What Pope Leo XIV thinks about present politics

“He is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis,” influencer and Trump advisor Laura Loomer declared (howled, really) on the election of Pope Leo XIV.

-  David Mills, Tribune News Service

"Catholics don't have anything good to look forward to. Just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.” It’s a ridiculous statement, but whether Loomer’s is the stupidity of ignorance, bigotry, avarice or ambition, or all of them, I do not know, though I'd bet on “all of the above.” But she’s only an extreme case of a mistake even sane people will make, that of assuming that the pope’s politics will fit American categories and judging him by whether he agrees with their side. They won't fit well and he won't always agree. Leo will often disappoint and sometimes anger people on right and left. The right more than the left, I'm guessing, but maybe not. Leo XIV will disappoint everyone because — this seems to surprise many people — he's the pope. He proceeds from a tradition different from the one that evolved into American politics. Catholic thinking runs aslant to American categories and assumptions. (And no, JD Vance is not a reliable guide to it.) The new pope took the name “Leo” after Pope Leo XIII, pope from 1878 to 1903, usually described as the founder of modern Catholic thought on social matters. “In our own day,” the new Leo said, explaining his choice, “the church offers everyone the treasury of its social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field