Pope Leo’s Borderless Gospel

The Pope Leo honeymoon is officially over for traditional Catholics. Days ago, Pope Leo XIV publicly defended Chicago’s progressive archbishop, Cardinal Blase Cupich, who plans to honor Senator Dick Durbin — the longtime “pro-choice Catholic” champion of abortion rights — for his advocacy on behalf of illegal immigrants.

Like nearly all Catholic priests and bishops of his generation, Cardinal Cupich is staunchly “America Last” when it comes to defending the un-citizenshipped.

For a bit of context: These are all Chicago men, and this is the Chicago way. There, hometown blood runs thicker than the mustard on your hot dog. And if we’re being generous, perhaps that explains the pope’s reasoning for celebrating this solidly pro-choice politician. 

“Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion’ but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” the pope explained when asked about his position, stretching to draw an equivalence on the Right. “Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States’ — I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

Leo’s wrong on all counts, of course. We can start from the beginning and work our way down. 

As Catholic scholar Edward Feser pointed out, plenty of Catholics who achieved sainthood were open advocates of the death penalty. “To cite just a few names among many, sainted doctors of the Church such as Thomas Aquinas, Alphonsus Liguori, and John Henry Newman were against abortion and for the death penalty, as were sainted popes such as Innocent I, Pius V, and Pius X,” wrote Feser of the pope’s claims. “I imagine Leo would not dare to suggest these great heroes of the Catholic faith were ‘not really pro-life.’”

For centuries, Catholic thinkers have insisted that, while every human life is sacred, legitimate authority may (when strictly necessary and proportionate) impose the death penalty as a form of just retribution and as a last-resort measure to protect the common good. And personally, I’m just glad to know that my idea of executing convicted pedophiles live on television isn’t heresy after all.

Let’s proceed now to Leo’s claim on the Christian morality of illegal immigration. The pope, like his predecessor Francis, argues you can’t be against abortion and also fine with the inhumane treatment of immigrants in the United States. This raises the question: What “inhumane treatment” are we talking about? 

A Catholic view of justice will argue that mercy must rest upon order — that the humane treatment of migrants cannot mean the abandonment of law itself. And while they’re barred from most federal welfare programs, illegal immigrants still receive taxpayer-funded emergency medical care, plenty of local aid from city and state programs, and public education for their children — all at the expense of American taxpayers who have no choice but to foot the bill.

Furthermore, to equate the murder of an unborn child with the deportation of an illegal immigrant is a deeply political deflection, and one I would expect to hear from a sneering atheist. It’s same tired canard argument tactic that Christian-haters always use on us: “Oh, you want to deport immigrants and you call yourself a Christian? Shame on you!”

Why yes, Pope Leo and Co.: I’m one of those Christians. I am unapologetically pro-life and I favor firm, well-guarded borders — including the systematic deportation of every single person who broke our laws and arrived here illegally. Protecting the unborn and protecting the born is a core tenet of our faith, and to safeguard innocent life we must remove violent criminals and criminal aliens from the communities they threaten: Criminals go to prison, and criminal aliens get deported. As a Christian, I will fight for the unborn children and the thousands of young women who have been raped, assaulted, and murdered by illegal immigrants. 

But thanks to immigration views like those held by the pope, our communities are burdened, our emergency rooms and hospitals flooded, and our housing in short supply. It’s not better elsewhere, either. Mass migration from the Third World into Western countries has not strengthened those nations: The rape rate in Sweden, the U.K., Germany, and the rest of Western Europe has skyrocketed as their economic outlooks have darkened. 

Is this pro-life, Leo?

Returning illegal immigrants to their home country, on the other hand, is extremely humane — especially relative to what would happen if they tried this out in other nations. Sounds like Pope Leo is unaware of what horrors await them there. If he’d only pay attention, America might not look so bad after all.

But as women and girls are abused worldwide by immigrant men, the pope — like all liberals — will stay silent. He will, however, find some time to [checks notes] bless a giant piece of ice at the leftwing climate change conference he hosted at his summer retreat this month.

Sadly, the new pope is exactly what we feared and expected: Francis 2.0. Very few of the Boomers in the Church can escape the deeply-held 1960s-style indoctrination in their ranks. I’ll just keep praying for Pope Leo, and you should too. Eventually there will be a non-Boomer, non-woke pope. But until then, it appears that the traditionalists are doomed to continue wandering the wilderness alone, keeping the faith alive.