‘More Dangerous Than Francis’: MAGA Fury at Pope Leo’s Christmas Message
It’s supposed to be a season of peace on earth. Instead, Pope Leo’s compassionate Christmas words have MAGA in a froth — revealing deepening rifts in between Church and state as 2026 approaches.
Dear friends —
Today’s piece is a subscriber-only deep dive into one of the more surreal sights of this Christmas season: MAGA influencers melting down over a pope preaching about the poor.
In his first Christmas as pontiff, Pope Leo XIV delivered a series of humble, Gospel-rooted messages about mercy, migrants, and the moral cost of exclusion. But for parts of the American right — especially those who’ve spent years weaponizing religion for nationalist ends — Leo’s words struck a nerve.
From Steve Bannon to Laura Loomer, the backlash to Pope Leo from the beginning has been swift and intense. Some even have accused Leo of betraying the faith.
But as we explore in today’s essay, this clash isn’t just a Twitter flare-up. It’s a window into the broader unraveling of a political alliance that once claimed to speak for the Church — and now finds itself exposed.
The piece also unpacks Leo’s quiet but seismic decision to replace Cardinal Dolan in New York with Bishop Ron Hicks, a move that speaks volumes about the future of Catholic leadership in America.
As we approach the new year, Leo’s words remind us what our faith is really about: making room. Not just in our hearts, but in our politics, our parishes, and our priorities.
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God Entered History Through a Refugee Family
Christmas is a season that reveals who is saved: the displaced outside our walls and the unwanted inside them.
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MAGA outrage at Pope Leo XIV is nothing new. But this Christmas season, it’s edged with fear.
“More subtle than Francis. More intelligent. Therefore, more dangerous,” warned Steven Bannon’s Rome correspondent Benjamin Harnwell.
That anxiety erupted into open fury this week after the new pope — the first American to lead the Catholic Church — used his Christmas addresses to champion society’s outcasts.
Leo’s three holiday messages carried timeless Christian themes: God entered history as a poor, marginalized child, and Christ’s birth calls us to care for the little ones. Yet just by mentioning those themes, Leo touched a MAGA nerve.
During his Urbi et Orbi blessing on Christmas Day, he lamented the plight of migrants — even pointedly invoking immigrants coming to America — and reminded the faithful that God will judge nations by how they treat the stranger.
Pope Leo XIV Condemns Treatment of US-Bound Migrants in First Christmas Urbi et Orbi
From migrants across America to war-weary families in Gaza and Ukraine, Leo used his Christmas blessing to demand solidarity — and to remind the world that “the Lord’s birth is a birth of peace.”
In MAGA circles online, that was the last straw.
MAGA Flips Out at a Christmas Homily
The backlash was immediate and unhinged. Trump loyalists on X (Twitter) blasted Leo for “politicizing” Christmas.
This is nothing new.
Laura Loomer, a far-right agitator, had already branded Leo a “WOKE MARXIST POPE” within hours of his election.
Now her MAGA allies fumed that the pope dared to criticize America’s treatment of immigrants during a holy day.
Before Leo's election, Steve Bannon, a Catholic and former White House strategist, sneered that Prevou would be “the worst pick for MAGA Catholics”, claiming his election would be a win for “the globalists that run the Curia.”
On social media, some seemed genuinely shocked to discover the pope preaching about welcoming foreigners.
One pro-Trump influencer, conservative podcaster Jesse Romero, snarled that “The Pope should tell us how to get to heaven… He has no authority over the government; he has to stay in his lane.”
As a Catholic, Romero was enraged that Leo and the U.S. bishops dared to criticize President Trump’s mass deportation policies. Other commentators went further, echoing conspiracy-tinged fears.
Harnwell accused Leo of “investing his energy in a radical, secularist, fundamentally globalist, left‑wing agenda”, fixating especially on the pope’s defense of migrants.
To Harnwell and his audience, immigration is a “third-world invasion of the West”, and Leo’s Christmas plea for compassion rang out as an existential threat to their vision of America.
Michael Sean Winters of NCR noted that Leo’s words “reverberated beyond the Catholic community,” impressing even non-Catholics, yet provoking fury from this vocal wing of Trump’s base.
Indeed, Hannah Roberts noted that while Pope Francis could be dismissed by American conservatives as a distant Argentine, Leo XIV — a Chicago native and lifelong White Sox fan — “cannot easily be dismissed as a foreign figure. He’s a more immediate lightning rod.”
In other words, MAGA world can’t ignore Leo as “someone else’s pope.” He’s one of our own, and that makes his challenge hit closer to home.
The End of an Era in New York
This Christmas clash comes on the heels of a dramatic changing of the guard in the U.S. Church.
Earlier this month, Pope Leo replaced Cardinal Timothy Dolan — the high-profile Archbishop of New York –—with Bishop Ronald Hicks, a relatively unknown pastor from Illinois.
Leo’s Chicago “Trifecta”: Cupich Protégé Tapped to Lead New York
Pope Leo XIV is set to appoint Bishop Ronald A. Hicks — a protégé of Chicago’s progressive Cardinal Blase Cupich — as the 11th Archbishop of New York, succeeding Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
The move sent an unmistakable signal. Dolan, who led New York’s diocese for 16 years, had become a Fox News favorite and an beloved by Trump’s Republican Party.
In fact, He recently hailed right-wing activist Charlie Kirk as “a modern day St. Paul.”
That era of cozy MAGA Catholicism is now over.
“It’s the end of an era,” said theology professor Massimo Faggioli about Dolan’s replacement. “President Trump has lost an ally.”
Analysts say Leo’s choice of Hicks — a Spanish-speaking Chicago native who spent years serving the poor in Central America — “signals a shift away from MAGA” in the Church’s leadership.
Hicks, like Leo, embraces a broad “consistent ethic of life”: he defends the unborn, and the migrant at the border, and the dignity of the poor.
In fact, at his introductory press conference, Hicks pledged to uphold New York’s legacy as a haven for immigrants, invoking the Statue of Liberty’s “golden door” and speaking warmly in Spanish to Latino Catholics.
He even reiterated his support for the U.S. bishops’ recent condemnation of Trump’s immigration crackdown, stating that while borders merit respect, America must “also be a country that upholds human dignity.”
In other words, Leo has begun elevating pastors who put Gospel compassion above partisanship — and easing out those who turned Catholicism into a political club.
This shift in church leadership has not gone unnoticed by the political class. Tellingly, President Trump had publicly endorsed Dolan as an ideal future pope during the last conclave — an endorsement that went nowhere.
By choosing men like Hicks — and by elevating outspoken advocates for migrants such as Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago — Leo is asserting that Catholic witness must not be co-opted by a political ideology, no matter how powerful.
Fault Lines into 2026
The showdown over Leo’s Christmas homilies underscores a broader reality: a fault line has formed between the pope and a significant faction of American Catholic life.
Here’s where we stand and where we expect to go in the year ahead.
