The bear poops in the woods and Pope Leo XIV was born in Chicago, lived in Peru a lot, and has spent a large part of his life ordained in Holy Orders, so we know he’s Catholic.
So I guess it turns out the new pope, Pope Leo XIV, is probably not a complete prejudiced asshole, and apparently some fringe right-wingers will have to object to that?
Everything is political, surely we see that now.
Robert Francis Prevost appears to have been a guy who is possibly less authoritarian and more community minded since he once said that bishops are pastors not managers. But his views are not all in line with what far righties would call “woke” actually. And that’s going by things he himself has said — he opposed sex education in schools in Peru on gender, citing the right-wing buzzword “gender ideology” claiming such education “seeks to create genders that don’t exist”, so we should be prepared for him to maybe be as clueless about biology as maga Rep Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee who denied the existence of intersex people outright.
This is a guy who spoke positively about working with the first women appointed to the Dicastery of Bishops, but even in describing that he sort of makes women sound like otherly creatures that he has to justify their contribution, rather than just ordinary equal participants. I guess that might be a choice or perhaps that’s more indicative of his age and a lifetime in priestly lifestyle, and considering having studied at Villanova, he’s from the Order of Saint Augustine, historically known as the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine. But he’s also come out against women being deacons, and that, some say, makes him conservative in the Church. His record on the priest scandals isn’t great, but it’d be hard to pin much on him personally in that vast shitshow.
But he was the prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops, which is the organization which reviews priests for promotion to bishop, and then the prefect meets with the pope to give him the roster of candidates so the pope can make decisions on promotions and post assignments. So I imagine this would be the same group of people who would review bishops for insubordination — called “schism” by Catholics with regard to members, so Cardinal Robert Prevost now known as Pope Leo XIV, probably was involved somehow in the investigations around that maga qanon anti-vax bishop that was defrocked and excommunicated — the Catholic terms for being fired from his post and ousted from the organization. So if you’re wondering why Laura Loomer (who is not a Roman Catholic) is digging up old tweets from 2015 and calling him a “woke marxist pope”, it’s because the sedevacantist far right is often hostile toward typical Catholic values such as caring for the poor or refugees, and has little regard for people from and in the global south. On top of that, adherents to this far right stuff actually don’t think any pope has been valid since at least Vatican II, and many are super into this Opus Dei cult thing or rad trad caths, and they’re jealous of whatever power they don’t have.
I find it rather amusing that MAGA at large even cares about any of this, since their Republican leader, the current American president, is the first US President to not have a hometown church, doesn’t much attend church, and he apparently says he considers himself a non-denominational Christian. Joe Biden was the Catholic from Scranton who attends church religiously and MAGA hates that guy. It’s funny that who’s the pope would even matter to any of these Trumpfluencers.
Of course nobody should be looking for saviours from the Roman Catholic Church either way. I daresay even Catholics, and Christians generally, would tell you that if you’re looking for a saviour that’d be Jesus Christ that you’re looking for. Robert Prevost, the Pope himself, said in 2023 that he saw it as his first duty to “communicate the beauty and joy of knowing Jesus.”
But I guess one can hope that this pope has some integrity and doesn’t run to the right in order to prove he’s not “woke” or something foolish like that. After all, he’s the pontiff, an ordained Catholic. and now The Holy See, not a Democratic Party politician.