I see that the fish-eaters have elected a new boss — a guy from Chicago, no less — and there ya go.
Ordinarily, I’d be totally indifferent to this event; but quite apart from being an atheist, though, I was always critical of the new Pope Leo XIV’s predecessor because he was, to put it mildly, a Green Commie.
However:
Before being elected pope, he shared several posts on X that took aim at the Trump administration’s approach to immigration, including the controversial policy of separating families at the US border. In one post that Pope Leo XIV re-shared, the original author wrote: “There is nothing remotely Christian, American, or morally defensible about a policy that takes children away from their parents and warehouses them in cages. This is being carried out in our name and the shame is on us all.”
Nope, yer Holeyness; the shame is entirely on the parents who exposed their children to all this.
But still (from Wikipedia):
Pope Leo XIV has opposed the ordination of women to the diaconate. As a bishop, Prevost opposed the inclusion of curriculum regarding “teachings on gender in schools” in Peru, stating that the “promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist.”
Also:
In 2012, Prevost lamented that popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel”, citing the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”
Sheesh. If all the above is true (#WikiPediaIsAwful), and apart from the “Catholic” thing, those are things that I might have said.
So maybe the Catholic Church might become something worth belonging to, again, for those people interested in such stuff. And devout, conservative Catholics — like many of my Loyal Readers — can stop being ashamed of their Church’s leadership.