Pope Leo is not MAGA (and he shouldn't be)
American Catholics seem to think Pope Leo is snubbing us.
He refused to join President Trump’s Board of Peace and will not be attending America’s 250th anniversary celebration.
But Pope Leo isn’t snubbing America; he is actively refusing to let the Papacy become a political tool.
If we want to understand Pope Leo, American Catholics—Left, Right, and even Center—have to radically adjust our expectations.
Pope Leo’s Decisions
After Pope Leo’s election to the Papacy, Vice President J.D. Vance visited the new Pontiff and invited him to the America 250 celebration in Washington, DC.
The Pope declined.
Following the ceasefire in Gaza, President Donald Trump established the Board of Peace, an international body focused on rebuilding war-torn Gaza. Given Trump’s leadership and his remarks that it might “replace the United Nations,” many nations are disinclined to join.
The Holy See explicitly said no.
Naturally, American Catholics are doing what we do best: making this entirely about ourselves.
The Right sees them as Pope Leo condemning the American Right. If he refused to attend the celebration, he must be anti-American. By refusing to join the Board of Peace, he must be anti-Trump. The American Left sees it the same way; they’re just happy about it. They see the actions as Pope Leo tacitly approving their position by condemning the American Right.
But really, neither of these actions affirms the Left nor condemns the Right.
A persistent problem in the American Church is that we have always expected the Pope to act like an American political figure—or a political figure in general. Now that he is actually an American, we expect it even more.
But Pope Leo is behaving as he ought to as a Pope dealing with an Empire.
The Church vs. The Empire
Pope Leo is trying to avoid the trap that other popes have fallen into when dealing with the empire.
America is an Empire, there’s no getting around it. The UN and now the Board of Peace are ways for us to exert our influence globally, for better or for worse. If the Vatican joined the Board of Peace, it would essentially be accepting a role as a bureaucratic NGO on the world stage. He would just be another piece of the machine. This fundamentally misunderstands what the Church is supposed to be.
The Holy See currently holds a permanent observer seat at the UN, able to offer moral correction but unable to vote as one nation among many.
To a lesser but still important extent, attending the American 250 would signal the same thing: participation in the Empire rather than moral authority over it.
The Church does not sit at the table as one nation among many. She stands above them.
When Popes try to act as members or as arms of an Empire, they make a critical mistake.
Popes in history have made this mistake before, and the Church paid dearly.
