The new pope may be American, but he's no fan of U.S. President Donald Trump or Vice President JD Vance.
Cardinal Robert Prevost has been elected as the first U.S.-born pope in history, choosing the name Pope Leo XIV. But the 69-year-old head of the Roman Catholic Church has recently used his X account to criticize Vance and Trump
"JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others," the newly now-pope tweeted Feb. 3, linking to a National Catholic Reportercolumn by writer Kat Armas with the same title as his post.
The column was critical of Vance's comments in a Jan. 29 interview on Fox News that parsed Christ's commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself," which the vice president argued should extend only after loving your family first.
"The problem with this hierarchy is that it feeds the myth that some people are more deserving of our care than others," Armas wrote in that piece. "It's a framework that makes sense in a world governed by scarcity and fear, where protection comes at the expense of others. But Jesus never speaks of love as something to be rationed. He speaks of love as abundance — a table where there is enough for everyone."
Prevost then posted on Feb. 13 a link to an article in the Jesuit publication America Magazine titled, "Pope Francis’ letter, JD Vance’s ‘ordo amoris’ and what the Gospel asks of all of us on immigration," which examined a letter written by the new pope's predecessor in response to the Trump administration's mass deportation policy and Vance's use of Catholic theology to justify the program.
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"It may be the case that some Catholics, or maybe even most Catholics, judge according to their own political prudence that the United States needs an immigration policy that is more restrictive than the bishops or Pope Francis would like," reads that piece, which was written by Sam Sawyer, editor in chief of America Media.
"But it ought to be clear that Catholics cannot support a rhetoric that demonizes immigrants as dangerously criminal simply because they have crossed the border in search of a better life for themselves and their families," Sawyer added. "It ought to be clear that Catholics cannot celebrate aggressive deportation enforcement as a spectacle. It ought to be clear that Catholics cannot accept a theory of love that pats itself on the back for putting some of the poorest among us farthest from our concern and charity."
Prevost then retweeted an April 14 post by Philadelphia-based Catholic writer Rocco Palmo, who castigated Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele after their White House meeting to discuss migrant deportations, including the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal U.S. resident mistakenly sent to the notorious CECOT prison.
"As Trump & Bukele use Oval to [mock] Feds’ illicit deportation of a US residen once an undoc-ed Salvadorean himself, now-DC Aux +Evelio asks, 'Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?'" Palmo posted, and which the newly elected pope shared with his thousands of followers at the time.
