Bishop Barron Claims the Left Wants to “Demonize” Trump. Standing With the Poor Is Not Demonization — It Is the Faith.
In a year of MAGA crusades — from defending Trump’s war on migrants to misreading Pope Leo on AI — Barron has reserved his sharpest fire for the Catholic left. Rome has noticed.
Last week, Bishop Robert Barron told the Washington Post’s Adam O’Neal that he hates “the tribalism” of online Catholicism — “the scapegoating mobs,” “this goofy us against them,” “liberal conservative Catholics in their little teams.” He claimed he had “scolded my own audience” against character assassination.
“I hate all that,” the bishop of Winona-Rochester said.
Unfortunately, Barron’s words don’t match his own behavior. Consider this bombastic tweet from less than a year ago.
By the standard he set with Adam O’Neal, he has spent the past year personifying the very behavior he claims to disdain.
In an interview with Fox News, Barron praised border czar Tom Homan as a Catholic who “spoke with great passion” on a White House call about immigration, parroting Homan’s framing on child trafficking.
The same Tom Homan has called Pope Leo XIV “a tool of our enemies”, mockingly invited the Holy Father on an ICE raid, and said he would “educate” the pope on Catholic teaching. Barron has said nothing about any of it.
The pattern follows a year of escalating partisan provocations dressed up as theology. In February, Barron praised Marco Rubio’s Munich speech as a defense of Western civilization’s Christian soul, then accused Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of running the “Marxist playbook” for daring to push back.
Vatican officials began an informal review of his conduct in the weeks that followed, as Letters from Leo first reported.
Two revelatory moments stood out to me in particular in the latest interviews.
