On April 9, Pope Leo XIV met with David Axelrod, one of the most seasoned operators in the Democratic Party and the architect of Barack Obama‘s rise to power; four days later, Leo delivered the first in a series of pointed public critiques of President Donald Trump and his Republican administration.
Hal Lambert, the founder of Point Bridge Capital and one of the more clear-eyed observers of the intersection between American politics and institutional power, saw coordination where others saw coincidence.
‘This is 100 percent political, ok? This is all about trying to hurt President Trump’s Catholic vote during the midterms and Republicans in the midterms,’ Lambert said Monday on CNN.
A Pope who breaks bread with partisan operatives and emerges days later to attack a sitting president has ceased, in my mind, to function as a shepherd of souls. He has become, instead, a political actor—and a graceless one at that. And this fits a recent pattern for the Vatican.
When Hamas butchered 1,200 Israelis on October 7th, the condemnation of Israel came readily from Pope Francis, while the slaughter and kidnappings passed without an explicit condemnation of Hamas.
Pope Leo has been conspicuously silent about the systematic persecution of Christians at the hands of Muslims in majority-Muslim countries. This includes the burning of churches and the slaughter of Christian communities across northern Nigeria—along with forced conversions in Pakistan and disappearances in Egypt.
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