Bishop Barron Goes Full MAGA: A Silence and a Scandal Behind His Rightward Shift
Once seen as a centrist evangelist with wide appeal, Bishop Robert Barron has spent the past few years aligning himself with MAGA politicians, right-wing media, and partisan culture war flashpoints.
Dear friends —
Letters from Leo has been closely tracking a jarring transformation unfolding in American Catholic leadership: the public journey of Bishop Robert Barron into the MAGA camp.
Over the past year, Barron — once famed for his PBS Catholicism series and hailed as a mainstream evangelizer — has shifted his focus and tone dramatically. The intensity of his pro-MAGA statements spiked over the last twelve months, peaking after an embarrassing social media scandal over the holidays.
Today’s subscriber-only deep dive examines what Barron is choosing to talk about (and what he pointedly ignores), why his priorities seem so skewed, and two theories about what might be driving his sharp rightward turn.
As always, these are the kinds of clues that conventional coverage often misses. But here at Letters from Leo, we connect the dots and shine light on the deeper context.
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One of the most revealing tests of a Catholic leader is which issues they choose to address — and which they pointedly ignore. On that score, Bishop Barron’s recent record is striking.
Consider a few matters of life and justice he has not found time to seriously engage: though Leo talks about it nearly weekly, not a single public word about the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that killed over 13,000 children since 2023. No mention of the young woman killed by an ICE agent last week in his home state of Minnesota.
Virtually nothing decrying President Trump’s mass deportations policy that is tearing families and our nation apart — even as Pope Leo XIV and U.S. bishops begged the Church to speak out “with one voice” against such cruelty.
These silences are deafening. They stand in stark contrast to the clear moral calls coming from Rome.
Recall that with the help of Leo, the late Pope Francis wrote last year that “the true common good is promoted when society and government welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable.”
The message could not be clearer. Yet on these life-and-death issues, America’s most famous bishop has been mute.
Instead, Barron has devoted his energy to an odd litany of partisan and culture-war topics.
In the first days of the new year alone, he blasted the newly elected mayor of New York City — 1,100 miles outside his diocese — over a single line in the mayor’s inaugural address about “the warmth of collectivism,” even comparing the city’s first Muslim mayor to the evils of Stalin.
Barron’s Twitter tirade warned that “collectivism in its various forms” caused 100 million deaths, concluding with a sneer: “For God’s sake, spare me the ‘warmth of collectivism.’” It was a bizarre intervention: a rural Minnesota prelate inserting himself into Big Apple politics on Day 1 of a new administration.
As we reported, Barron’s eagerness to pounce on the socialist mayor’s rhetoric was especially peculiar given what he wasn’t saying at the time — namely, anything about migrant children being deported from Minnesota or the fires smoldering in his own backyard.
And that wasn’t a one-off. Barron also took to social media to amplify a right-wing narrative about supposed corruption by the “Somali elite” in Minnesota, spotlighting sensational claims of fraud that had already been thoroughly investigated by authorities for years before going viral in right-wing media over the holidays after an error-riddled “exposé.”
He’s weighed in on the uprising against Iran’s regime — yet stayed conspicuously silent on the far deadlier humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Last fall, Barron even penned a Fox News op-ed to chastise Democratic Senator Tim Kaine for an awkward turn-of-phrase about the origins of Americans’ rights.
In that piece, the bishop warned darkly of the “dangers” behind Kaine’s comments, as if a senator’s musings on Lockean political theory were a greater moral crisis than toddlers in cages or hospitals bombed to rubble.
In short, the pattern is unmistakable: on grave matters of justice and human dignity, Barron’s voice is missing. On hot-button ideological flashpoints, he is loud and hyper-focused.
MAGA Allies and Misplaced Priorities
Perhaps nothing illustrates this shift better than Bishop Barron’s newfound camaraderie with MAGA politicians — and his reluctance to challenge them.
In March 2025, Barron was invited to Washington as the guest of Rep. Riley Moore (R–W.Va.) for President Trump’s State of the Union address.
The very next day, the bishop released a glowing 7-minute video recounting his D.C. trip.
He raved about the experience, even likening the pomp of Congress that night to “a kind of high liturgy of our democracy” and marveling at the “stately procession” of officials like it was a Mass.
Barron praised his host Rep. Moore as “a very ardent Catholic” and said he was “honored to be asked” to dinner and the speech.
But tellingly, Barron’s only note of disapproval was aimed at Democrats in the chamber for not applauding the president. He scolded the Democratic side for sitting in silence, calling it “very strange” and unbecoming in such a ritual event.
What went unmentioned in Barron’s cheerful recap? The actual content of President Trump’s address — which boasted of policies anathema to Catholic teaching (rom slashing aid to the poor and refugees to glorifying an immigration crackdown.
Also unmentioned: Rep. Moore’s troubling record.
Moore has openly advocated mass deportations and applauded cuts to humanitarian aid. He has even tweeted a photo of himself mocking prisoners inside a Salvadoran prison where immigrants deported from the United States are being held.
In his video, Barron chose not to acknowledge any of that. He offered no critique of Trump’s harsh immigration agenda or Moore’s deviations from Church teaching. Instead, all Barron’s criticisms were reserved for the political left’s decorum.
As National Catholic Reporter dryly observed after analyzing Barron’s video, the bishop opted not to address Moore’s heterodox stances at all — focusing his ire solely on Democrats’ behavior.
This episode encapsulates a leadership failure that many Catholics have noticed.
While multiple U.S. bishops and Pope Leo XIV himself have been clear in denouncing the cruelty of Trump-era immigration raids, Bishop Barron has largely looked the other way.
When pressed, he minimized the issue by pointing out that the Minnesota Catholic Conference issued a tepid statement “supportive of certain elements” of Trump’s immigration policy, “critical of others.”
In other words, checked the box. Meanwhile, Barron’s Word on Fire media apparatus went so far as to publish a defensive think-piece excoriating those who dared question the bishop’s silence.
On March 20, Word on Fire Institute director Matthew Petrusek wrote a scathing column in Catholic World Report caricaturing Barron’s critics as hysterical ideologues.
“The dogma underpinning these attacks on Bishop Barron and the Word on Fire apostolate,” Petrusek charged, “is a mutant amalgamation of two archetypes of religion-gone-wrong: the performative tut-tutting of the self-righteous Pharisees mixed with the shameless world-worshiping accommodation of the Herodians.”
In Petrusek’s telling, anyone unhappy with Barron’s political quietism is basically a Pharisee or a Herodian — a faithless scold. This sneering response spoke volumes.
Rather than seriously engaging the concerns of faithful Catholics, including many of Barron’s own flock in Minnesota, who are alarmed at migrant families being torn apart, Barron’s inner circle mocked them as “progressive” malcontents.
Barron’s priorities, it seems, now align snugly with a MAGA-friendly media ecosystem.
He has appeared chummy with right-wing personalities like Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson, whom he never challenges. He’s courted figures from The Daily Wire and TPUSA cadre (Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, and the late Charlie Kirk among others) more than he has ever dialogued with Catholics on the center-left.
In none of these settings does Barron offer even the slightest question about the rise in authoritarian populism, yet he gets fired up about the latest minutiae in the never-ending culture war.
Case in point: in the summer of 2024, Barron loudly condemned a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in Paris Olympic opening ceremonies involving a drag troupe — an incident so trivial many didn’t notice until Barron made it what the French call a cause célèbre.
In fact, he posted three videos about the incident.
The result? He garnered plenty of clicks and right-wing attaboys, but expended zero capital on, say, standing up for the dignity of asylum seekers at the border.
It’s a tale of two bishops: compare Barron’s quiet complicity with the courage of leaders like Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago.
When Trump’s ICE raids escalated, Cupich released a video urging solidarity with immigrant families and condemning the inhumanity of indiscriminate deportations.
He was answering Pope Leo XIV’s call for moral clarity.
Barron, by contrast, offered polite silence. One imagines Pope Leo (or any pope) would not be impressed by a shepherd ignoring pleas for migrant justice only to spar over semantics with a distant mayor.
All of this leaves many Catholics, including those who once admired Barron, asking a painful question: What on earth happened to Bishop Barron?
Here’s the rundown of Bishop Barron’s MAGA transformation over the past fifteen years.
