Louis Prevost, 74, is an ardent fan of Donald Trump. The veteran from Florida was even able to meet the US President in person. But his little brother, Robert Prevost, known as Leo XIV, wants to be a conservative counterweight to Trump. In terms of geopolitics. Regarding migration. “We have different opinions on this point,” Louis Prevost once said.
Pope Leo speaks more deliberately than his big brother, than his quasi-left predecessor Francis and definitely more level-headed than Trump. But the message from the leader of 52 million adult US Catholics is clear – and more and more US bishops are getting behind it. America’s “moral role in the fight against evil in the world” is in question, the cardinals of Chicago, Washington and Newark wrote in a statement on Monday. “For the first time in decades.”
Leo is the first American to the Holy See. But he also has a Peruvian passport and has been influenced by a religious life in Latin America and Europe. What he wants to defend is the multilateral “post-war order”. Contrary to the “Christian nationalism” in Trump’s camp.
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Immediately after Trump’s attack on Venezuela on January 3, Leo declared that the country’s “sovereignty” and “the rule of law enshrined in the constitution” must be preserved.
“Truly moral foreign policy”
The US ambassador to the Holy See had already spoken to papal diplomats about Venezuela before Christmas. They had tried to persuade ruler Nicolás Maduro to resign and go into exile – for example in Russia. In vain. On the third day of the new year, Trump had Caracas bombed and Maduro kidnapped.
In his State of the World address to Vatican ambassadors on January 9, Leo then complained: “Diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by diplomacy based on force.” But the topic of Venezuela was quickly pushed aside by Trump’s threats towards Greenland and thus NATO.
These volts and the Pope’s words prompted the prominent US cardinals Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy and Joseph Tobin to speak on Monday unusual explanation. In 2026, the United States would be “engaged in the most profound and burning debate about the moral basis for America’s actions in the world since the end of the Cold War,” it says. The shepherds call for a “truly moral foreign policy” in which “military actions must be viewed only as a last resort in extreme situations and not as a normal instrument of national policy.”
The cardinals also made reference to Ukraine, which has been hit by Russian attacks – entirely in line with the papacy. In December, Leo met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and told him he would like to visit Ukraine. The Pope had criticized Trump’s “peace plan”: “Trying to reach a peace agreement without including Europe in the talks is not realistic.” The war is, after all, taking place in Europe. But the most powerful Catholic in the USA, Trump’s deputy J. D. Vance, dismissed this statement as too “Eurocentric”.
Leo XIV also creates facts
On Wednesday the Vatican said, Trump invited the Pope to his “peace council” for Gazawho is still considering whether to accept. A hug maneuver? The position on Trump’s committee would definitely not go well with Leo’s commitment to the UN.
“La pace sia con voi,” were the new pope’s first public words after his election in May 2025. Peace be with you. And with the choice of his name, Leo already set a peace policy accent back then. His predecessor Leo XIII. (1810-1903) had defined diplomacy as a new secular role after the Papal States had shrunk to the Vatican.
Leo XIV inherits his direct predecessor when it comes to migration issues. Pope Francis, the first Latin American to sit on the Chair of Peter, himself the son of migrants, as he once emphasized to the US Congress, had repeatedly held up a mirror to the oh-so-Christian West on this issue.
Even as a cardinal, Robert Prevost criticized the Trump administration’s rigid and sometimes illegal migration policy. Since becoming pope, he has repeatedly called on American clergy to loudly and actively protest against it. But not only that, he also creates facts.
On February 6, Ronald A. Hicks will be inaugurated as the new Archbishop of New York. The fact that Leo Especially since New York’s previous bishop, Timothy Dolan, appeared frequently on Fox News and was close to Trump.
Even arch-conservatives are now speaking out
But whether bishop or mayor – personnel decisions in liberal New York only say a limited amount about shifts in the United States. What happened in a Baltimore hotel ballroom in mid-November may actually shed more light on this.
In his farewell speech, the outgoing President of the US Bishops’ Conference, Military Bishop Timothy Broglio, responded to Pope Leo’s call and warned that Catholics must show “special care for strangers, foreigners and pilgrims”: “This is not rocket science; this is the Word of God.” The U.S. bishops then elected Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City as their next president. Coakley belongs to the right wing of the US church – but he too is now calling for people to support immigrant families and to remember that Jesus himself was once a refugee.
The Anglican Bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, had previously spoken to Trump’s conscience. Progressive Catholic bishops have already appeared at court hearings to deter ICE officials. The fact that the arch-conservatives are now also speaking out is new.
“We pray for an end to the dehumanizing rhetoric and violence,” said the joint pastoral letter after the bishops’ conference, which went far beyond what had previously been read from the official Catholic side: “We reject the arbitrary mass deportation of people.”
The fact that the US bishops are now so united on migration issues also has to do with Pope Leo’s warning to right-wing culture warriors. Asked about US policy in October, the Pontiff Maximus replied: “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion,’ but agrees with the inhumane treatment of immigrants in the United States – I don’t know if that pro life is.”
His brother Bob was “neither quiet nor shy,” said Louis Prevost after his visit to the White House. “If he has something to say, he says it.”