Pope Leo vs. the Empire of Lies: The Long Game to Defeat Trumpism

He’s already rebuked immigration crackdowns and blasted the “logic of exclusion” fueling rising nationalism. Now, as the youngest pope in 35 years, Leo is poised to help defeat Trumpism for good.

Dear friends —

Happy Sunday! As promised, today we turn to what Pope Leo XIV has already done — and what he can do next — to defend human dignity against the new authoritarian currents in our world.

In yesterday’s essay, we saw how Pope St. John Paul II’s courageous, decade-long stand helped bring down Soviet Communism. Pope Leo, for his part, is facing a different empire of lies here at home: a political culture of fear and falsehood in the United States.

The first American pope has wasted no time mounting a moral challenge to this trend. In this essay, I’ll recap how Leo has stood up to authoritarian nationalism so far, and then outline three bold strategies he can deploy moving forward.

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From day one, Pope Leo XIV has made the plight of migrants a centerpiece of his papacy. This put him on an almost immediate collision course with President Trump’s hardline immigration policies.

In late September, Leo publicly questioned whether Trump’s crackdown on immigrants can ever square with the Catholic Church’s pro-life teachings, pointedly asking if someone can really be “pro-life” while supporting “inhuman treatment of immigrants.”

This remark on September 30 — effectively a moral rebuke of Trump’s mass deportation raids — drew heated backlash from some prominent conservative Catholics, but Leo didn’t flinch.

Just a week later, in early October, he met with U.S. border bishops and was handed dozens of letters from terrified immigrant families. Pope Leo listened with tears in his eyes as he read their stories.

He assured the group that “the Church cannot stay silent before injustice. You stand with me. And I stand with you.”

He then urged the entire U.S. bishops’ conference to speak out firmly on how migrants are being treated. In other words, Leo XIV has been doing exactly what he promised: answering cruelty with the Gospel.

By widening the pro-life conversation to include the migrant at the border, the pope is challenging American Catholics to practice a consistent ethic of life — even when it conflicts with the agenda of a president.

It’s a clash John Paul II would instantly recognize: the Gospel truth versus a regime of fear. And Pope Leo has placed himself squarely on the side of the oppressed, no matter the political blowback.

Calling Out a Rift Between Allies

Pope Leo’s moral voice hasn’t been confined to traditional “church” issues — he’s also waded directly into geopolitical turmoil created by President Trump.

Case in point: Leo lamented the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Canada after Trump abruptly ended trade talks with America’s closest neighbor.

In a Vatican meeting on October 24, the pope noted with deep concern that “the United States and Canada…are experiencing great difficulties” in their once-strong alliance.

“Two countries that were once considered the closest allies at times have become separated from one another,” he observed ruefully.

It is highly unusual for a pope to comment on a specific bilateral dispute like this.

Yet Leo’s words signaled to the world that he sees nationalist isolation and broken dialogue as a moral issue, too. By publicly responding to the U.S.-Canada rift, he implicitly rebuked Trump’s divisive America-First approach and urged a return to good-faith cooperation.

The moment was reminiscent of John Paul II speaking out in the 1980s for the rights of oppressed Eastern Europeans: Leo XIV is using the papal pulpit to defend unity and mutual respect among nations, countering the new strains of isolationism.

It’s a gentle but firm reminder that no political leader — not even the U.S. president — should treat longtime allies as disposable.

In Pope Leo’s view, tearing down alliances is as short-sighted and morally fraught as building border walls. Both sow division in a world yearning for solidarity.

Denouncing the “Logic of Exclusion”

Perhaps Pope Leo’s clearest moral broadside against the forces underpinning Trumpism came in his Pentecost homily earlier this year.

On that feast celebrating the Holy Spirit uniting people of all languages, Leo XIV pointedly condemned the rise of ultranationalism. He warned that true Christian love leaves “no room for prejudice… [or] the logic of exclusion that we unfortunately see emerging also in political nationalisms.”

In language that echoed both Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II, Leo insisted that the Holy Spirit “breaks down our hardness of heart” and “shatters our inner chains” — including chains of fear and hatred that fuel nationalist movements.

Without naming any country or leader, the pope’s target was unmistakable. He was dismantling the moral pretenses of Christian nationalism — the idea that one can exalt nation or ethnicity in a way that excludes others and still call it godly.

For American observers, it was hard not to think of the MAGA movement’s more extreme rhetoric.

Leo’s Pentecost message cut to the heart of the matter: “The Spirit opens borders” of the heart and “tears down the walls of indifference and hatred,” he preached.

This is the Gospel antidote to the alt-right’s fear-based politics. Just as John Paul II, in 1979, stood before a crowd in Warsaw and proclaimed a Gospel of freedom against a communist regime’s lies, Pope Leo XIV, in 2025, is proclaiming a Gospel of universal fraternity against the lies of ultranationalism.

The continuity is striking.

In both cases, a pope is telling the world that any ideology which pits us versus them — which builds walls and calls them righteous — is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity.

Leo XIV has only been pope for a few months, but through these actions, he has defined himself as a prophetic voice against authoritarian tendencies. He has blasted cruelty toward migrants as sinful, called out the erosion of alliances, and unmasked nationalist exclusion as anti-Gospel.

In short, he’s doing what popes are meant to do: “strengthen your brothers” in the truth, and speak truth to power when the powerful go astray. Like the early days of John Paul’s pontificate, it’s a dramatic and at times confrontational start.

The question now is, how can Pope Leo carry this mission forward for the long haul? Trumpism, after all, will far outlast Trump himself. The forces of nativism, fear, and relativism in our culture run deep.

To defeat this tide — or more realistically, to recenter the Church on justice and charity in spite of it — Leo will need strategy and staying power.

Here are three things Pope Leo can do to rise to that challenge: