Pope Leo XIV’s US Ambassador Rips Vance’s “Post-Liberal” Crusade in Newly Discovered Speech

In a once-secret address now brought to light, Pope Leo's envoy to America delivers a stinging critique of JD Vance’s “post-liberal” Catholic movement — warning it flirts with authoritarianism.

Dear friends —

Happy Wednesday! Today’s essay is the fifth in our ongoing series on the religious and political formation of Vice President JD Vance — a formation that continues to shape the direction of Catholic life in American politics, often in ways that unsettle the very tradition it claims to uphold.

In Installment One, we traced Vance’s 2019 entry into the Catholic Church — not just through a sacramental lens, but as a strategic shift in worldview that accompanied his turn from Trump critic to MAGA standard-bearer.

Installment Two examined his now-infamous invocation of ordo amoris to justify hardline immigration policy — and the rare, public rebukes from both Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV that followed.

Installment Three introduced the Dominican friars who privately catechized Vance behind closed doors — bypassing parish OCIA and embedding him instead in Washington’s elite conservative Catholic circles.

And, earlier this month, in Installment Four, we zoomed out to the broader intellectual scaffolding. Who shaped Vance’s moral and political imagination? Who gave him the tools to blend post-liberal theory with culture war combat? We met four of the most influential figures behind Vance’s worldview: Leonard Leo, Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, and Scott Hahn.

Now, in Installment Five, we pivot from formation to resistance.

This week’s essay unveils a once-hidden speech by Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s top American envoy — offering a sweeping and direct critique of Vance’s post-liberal movement.

Pierre doesn’t just diagnose the dangers of instrumentalizing religion for political power; he delivers a full-throated defense of the Church’s social doctrine and a veiled warning to Catholic leaders tempted by authoritarian paths.

The speech, buried since September and only now coming to light, marks the clearest line yet drawn between Pope Leo’s Gospel-rooted reforms and the rising illiberalism among some of the U.S. hierarchy’s most powerful patrons.

This isn’t the end of the story — but it’s the first sign of serious pushback from inside the Church itself.

As always, these thoroughly-researched essays are available only to our paid subscribers. If you haven’t yet joined us, I hope you will — your support keeps this work independent, ad-free, and fiercely committed to truth.

Subscriptions begin at $8/month and unlock our full archive, including our series on Pope Leo’s life and formation.

Already a subscriber but hitting a paywall? Just reply to this email — we’ll sort it out right away.

Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.

Over two months ago, at a quietly convened Catholic forum, a senior American churchman launched an unflinching broadside against a rising movement on the Catholic right.

The event drew little public notice at the time, but the content of his speech has finally surfaced this week — and it’s a theological thunderbolt.

The speaker was Cardinal Christophe Pierre, Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic nuncio (ambassador) to the United States and one of Leo’s top defenders in the United States.

In a talk titled “Woke Culture and Post-Liberalism” (delivered Sept. 13 and only now coming to public attention), Cardinal Pierre dissected two opposing ideologies roiling modern society.

He argued that while both far-left “woke” activism and the new right-wing “post-liberal” push each claim to fix liberalism’s failures, neither extreme aligns with the Gospel.

And his sharpest words were aimed squarely at the post-liberal crusade associated with figures like with Vice President JD Vance.

Here’s what he said about the vice president’s besieged political movement.