he Chicagoan Robert Prevost ascended the Throne of Saint Peter last year to great relief from a flock wandering in a long search for its lost shepherd. His predecessor, Francis nee Jorge Bergoglio, ruled for twelve years as a grumpy and political pope who slapped down a touchy fan, hosted a pagan ritual at the Vatican, tolerated sins that cried out for vengeance, let loose a broadside against traditional church liturgies, slow-rolled the prosecution of demonic priests, promoted heretics, bent a knee to climate activism, and shrugged off Vatican-approved apparitions that forewarned a coming crisis within the church. He thundered as any South-of-the-Border Marxist would about the evils of capitalism, putting a bullseye squarely on the prosperity of American Catholics and their God-awful adherence to time-honored doctrines and magisterial practices.
For two consecutive papacies, anti-American finger-pointing has been driven by a Vatican drift back to a 60’s-style Latin American liberation theology. Hand in glove with the economic globalists, unchecked migration has established a new for-profit morality within the church, overshadowing the salvation of souls as the Vatican’s nouveau cause célèbre.
While the Biden White House precipitated a human trafficking crisis on the Southern border, American bishops happily wet their beaks at the federal trough, getting billions from U.S. taxpayers to mind the welfare of hundreds of thousands of children that would nonetheless fall off the grid. In 2025, President Donald Trump shut down this cash cow and turned the deep pockets of Bergoglio’s U.S. nonprofits and charities inside out, putting the Vatican and Trump administration at each other’s throats.
Unfortunately for the White House and Catholicism as a whole, Prevost as Leo XIV has turned out to be Francis 2.0, a mellowed version cloaked in orthodox vesture and sporting an even temperament and outward piety. His historically quick election by the Roman Curia after just four rounds of ballot-burning hints at collusion to continue Bergoglio’s radical synodal vision of the church with a low-profile Vatican insider. Within months of his coming-out party on the balcony of the Basilica, it became apparent that Prevost was comfortable with celebrity in a secular world. His acerbic commentary and lobbying for left-wing causes, coupled with a Bergoglian distaste for all things Trump, has opened opportunities for America’s foreign adversaries to hide behind his words and actions.
Vatican nitpicking and saber-rattling with Trump began on the occasion of his first meeting with Bergoglio in May 2017. Four years later, Joe Biden, who flaunted Catholicism for political advantage, brokered an alliance with the Vatican on social issues, migration, and the environment. Trump hysterics returned in force in 2025 and continued until Bergoglio shed his mortal coil just four months into the administration.