After Cardinal Robert Prevost—a Chicago-born Roman Catholic Augustine cleric who ministered in Peru and later led the Vatican’s influential Bishops’ office—made history as the first American ever elected Pope in the Church’s 2,000-year history, a tweet from February resurfaced in which he shared an article criticizing Vice President JD Vance for "ranking" his love for others.
And MAGA is not happy about it.
Pope Leo XIV emerged as the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church after white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel chimney on Thursday, signaling the successful election of a Pope. The decision came on the second day of the conclave, surprising many observers and Church experts who had anticipated other contenders and did not expect an American to be chosen.
But this American sure is angering MAGA supporters now that they've become aware of an article he shared that criticized Vance.
Vance said during a Fox News interview on Jan. 29:
"There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world."
"A lot of the far left has completely inverted that."
Prevost shared a National Catholic Reporter opinion piece criticizing Vance because "Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others," which reads, in part:
"The point wasn't about setting limits on love. It was about breaking them down — taking the gospel beyond familiar spaces and into contested ones. If anything, those of us in the United States are the ends of the earth, unimaginable to the earliest Christians. And yet, the gospel has already reached us."
"The real question is not whether love begins at home. It's what we do with it — how far we are willing to change ourselves and the world around us."
You can see the February post below.
Notably, the new Pope previously criticized the Trump administration on social media for Trump’s “anti-immigrant rhetoric” back in 2015. He later reposted messages criticizing the death penalty, mass deportations, and Congress’s failure to act on gun reform after mass shootings.
MAGA fans are not happy about this.
The Pope even got Loomered!
People found the MAGA anger hilarious.
It's well known that the Trump administration uses social media to stoke a divide between their supporters and those they've admonished as "Radical Left Lunatics"—and while the new Pope didn't mention the administration directly, he's previously made comments about the incendiary ways people use social media to suit their nefarious aims.
Back in 2023, he said:
"The world today, which is constantly changing, presents situations where we really have to think several times before speaking or before writing a message on Twitter, in order to answer or even just to ask questions in a public form, in full view of everyone.”
“Sometimes there is a risk of fueling divisions and controversy."
(Sound familiar?)
Despite the ways the new Pope is sure to butt heads with the Trump administration's policies, he's been celebrated the world over.
Newspapers in Peru highlighted that the new Pope holds dual citizenship, noting his years of missionary work and service as Bishop of Chiclayo, a city in northern Peru with roughly half a million residents.
In Rome, thousands packed the Via della Conciliazione, celebrating the historic moment as the first American Pope was introduced to the world.
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@BillAckman/Twitter