Under Pope Leo XIV, American Catholics Are Uniting to Defeat MAGA Authoritarianism

Trump’s support among U.S. Catholics has plummeted to an all-time low of 39%, a stark decline over the year. This is no accident. Under Leo XIV, we're working to defeat Trump-Vance authoritarianism.

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Dear friends,

Across the country — even in the heart of “MAGA country” — Catholics have become the most visible, organized counterweight to Trump’s agenda. In deep-red communities, parishioners, religious women and men, and priests are banding together to shelter immigrant families and speak out against cruelty.

Just this past week, Arkansas’s leading bishop rightly compared Trump-Vance's America to the atrocities that marked the earliest stages of Nazi Germany.

And this message is resonating. Today, only 39% of Catholics approve of President Trump, his lowest rating ever among our faith community.

Make no mistake, fellow Catholics: if we decide collectively that Trump and Vance should no longer lead this country, rest assured, they will no longer be in charge.

Thank God, we are not alone in this effort.

U.S. bishops, too, are finding their voice. Last November, the American bishops’ conference, urged on by Pope Leo, issued a remarkable message condemning Trump’s mass deportations and defending the dignity of migrant families.

It’s now unmistakable: the Catholic Church in America is awakening as a force for conscience against the ethos of fear and exclusion that MAGA has tried to normalize.

Jesuit Fr. James Miracky leads a pro-immigrant prayer vigil outside a migrant detention center in Newark, N.J., on Oct. 22, 2025. Catholic groups held such “One Church, One Family” vigils nationwide in response to the Trump administration’s harsh immigration crackdown.

At the center of this awakening is the American Pope Leo XIV.

From day one, he put the plight of the poor and displaced at the forefront of his pontificate, immediately placing himself at odds with President Trump’s hardline policies.

In September, Leo denounced America’s treatment of immigrants as “inhuman” and even questioned whether one can truly be pro-life while supporting such brutality.

“The Church cannot stay silent before injustice. You stand with me. And I stand with you,” he told a group of migrants a few weeks later in a private meeting, tears in his eyes. Those words have become our rallying cry.

Under Leo’s leadership, Catholic social teaching is being reawakened in the American public square. He has framed the defense of migrants and the vulnerable as a pro-life imperative and a test of our faith’s authenticity. This is the Gospel in action, and the faithful are responding.

Trump’s nominally Catholic vice president, JD Vance, has promoted a twisted “hierarchy of love” that puts countrymen before others, but Pope Leo and his predecessor Pope Francis have flatly repudiated that notion.

The message from Rome is clear: no political ideology can justify dehumanizing our neighbors. And American Catholics are hearing that call.

We’re seeing parish protests, prayer vigils at ICE offices, bishops leading processions for compassion — signs of a Church uniting in prophetic witness. Pope Leo’s unapologetic moral stance is galvanizing the grassroots and putting tyrants on notice.

When I stood in St. Peter’s Square on May 8, 2025, I wasn’t exactly sure why I was there beyond curiosity.

But when I saw Leo XIV emerge on the loggia, it became very clear to me why I was there.

I was there for you. I was there for us. I knew deep in my bones that God had placed this American pope — and all of us — here for a reason.

We’re now seeing that truth unfold. Under Pope Leo’s guidance, American Catholics are rising to reclaim the soul of both our Church and our country.

Here’s my promise to you today. We are together or the long haul, and by the grace of God, we will win this fight.

To Pope Leo — we will follow your lead.

To our fellow Catholics — we stand united with you.

To women and men of good will, of every faith and background — we join arms with you.

To our neighbors who are afraid— we will protect you.

To Donald Trump, JD Vance, and all the MAGA purveyors of cruelty and lies — we will defeat you.

And to our children and our posterity — as long as God gives us breath, we will work every day to leave this nation and this world better than we found it.

A Movement Powered by the Faithful

This burgeoning movement of faithful citizenship has grown at a pace no one expected. Letters from Leo is proud to be at its heart.

With over 20,000 members in just half a year, we are now the fastest-growing Catholic community in the United States — and we’re just getting started.

If we do our job, the days of MAGA extremism having a stranglehold on our nation will come to an end.

Based on our growth trajectory, this publication could reach one million readers by the 2028 election.

Imagine what a community that size — hopeful, formed, and engaged — could do for a country starving for moral clarity.

But none of that will happen automatically. And none of it can happen without you.

I’m asking for your help to build this movement.

I have a dogmatic belief you and I are living through a providential moment.

Just as God raised up a pope from behind the Iron Curtain to help defeat communism, God has raised up a pope from the Americas to defeat MAGA authoritarianism.

I dedicate my entire heart to that mission.

To paraphrase Peter: I bring neither silver nor gold to this project. I bring the greatest gifts I’ve received — my back, my mind, my heart, and my faith. I offer them in the belief that you and I were made for this moment — to be repairers of the breach.

Letters from Leo isn’t just a chronicle of a historic pontificate.

It’s an attempt to rally a community of conscience, to recover the best of America’s faith and political life, and to walk with Pope Leo as he challenges the creeping authoritarianism seeping into our national bloodstream.

In my own small way, I’m trying to participate in that mission. This newsletter has become, for me, a kind of secular priesthood — my imperfect effort to carry the light of Christ’s love into the public square.

I’ll be honest: I know I’m not the ideal messenger. Writing about faith in the brutal arena of American public life is uncomfortable and, at times, deeply exposing.

But I keep going because I believe what Pope Leo is doing has the power to make our world better.

In the words of Blessed John Paul I, “I offer you the little that I have and am.”

Letters from Leo is sustained entirely by readers like you. There are no corporate sponsors. No billionaire benefactors. Just ordinary people choosing to invest in something they believe matters.

If you feel the same energy I do, the same urgency I do, the same passion I do, and the same hopefulness I do, I’m asking for your help in three concrete ways:

• Subscribe as a paid member to receive exclusive posts about the life and formation of Pope Leo and help sustain this newsletter.

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Paid subscribers will also have access to our Sunday Reflection Series and the Q&A mailbag that opened last week, where you can ask me anything about American politics, Catholicism, Donald Trump, Pope Leo, JD Vance — or my own faith, biography, and life.

And if you’re someone who prays, I ask for your prayers: for me, for this project, and for Pope Leo XIV.

Whether you can give $0, $1, or $1,000, please know that your being here matters — no matter your faith, your doubts, or your politics. We need people of goodwill united in hope, now more than ever.

Thank you for believing that this country of ours — blessed and broken as it is — can still be made more just, more loving, and less cold. Six months is just the beginning.

There is a long road ahead, and none of us can walk it alone.

So let us rise, you and I, and make of this blessed nation something more blessed still.

Together, we will not hide from history — we will make it.

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

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