Rachel Maddow, Openly Gay MSNBC Anchor, Returns to the Catholic Church

After years away, Maddow says she considers herself Catholic again. She believes Pope Leo can both “soften hearts and sharpen minds” during his pontificate.

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Last night in Chicago, MS NOW anchor Rachel Maddow — one of America’s most prominent progressive voices — revealed to a live audience that, after years away, she has returned to the Catholic Church.

It was an remarkable admission from a public figure who is openly gay and often seen as a secular icon.

Maddow’s revelation came during a Q&A at a local event when an audience member asked for her thoughts on the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, and his stance on immigration.

In her response, Maddow praised both Pope Francis and Pope Leo, framing the moment as almost providential.

The Church had “just said goodbye to Pope Francis and his message of not just empathy but solidarity with immigrants the world over,” Maddow noted, and then along came Pope Leo — a Chicago-born successor who shares Francis’s passion for migrant justice.

The timing was so perfect, she quipped, it was “like it was just grown in a lab to radicalize American Catholics” against cruelty to immigrants.

In Maddow’s view, it’s divine intervention that after Francis’s death the cardinals chose a pope so outspoken on these issues.

Pope Leo celebrates his first Mass after this election, the central act of faith that Rachel Maddow has re-embraced after years away. Her return reflects a broader trend of lapsed believers finding hope in a more compassionate Church.

Maddow then shared a bit of her own faith journey. “I was born and raised in a conservative Catholic family… after having not considered myself [Catholic] for some time, I do consider myself to be back in the faith,” she told the crowd.

Coming out as a lesbian in her youth, Maddow had drifted from the Church for nearly 30 years. But now, she said, Pope Leo’s witness on issues like immigration has drawn her back to her religious roots.

She was deeply inspired by an outdoor Mass for immigrant detainees at the Broadview ICE facility in Illinois where hundreds of faithful in prayerful protest.

Seeing the Church champion society’s vulnerable again has reignited something in her. Maddow argued that if you’re Catholic, “the pope and the actions of the Church and the bishops honestly matter” in shaping your moral outlook. And beyond just Catholics, she believes a pope “speaks to a universal conscience and to a universal heart” in a way no other leader can.

“There’s something about the role of the pope that is unlike any other role on earth,” Maddow observed, adding that if Leo “can soften people’s hearts and sharpen people’s vision on this topic, he may change the world — and [the Trump Administration] will regret messing with him on this topic.”

Those words drew loud applause.

In that moment, the progressive television host essentially affirmed Pope Leo XIV as a pivotal moral voice on the global stage — one capable of moving even secular minds and challenging governments.

Maddow even suggested that the Trump White House must be kicking itself for trying to meddle in Church affairs (reportedly, Trump allies had eyed the 2025 conclave with hopes of a more compliant pope).

Instead, they got Leo XIV, who has proven to be a relentless champion of migrants and a critic of nationalist “build walls” ideology.

Maddow’s public return to Catholicism is part of a larger trend in Pope Leo’s America.

She joins other high-profile LGBTQ Americans whose faith has been reawakened by the Church’s newfound tone of inclusion.

Just last month, ABC News anchor Gio Benitez — who is openly gay — similarly announced his embrace of the Catholic Church after 25 years away from Christianity.

Benitez credited Pope Francis’s inclusive legacy, now carried on boldly by Pope Leo XIV, for opening the doors of faith to him once more.

Now Rachel Maddow, a married gay woman who once felt alienated, says she too feels the Church has room for her. This is an astonishing shift. It’s hard to imagine such stories even a few years ago, when many LGBTQ Catholics felt they had no place under the Vatican’s roof.

But thanks to the work of Father James Martin and others, that day is here.

Maddow has made no secret of her admiration for Pope Francis over the years.

When Francis died in April, she delivered a moving on-air tribute, lauding him as an advocate for migrants who “changed the world and changed the Church.”

That same concern for the marginalized is what she now sees burning brightly in Pope Leo XIV.

In Chicago, she expressed gratitude that Leo is carrying the torch on social justice: from condemning the dehumanization of refugees to insisting that “defending migrants is not partisan politics, it is Christianity” in action.

For Maddow, Pope Leo’s leadership seems to embody the Church at its best — a Church of the Beatitudes — as Leo himself has called it, which sides with the “little ones” of society.

It’s a testament to Pope Leo’s broadening appeal that a figure like Rachel Maddow, who hadn’t set foot in a confessional for decades, now speaks openly about her Catholic faith.

This is the first American pope’s impact radius: it extends beyond Sunday Mass-goers, reaching deep into the culture. When someone who has long been on the political left — and who felt estranged from the Church’s old attitudes — is inspired to come home again, it underscores the transformative power of witnessed compassion.

Maddow’s story is a powerful sign of the times: Pope Leo XIV’s message of justice and inclusion is resonating far outside the usual Catholic circles. It’s touching hearts in newsrooms, in protest lines, and even in prime-time TV studios.

Letters from Leo exists to spotlight moments like this, connecting the dots that others miss. A major American media icon quietly returning to her faith because of a pope’s example is not a headline you’ll see anywhere else. But it speaks volumes about the quiet revolution underway in the Church.

As Rachel Maddow’s experience shows, when the Gospel is lived boldly — when the Church truly “makes room for the little ones” — it has the power to bring even long-absent Catholics back to the fold. And in an era when our nation is wrestling with its soul, that homecoming of conscience could not be more timely.

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