{"id":13892,"date":"2025-10-14T13:20:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T17:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=13892"},"modified":"2025-10-14T13:20:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T17:20:04","slug":"pope-leo-at-odds-with-conservative-catholics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2025\/10\/pope-leo-at-odds-with-conservative-catholics.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo at Odds With Conservative Catholics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Marco Iacobucci Epp-Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pope Leo is still early in his tenure as the first American Pope, but some of his recent comments have left conservative Catholics on edge. When asked to address criticisms of Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin<\/a>, a pro-choice advocate, receiving recognition from a Catholic organization, the Pope offered a middling response, where he failed to condemn Durbin\u2019s pro-choice stance, which stands in contrast to the Catholic church. \u201cI understand the difficulty and the tensions,\u201d he said of the criticisms. \u201cBut I think as I myself have spoken in the past, it\u2019s important to look at many issues that are related to the teachings of the Church. Someone who says I\u2019m against abortion but says I\u2019m in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life, so someone who says that I\u2019m against abortion but I\u2019m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of [illegal] immigrants who are in the United States, I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s pro-life. So, they\u2019re very complex issues. I don\u2019t know if anyone has all the truth on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pope\u2019s comments irked conservatives, who took umbrage with the Pope conflating a pro-life stance and a pro-death penalty stance. \u201cReally terrible answer from Pope Leo,\u201d said conservative commentator<\/a> Matt Walsh, who is Catholic. \u201cGod Himself prescribes the death penalty in the Bible. Is the Pope saying that God is \u2018not pro-life\u2019? And who exactly is advocating for \u2018inhumane treatment of immigrants\u2019? What sort of inhumane treatment is he referring to? Deportations? Also, how can he say that \u2018nobody has all the truth\u2019 on any of these issues? We know the truth on abortion. It isn’t complicated.\u201d Elise Allen, author of a biography of Leo for Penguin Peru, shared that Pope Leo has a heart for social causes, particularly immigration. \u201c”He understands the priority of the abortion issue, but he’s not going to be somebody that says that’s far more important than immigration,” she told Reuters<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n

However, Alejandro Berm\u00fadez, founder of the Catholic News Agency, has cautioned against too much alarmism from conservative Catholics. \u201cI have seen colleagues from progressive Catholicism kind of giving victory laps for what the Pope said,\u201d he admitted. \u201cI think partisans here are desperate to grab him as a baseball bat to hit the other side, because that\u2019s the church that was left behind by Pope Francis. Conservatives should not be freaking out by these things, because the way the pope is acting is long term.\u201d John Yep, president of Catholics for Catholics, offered similar advice, though with less optimism. \u201cThe majority of us are, you know, we\u2019re watching, but we\u2019re also not too quick to judge here in the sense of it\u2019s still early on.\u201d He added, however, that \u201cit does seem in short that Pope Leo is continuing the line of Pope Francis by making, you know, immigration rights a preeminent issue of sorts.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo is still early in his tenure as the first American Pope, but some of his recent comments have left conservative Catholics on edge. When asked to address criticisms of Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, a pro-choice advocate, receiving recognition from a Catholic organization, the Pope offered a middling response, where he failed to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":13895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPope Leo at Odds With Conservative Catholics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pope Leo sparks debate with comments equating abortion, death penalty, and immigration, leaving some conservative Catholics unsettled.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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