Pope Leo, the man for the moment, was chosen to inspire fellow Americans to stand up to unprecedented evil.
The new pope may be woke on immigration, but what’s really driving MAGA crazy right now is that Trump’s suddenly become the world’s second most powerful American. And Leo is America's John Paul II.
Why him? Why now? The facts are clear:
There was never an American pope, until now.
The man chosen has used social media to call out President Trump and Vice President Vance.
We are living at a time where the weak and powerless are the most threatened, and where American democracy and moral leadership are teetering on disaster.
And one by one, American institutions are capitulating and crumbling - including Congress, law, finance, the judiciary, the media and - not to be overlooked - religion.
Pope Leo is a man of the people, and his constituency of 1.4 billion loyalists worldwide absolutely dwarfs Donald Trump’s shrinking share of American loyalists.
In one fell swoop, Pope Leo has become the most powerful and influential American on this planet, and Donald Trump has slid suddenly to second place.
Trump will cede endless news cycles to this articulate, English-speaking, media-savvy Chicagoan. Whenever Leo speaks, the pulpit will be all his.
Just as Pope John Paul II was selected as the first Polish pope at that chosen time - and he subsequently inspired his birth nation to stand up to the Soviet machine that had subjugated them, that’s precisely why the cardinals chose Pope Leo yesterday - to inspire his home country, America, to resist evil.
People have been saying that he is another Francis. Maybe in some ways he is, but that’s not why he was chosen.
Pope Leo is America’s John Paul II.
"I have no doubt," Lech Wałęsa once said, that without John Paul II "the birth of Solidarity would not have been possible."
That pope visited Gdansk, the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, several times, most notably in 1979, a visit that Vaclav Havel, the playwright and former President of Czechoslovakia called, “a miracle." As pope, he visited Poland eight times. At a time when protest was suppressed, he stood up to the Russian machine with defiant messages emphasizing social justice. The Russians couldn’t touch him. He openly defied martial law. Over a million people attended a mass set on the remains of the old airstrip in the center of the Zapsa district.
Speaking at Gdynia, near Gdansk, in 1987, Pope John Paul II said:
In the name of the future of mankind and humanity, the word ‘solidarity’ must be pronounced. Today it echoes like the waves that extend across the world. In view of this, we realize that we cannot live according to the principle ‘all against all’, but only according to the other principle ‘everybody with everybody, all for all’.
Returning to Gdansk after the liberation, for an Apostolic Journey to Poland in 1999, John Paul gave a homily, stating:
Dear brothers and sisters, do not let yourselves be “frightened in anything by your opponents”, as Paul tells us in the First Reading. Do not let yourselves be intimidated by those who point to sin as the way to happiness.
And before the throngs at the Vatican yesterday, the Pope Leo said, “Without fear, united, hand in hand with God and among ourselves, we will go forward.”
He spoke of peace and justice, building bridges and dialogue, but make no mistake - he also said, as clear as a foghorn in a Polish Baltic port decades before:
“Evil will not prevail.”
“Evil will not prevail.”
Sorry, Don, but the newly minted most powerful American in the world has donned his cape. And make no mistake, Papa will be watching - and visiting often. It’s time to look over your shoulder, because while you are entertaining your media sycophants in the Rose Garden with some banter about rebuilding Alcatraz, Pope Leo will be talking to a million folks in Grant Park.
He was chosen for this moment and the choice was intentional. Not only to counterbalance the growth of fascism, but to inspire others to stand up to it.
He was chosen for this moment and the choice was intentional.
John Paul II arguably was the single most important catalyst in bringing down the Iron Curtain. But there were others who showed great courage, including the Soviet dissidents and the movement to free Soviet Jewry, which was championed by courageous leaders in Russia and overseas, including Congressional leaders like Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who tied most favored nation trade status to human rights, especially for Soviet Jews.
As a great hero of that movement, Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky, said of Jackson:
The contribution of Senator Jackson was in the fact that he was the first who made the direct linkage between freedom of emigration and very important economic interest[s] of the Soviet Union. And he did so against all the political thought in the United States of America and in the free world. Many of those people were saying, “It is our interest to have more trade with the Soviet Union, and when there is more trade there is less war.” And we, Soviet Jews, knew that our only hope to be released was that the interests of the Soviet Union, economic and otherwise, would be so closely linked to our fate that the Soviet Union would have no choice. Senator Jackson was the first to understand the power of this linkage.
Keep in mind that Jackson was a non-Jewish senator from Washington State, where the Jewish population, at about 1 percent, is hardly a significant voting bloc. For Jackson, influenced by lessons of the Holocaust, it was about standing up for the victim, even when there was economic risk When it came to standing up to Russian domination, Jackson had more courage in his pinky than Lindsey Graham has in his entire body.
Graham tweeted this last week, after Trump’s abomination of a “Hey, look at me looking like a pope,” meme:
Well, the conclave responded and the response was “Checkmate!”
JD’s Messed-Up Golden Rule
Pope Leo was chosen because he had the courage to call out the Vice President for suggesting that the Golden Rule has a pecking order that puts foreigners way at the bottom.
As Yahoo reported:
In February, Leo, born Robert Prevost in Chicago, posted two news articles to his X profile. One, titled, "JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others," refuted Vance's proclamation about Christian priorities on Fox News. The other delved deeper into the late Pope Francis' criticism of Vance using the Catholic concept of "ordo amoris" to justify the Trump administration's immigration policies.
Two things.
Remember, this tweet took place only days after Trump was gently called out by Bishop Maryann Edgar Budde at Washington Cathedral, and Bishop Budde faced immediate and massive excoriation from MAGA world, including Trump himself.1
Trump won the Catholic vote last November by 15 points, 56-41 percent.
That didn’t matter to Robert Prevost, and this week, it didn’t matter to a supermajority of the Conclave. In fact, what mattered is that he spoke out in spite of the risks.
That’s why he’s the pope.
A word about JD’s claims, from a Jewish perspective. If any love should be prioritized, it’s the love of strangers, which is mentioned more than any other commandment in the Torah, even the commandment to love God. The Hebrew Bible states that we should love the stranger no less than 36 times - some say 46 - and that’s before Christians brought Jesus into the picture and before Jews amplified the message in rabbinic literature.
But in truth there should be no pecking order for love. The Talmud makes it clear that all human beings are equal and that every life is of infinite value. No one’s blood is redder than anyone else’s.
On this Mother’s Day weekend, we should note that there are special obligations one has in fulfilling the commandment to honor one’s parents, and to a degree, charity does begin in the home. The Talmud and subsequent legal codes do establish priorities in allocating finite resources.
Resources are finite, but love is infinite. That’s the distinction Vance fails to make.
To quote from the article that Pope Leo endorsed in his tweet:
…The problem with this hierarchy (of love) is that it feeds the myth that some people are more deserving of our care than others. It's a framework that makes sense in a world governed by scarcity and fear, where protection comes at the expense of others. But Jesus never speaks of love as something to be rationed. He speaks of love as abundance — a table where there is enough for everyone.
Jewish sources of that same time period are in complete agreement - minus the Jesus part. Love is abundant, expansive and infinite. Tzedakkah, on the other hand, requires real-world prioritization and hard decisions. But even there, the poor and the stranger come first - not the rich person. Not the guy with the bitcoin or billion dollar deals in Qatar. And, whether local or foreign, the poor come before the rich, the stranger before the powerful. Either way, JD Vance is still wrong.
And either way, he’s still a jerk.
Time to step up
The choosing of Leo was a clarion call for American Catholics to step up in the face of cruelty and corruption. Not only clergy, but especially clergy.
And not just Catholics, but people of all faiths - and atheists too.
Just as the Soviet Jewry movement partnered with Pope John Paul to upend the Soviet machine, so must leaders of all bents show some courage now. I was heartened to see that a group of recent Jewish leaders banded together to publish an ad in the New York Times calling out current organization heads for their timidity in the face of the Trump administration’s “stunning assault on democratic norms.” (See the whole ad and list of signatories below2)
“With few exceptions, major Jewish organizations have been far too silent about the stunning assault on democratic norms and the rule of law,” the letter read, as quoted in JTA. “While modest declarations of ‘respecting the rule of law’ and similar phrases have been included in multiple organizational statements, we believe the present moment requires far more.”
Now all the fence-sitters have an American pope to show them the way. Not only does Pope Leo prove that one can stand up to bullies and make the world a better place, he is also proof that a leader can show a little courage - and still advance professionally. In fact, it’s because of that courage that he did advance.
And it’s because of his courage that Scoop Jackson is still revered by Americans. And it’s because of his lack of courage that Lindsey Graham’s name will be spat upon by the history books, once the truth is no longer banned by this nation’s libraries - and if Ukraine still exists, no thanks to him.
Yesterday was a great day for American Catholics. And it was a great day for everyone who believes in the primacy of justice, kindness and love.
Papa can you hear me? 3
Yes. Papa is listening. Papa is on the case.
Rev. Budde’s sermon:
The ad and signatories:
Couldn’t resist:
Is it possible that some day Trump’s abomination of a meme, hitting the heights of narcissism by portraying himself as the pope, might have been the “October Surprise” that swung the Conclave in favor an American, someone who might help to “drain the swamp?” Not even James Comey had such bad timing for such a colossal blunder. The AI generated photo was beyond blasphemous. And the cardinals were all hanging together in Rome, still in grieving mode when it came out. Ya think it didn’t come up in a few conversations? Nothing else explains how they were able to settle on an American so quickly. There’s a Yiddish saying, “Man plans and God laughs.” Well, in this case, one man planned something beyond distasteful and dumb, and God was not laughing. And from this moment on, when Trump looks into his magic mirror each morning and asks who is the most powerful American of all, a guy from Chicago will stare back.
108 of 133 Cardinals appointed by Pope Francis. Did he pack the conclave? I have been praying that he would work some divine intervention to right the hate that has been allowed to surface in this country.