In a quiet corner of Italy, a soft-spoken man from Illinois has offered a lesson that seems both ancient and urgently new, speaking words that landed in the tumultuous American political landscape with the force of a quiet challenge.
Pope Leo XIV, the first pontiff born in the United States of America, has directly questioned the very meaning of the term “pro-life” as used by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, suggesting that a creed which embraces the “inhuman treatment” of migrants, celebrates the power to wage war, and advocates state-sanctioned death is a creed that has lost its way.
The pope’s comments, delivered in an unscripted exchange with reporters outside his residence at Castel Gandolfo, followed the spectacle of a partisan meeting of senior U.S. military leaders.
The top brass of the United States military assembled at Quantico to hear a political broadside dressed in uniform. In an extraordinary breach of tradition, Trump and Hegseth turned the meeting into a partisan rage, airing grievances and targeting predecessors while the generals and admirals listened in stony silence.
The President’s remarks meandered for over an hour, punctuated by a threat masquerading as a joke: anyone who didn’t like what they heard was free to leave, but “there goes your rank, there goes your future.”
It was a stark message to a military that has already seen numerous commanders—disproportionately women and those championing diversity—purged under the vague accusation of promoting a “woke” ideology.
The event laid bare a simple, uncomfortable truth: the non-political creed of the American military is being replaced by a loyalty test, as more sacred norms are being broken.
The pope expressed a profound unease with the escalating rhetoric, particularly the macho shift in language from ‘secretary of defense’ to ‘secretary of war.’
“This way of speaking is concerning, because it shows, every time, an increase of tension,” Leo said in Italian, his tone that of a weary but watchful uncle. “Let’s hope it’s just a figure of speech.”
Before his election as Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.
The first Augustinian Pope, Leo XIV is the second Roman Pontiff – after Pope Francis – from the Americas. Unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was known as Pope Francis, the 69-year-old Prevost is from the northern part of the continent, born on September 14, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois.
He acknowledged the political theater of demonstrating strength but added a simple, firm coda that seemed to echo across the ocean: “One always needs to work toward peace.”
The heart of his critique, however, was reserved for a more fundamental contradiction. Switching to English with the precision of a surgeon, the former missionary from Peru dissected a political identity that has long been taken for granted.
“Someone who says, ‘I am against abortion,’ but says, ‘I am in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life,” he stated, his words leaving little room for misinterpretation.
He extended the logic to the treatment of those seeking refuge at the nation’s borders, drawing a direct line from principle to practice.
“Someone who says that, ‘I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
This foray into the fray was notable for a pontiff who has largely kept his distance from the media and positioned himself as a listener seeking to lower the temperature of political debate.
His biography, published just last month, reveals a leader consciously trying to avoid further polarizing his own flock. Yet, on this matter of human dignity, he seemed compelled to speak, demonstrating a sharper familiarity with the political divisions violently tearing apart American Catholics than his predecessor.
While offering a pragmatic nod to the Trump administration’s peace plan for Gaza, which he called “realistic,” his broader message was one of moral consistency.
The timing of his remarks coincided with a separate, telling controversy within the American church, as Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago announced that Senator Dick Durbin turned down a lifetime achievement award for his work on immigration following backlash from bishops critical of the senator’s support for abortion rights.
The pope, while claiming no specific knowledge of the case, used the moment to preach a larger gospel of complexity, urging a view of a public servant’s entire record and a collective search for the way forward.
In doing so, Pope Leo XIV has not so much thrown a gauntlet as held up a mirror, asking his fellow countrymen and his global congregation to examine what they see.
He has reframed a decades-old political slogan into a profound theological question, suggesting that the protection of life is not a single battle to be won but a seamless garment to be woven, from the womb to the border to the death chamber.
It is a vision that finds no comfortable home in any partisan camp, a reminder from the first American pope that the path to peace and the defense of human dignity is, and has always been, a narrow and demanding road.
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