithfully follows the mandate he received from Christ: to bear witness to the Gospel of peace.” The evangelical message, he concluded, “stands above the interests of politics, and God is our judge”. And no powerful man - not even the most powerful in the world - may “instrumentalise the name of God for his own interests”. Leo XIV, Müller recalled as he closed on a note of hope, opened his pontificate with the biblical greeting that has echoed for two thousand years: “Peace be with you!” That is where we must begin again. Not from Truth Social.
fr.L.C.
Silere non possum
Letter of the Holy Father Leo XIV to the Cardinals, 14.04.2026
The following is the Letter sent by the Holy Father Leo XIV to the cardinals:
Letter of the Holy Father
Your Eminence,
During this holy season of Easter, I wish to convey to you my heartfelt and fraternal greetings, in the hope that the peace of the risen Lord may sustain and renew our suffering world.
I likewise renew my gratitude for your participation in the Consistory last January. I greatly appreciate the work carried out in the groups, which facilitated free, concrete and spiritually fruitful exchanges, as well as the notable quality of the interventions made during the plenary. The compiled contributions constitute a resource of lasting value, which I hope will be reflected on further, and will mature through ecclesial discernment.
In my concluding remarks in January, I already referred to some elements regarding synodality that emerged from the groups. Now, I wish to focus in particular on what emerged from the groups regarding Evangelii Gaudium, especially concerning mission and the transmission of the faith.
Your contributions make it clear that this Exhortation continues to be a significant point of reference. In addition to introducing new content, it refocuses everything on the kerygma as the heart of our Christian and ecclesial identity. It was recognized as a “breath of fresh air,” capable of initiating processes of pastoral and missionary conversion — rather than producing immediate structural reforms — and thus profoundly guiding the Church’s journey.
Indeed, you emphasized how this perspective challenges the Church at every level. On a personal level, it calls every baptized person to renew their encounter with Christ, moving from a faith merely received to a faith truly lived and experienced. This journey affects the very quality of spiritual life, expressed in the primacy of prayer, in the witness that precedes words, and in the coherence between faith and life. At the community level, it calls for a shift from a pastoral approach of maintenance to one of mission. This requires communities to be living agents of the proclamation — welcoming communities that use accessible language, attentive to the quality of relationships, and capable of offering places for listening, accompaniment and healing. At the diocesan level, the responsibility of Pastors to resolutely support missionary boldness emerges clearly, ensuring that such boldness is not weighed down or stifled by organizational excesses, but is guided by a discernment that helps us to recognize what is essential.
From all this flows a profoundly unified understanding of mission, which is Christ-centered and kerygmatic. It is born of an encounter with Christ that is capable of transforming lives and spreading through attraction rather than conquest. It is an integral mission, holding in balance explicit proclamation, witness, commitment and dialogue, and yielding neither to the temptation of proselytism nor to a merely institutional mentality of preservation or expansion. Even when the Church finds herself in a minority, she is called to live with confident courage, as a small flock bringing hope to all, mindful that the aim of mission is not its own survival, but the communication of the love with which God loves the world.
Among the specific suggestions that emerged, the following deserve to be welcomed and reflected on further: the need to relaunch Evangelii Gaudium through an honest assessment of what has actually been embraced over the years and what, by contrast, remains unfamiliar or unimplemented, with particular attention to the necessary reforms of the processes of Christian initiation; the importance of valuing apostolic and pastoral visits as authentic opportunities for kerygmatic proclamation and for a growth in the quality of relationships; and the similar need to reassess the effectiveness of ecclesial communication, including at the level of the Holy See, from a more explicitly missionary perspective.
With a grateful heart, I renew my thanks for your service and contribution to the life of the Church. In regard to the forthcoming Consistory, which will take place from 26 to 27 June, more detailed information will be provided in due course to assist with the necessary preparations.
In the risen Lord, source of our hope, I send you my warmest Easter greetings.
With fraternal esteem in Christ,
From the Vatican, 12 April 2026
Here is a summary of Saint John Paul II’s peacemaking, certainly one aspect of His Holiness papacy that points to saintliness and a powerful Catholic identity:
COMMENTARY: With war again rampant, what lessons should we draw from the pro-life Pope’s unflinching opposition to the Iraq War 20 years ago?
John Paul II undertook a diplomatic campaign to persuade political leaders who supported the war to reconsider. He sent Cardinal Pio Laghi to meet with President George W. Bush to convey his opposition to the war. After the meeting, Cardinal Laghi stated of the war, “You might start it, and you don’t know how to end it.”
This proved painfully true. These diplomatic efforts affirmed the Church’s long-standing support of the United Nations. Laghi stated that we must “wait for the United Nations, whether they would give a green light in one way or the other.” Without waiting, the war would be unjust.
The most powerful moment in John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq War was his personal meeting with President Bush. The Pontiff — debilitated by Parkinson’s — publicly and on live TV told Bush that it was time to end the war as “quickly as possible with the active participation of the international community and, in particular, the United Nations organization, in order to ensure a speedy return of Iraq’s sovereignty, in conditions of security for all its people.” The president did not heed the Pope’s advice, and the war dragged on, leaving its wounds on Iraq and Syria to this very day.
I grew up in Augusta, Georgia, where Catholics are a minority and I have experienced first hand what the non-Catholic world in the south in the late 1950’s and 60’s and even today think about the pope, the Church. We were marginalized. Southern non-Catholics were not fans of the pope or his Church and often called her the Whore of Babylon.
They certainly didn’t think Catholics were going to heaven either. It was up to them through their political and religious prism to convert us to them and their way of doing things.
I am scandalized, though, when I hear Catholics more a fan of Donald Trump than of of the Pope.
What rubbish and may God have mercy on them! To think that Catholics who should know better have become know nothings!
If you don’t know about the Know Nothings and their current poltical party in the USA, here is an AI synopsis of the Know Nothing Party’s platform:
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