Here’s What the New Pope Really Thinks (Beside Hating Trump)

When white smoke began pouring from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney Thursday, after as few as four ballots, many assumed that meant the sitting Catholic cardinals had selected the consensus front-runner Pietro Parolin, who had served as Pope Francis’s secretary of state since 2013, as the new pope. If there’s one thing you have to hand to the assembled leaders of the Catholic Church, it’s this: They do know how to surprise you. 

When the curtains of a balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica were drawn an hour later, Parolin did emerge—to announce that Robert Francis Prevost had been elected pope. Few had thought that the Chicago-born Prevost—now known as Pope Leo XIV—was a contender. But there he was: the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church. 

Prevost, like Parolin, was a close ally of Francis. Ordained in 1982, he has spent much of his time in Peru and was appointed by Francis as bishop of Chiclayo in 2014. In 2023, he was appointed to the influential position of prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. As with Parolin, Prevost is seen as a continuity pick, given his close ties to his predecessor. 

In his opening speech, the newly anointed Pope Leo XIV paid tribute to Francis, who had last been seen speaking on the same balcony shortly before Easter. “Let us keep in our ears the weak voice of Pope Francis that blesses Rome,” Leo XIV said. 

“The pope who blessed Rome, gave his blessing to the entire world that morning of Easter. Allow me to follow up on that blessing. God loves us. God loves everyone. Evil will not prevail,” he said in Italian as he addressed a massive, multinational crowd of more than 100,000 people. 

Prevost is seen as being to Francis’s right on LGBTQ issues. In 2013, shortly after assuming the papacy, Francis expressed openness toward gay parishioners, saying, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Prevost, meanwhile, has been critical of what he has called the “homosexual lifestyle” and culture, which encourages “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.” 

Like Francis, he is deeply critical of “gender ideology,” which he has said “seeks to create genders that do not exist.” Prevost’s record on what is arguably the single biggest issue in the church—rampant sexual abuse by clergy—is troubling. He not only provided housing to a priest who had been accused of abuse but provided him a residence that was near a Catholic school.  

He is, nevertheless, considerably more moderate on social issues than many other contenders. Like Francis, he is outspoken about the danger posed by climate change and the need to provide ministry, support, and sympathy to migrants and the poor. Last year, in an interview with the Vatican’s news outlet, he distilled his vision of the church, which is one in which leaders are constantly in communion with the poor. 

“The bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom,” he said, but is “called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them, to suffer with them.” 

Much has been made of Prevost’s X account, which was recently confirmed to belong to the new pontiff by journalist Rocco Palmo. That account is mostly fairly standard Catholic stuff—pictures of church gatherings and community events. But it is outspoken on one subject: That JD Vance, the Catholic convert who is currently vice president, has views on migration that deviate substantially from the Gospels. Prevost has posted and reposted several posts and articles attacking Vance’s treatment of migrants. Pope Leo XIV will continue his predecessor’s work in one other notable way as well: By hating JD Vance. 

It’s clear that Pope Leo XIV cares deeply about the plight of migrants, like Francis before him. Whether he has strong feelings about deep-dish pizza or the Chicago Bears quarterback situation is another matter altogether. 

The first American-born pope is not a fan of the Trump administration.

Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who is now Pope Leo XIV, has multiple posts on his X account that criticize or outright rebuke the words and policies of President Trump.

In February, he shared an article from the National Catholic Reporter titled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” in response to Vance’s bastardization of the concept of ordo amaris, a narrow interpretation of love that Pope Francis himself admonished.

In April, he reposted Catholic writer Rocco Palmo, who wrote, “As Trump & Bukele use Oval to [aid] Feds’ illicit deportation of a US resident, once an undoc-ed Salvadorean himself, now-[Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar of Washington, D.C.] asks, “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?”

Pope Leo was also critical of Trump’s family separation policy. In 2018, he retweeted a scathing post from Cardinal Cupich: “There is nothing remotely Christian, American, or morally defensible about a policy that takes children away from their parents and warehouses them in cages. This is being carried out in our name and the shame is on us all.”

The new pope also has multiple reposts showing sympathy and support for George Floyd, the Black man whose police murder was a catalyst for racial justice movements in 2020. He reposted words in opposition to Trump’s refugee ban and Muslim ban, as well as articles on “rivers of blood” flowing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Russian attack on a Catholic missionary headquarters in Mariupol.

The pope is expected to strike a Francis-like chord on issues of immigration and poverty, two things the current administration is directly opposed to.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that it was “a good thing, not a bad thing” that he’d crippled the international economy, putting workers’ livelihoods in jeopardy.

During a press briefing in the Oval Office, Trump downplayed concerns over job security sparked by a significant drop in cargo volumes as a result of his sweeping tariff policy and ongoing trade negotiations with China.

One reporter said that traffic at U.S. ports “has really slowed, and now thousands of dockworkers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs,” before being interrupted by the president.

“That means we lose less money, you know? When I see that, that means we lose less money,” Trump replied. He claimed that China had been making “over a trillion, 1.1 trillion, in my opinion.”

“And frankly if we didn’t do business, we would have been better off,” Trump continued. “So, when you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

Trumpian algebra dictates that shrinking trade with China may curtail the country’s trade deficit, but he doesn’t even know what a trade deficit is, let alone how big it is.

Unlike Trump’s enormous estimate, America’s trade deficit with China was just $295.4 billion in 2024. The president has previously claimed that the U.S. is losing $2 trillion a year on trade, but the country’s trade deficit with the rest of the world was $917.8 billion in 2024.

All of this comes back to Trump’s fundamental misunderstanding of economics. A deficit isn’t money lost but an indication that the U.S. has imported more goods and services than it exports. Economists say that having a trade deficit is not an inherently bad thing at all, because the U.S. simply can’t and shouldn’t make everything.

Trump’s continued insistence we’ve been taken for a ride betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of economics, built off a dislike of other countries. Crucially, when he says that the U.S. would be “better off” if they hadn’t done business with China, what he actually means is that China would be worse off, which to him is the same thing.

But what gets lost in Trump’s phony economic model? Actual workers, whose jobs at U.S. ports undoubtedly will be affected by a sudden reduction in trade.

In Seattle, port commissioner Ryan Calkins told CNN Wednesday night that there were “no container ships at berth.”

“That happens every once in a while at normal times, but it’s pretty rare,” Calkin said. “And so to see it tonight is I think a stark reminder that the impacts of the tariffs have real implications.”

Ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, have already seen a 44 percent drop in docked vessels from the same time last year, according to NBC4 News.

Trump also has no concern for consumers, who soon will begin to see shortages on goods from other countries, and an inevitable price increase on the scant products that remain. The president has suggested that concerns over shortages are as trivial as having fewer dolls and pencils.

FBI Director Kash Patel seems to be interpreting the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution how he sees fit, contradicting legal precedent. 

At a Senate hearing Thursday, Patel was asked by Senator Jeff Merkley if people deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 had the constitutional right to due process, which the Trump administration claims is not the case. 

“Are you gonna launch an investigation of the reported violation of the due process of several hundred individuals?” Merkley asked Patel. The FBI director’s answer was not comforting, as he began by saying, “It’s not for me to call the balls and strikes on it.”  

“Your position is that every one of those individuals is by constitutional right afforded due process. I don’t know the answer to that,” Patel replied, before questioning whether immigrants sent to El Salvador were afforded due process. 

“You haven’t read the Constitution? It says ‘all persons,’” Merkley said, adding that “it concerns me you’re not familiar with the core concept of due process applying to all persons.”  

Patel was evasive on whether he would enforce the law against other agencies found to be violating the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, claiming that no government agencies were doing so and the Supreme Court had not ruled to that effect. 

Patel’s stance shows that the Trump administration is interpreting the law, and even federal court rulings that are supposed to be binding, to serve its own mass deportation agenda. Already, the administration continues to defy a Supreme Court ruling urging the return of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported in March. 

As a Trump appointee with very little law enforcement experience, it’s not surprising that Patel is pushing legal limits, and probably crossing them, to defend Trump expelling as many people from the United States as possible. It’s funny that Patel sees this as his job as head of the FBI, even as he isn’t living up to many of his other responsibilities.

Chief Justice John Roberts offered a gentle rebuke of Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on the judiciary. 

During a fireside chat Wednesday night marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York in Buffalo, Roberts emphasized the importance of judicial independence. 

“In our Constitution, judges and the judiciary is a coequal branch of government separate from the others with the authority to interpret the constitution as law, and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president,” Roberts said. “And that innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent.

“Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive, and that does require a degree of independence,” he said.

The chief justice’s impartial recounting of the nation’s founding document flies in the face of the Trump administration’s efforts to sidestep the checks and balances provided by the judiciary. 

Roberts also doubled down on his rare public criticism of Trump, after the president called to impeach a federal judge who ruled against his illegal deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. 

“Well, I’ve already spoken to that, and impeachment is not how you register disagreement with decisions,” Roberts said. 

But Roberts’s mild criticism may not be enough, as the administration has escalated into making direct threats. When announcing his inane plan to reopen Alcatraz Sunday, Trump listed “judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals” alongside the “criminals” and “thugs” he hoped to imprison there. 

Josh Gerstein, a senior legal affairs reporter at Politico, suggested that there may be a method to Roberts’s missing madness. 

“Subdued Roberts seemed to be keeping his powder dry since many of the big fights, like law firms, deportations, contempt, are making their way to the court or already there,” Gerstein wrote on X Thursday.  “A reasonable strategy, but that’s not some rousing defense of the judiciary or separation of powers.”

Gerstein noted that Roberts’s “‘judicial independence’ stuff” was “thinner” than his 2024 Year End report on the federal judiciary, which had compared political bias to doxxing and disinformation as some of the “illegitimate activity” that threatens independent judges. At the time, his comments seemed to echo Trump’s complaints about critics who went after judges that ruled in his favor. Now the Trump administration has taken to attacking so-called “activist” judges who rule against him. 

Roberts’s refute is comparatively limp when held beside Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s recent indictment of the right-wing campaign of threats being used to intimidate judges.

“The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law,” Jackson said last week.