Pope Leo XIV called out Vice President J.D. Vance in a social media post just weeks ago bluntly calling him “wrong”—and bashed Donald Trump in a retweet less than a month ago.
Posting on his X profile as Cardinal Robert Prevost, he criticized Vance for an interview he gave about Christianity on Fox News.
“JD Vance is wrong,” he said. “Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
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The new pope, 69, posted the rebuke on X, together with a link to an article from the National Catholic Reporter reporting on the fallout from Vance’s remarks.
Vance had claimed that a teaching known as “ordo amoris” justified MAGA’s crackdowns on immigrants. “[Y]ou love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” Vance said in late January.
But Pope Francis spoke out strongly against him, giving the Catholic convert a lesson on theology in a public letter—and his successor, Pope Leo XIV tweeted his approval.
Vance appeared to put that aside Thursday to tweet his own message of congratulations.
The tweet from the new head of the Catholic church is one of a series which will be heavily scrutinized for clues about the first American pope’s political views. He is the first pope ever to have a social media history; although Pope Francis had an official account, it was not one he personally controlled or used. Much of the X account used by the former Cardinal Prevost is strictly related to church practices, news and events.
But he also tweeted about the death of George Floyd in May 2020, saying, “We need to hear more from leaders in the Church, to reject racism and seek justice,” and in 2017 retweeted the anti-death penalty nun Sister Helen Prejean who said, “I stand with the #Dreamers and all people who are working toward an immigration system that is fair, just, and moral. #DefendDACA #DACA.”
The Pope’s most recent retweet was even more directly anti-Trump.
He retweeted a link to an article by the auxiliary bishop of Washington D.C., Bishop Evelio Menjivar, which compared Trump’s immigration crackdown to the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero by El Salvador’s right-wing regime in 1980 and called the actions of the U.S. government “injustice and infamies.”
The tweet, by noted Catholic commentator Rocco Palmo, accused Trump and El Salvador’s current leader, Nayib Bukele, of laughing at the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongly deported Maryland father put on a flight to Bukele’s megaprison and now at the center of a constitutional stand-off between Trump and the courts.
The new pope was even more direct in his attacks on Vance, following up the February 3 post with another message ten days later which again took issue with Vance’s “ordo amoris.” The concept comes from the teaching of St. Augustine, the founder of the order of which the new pope is a member.
He attached an article in America, The Jesuit Review, with the caption: “Pope Francis’ letter, JD Vance’s ‘ordo amoris’ and what the Gospel asks of all of us on immigration.”
The magazine story again discusses the missive from Pope Francis to U.S. bishops criticizing Trump’s mass deportation efforts and directly addressing Vance’s interpretation of “ordo amoris”.
The pope’s opposition to Trump’s policies on immigration goes back a decade. He quoted Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, from a Washington Post article in 2015, posting on his X account at the time: “Cardinal Dolan: Why Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is so problematic.”
In the op-ed article, Dolan didn’t mention Trump by name, but wrote: “I am not in the business of telling people what candidates they should support or who deserves their vote.
“But as a Catholic, I take seriously the Bible’s teaching that we are to welcome the stranger, one of the most frequently mentioned moral imperatives in both the Old and New Testament.” The Washington Post tweet, however, did name Trump—and the then-archbishop Prevost tweeted it.
MAGA supporters were quick to show their disdain for the new Pope, with right-wing activist Laura Loomer commenting on several of his posts on X.
Loomer posted: “Meet the new American Pope. Of course he’s anti-MAGA and WOKE. Another Open Borders Pope. Gross.”
