15 h. ago A 2012 video shows comments from new pope that disappoint LGBTQ activists

Pope Leo XIV in 2012 made comments critical of what he called the “homosexual lifestyle” and the role of mass media in promoting acceptance of same-sex relationships that conflicted with Catholic doctrine

Culture

16 h. ago The Guardian view on Pope Leo XIV: a different kind of American leader | Editorial

The first pontiff from the United States can be a powerful countervailing voice in the Trump era, and help protect Francis’s legacyTwelve years ago, in the words of the late Pope Francis, the Catholic church went “to the ends of the Earth” in its search for a new pontiff. On Thursday, after surprisingly brisk discussions, the most geographically diverse conclave in history went to the heart of a superpower to find his successor.The election of the first American pope is a remarkable moment. In part the cardinals’ choice of the Chicago-born Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, can be seen as a robust progressive response to the signs of the times. While senior Catholic figures around Donald Trump prosecute an insular Maga agenda, the new pope is as at home in Latin America, having spent two decades working in one of the poorest regions of Peru. Previous posts on a social media account under his name suggest he shared Francis’s withering views on the Trump administration’s...

Politics

17 h. ago Martin Rowson on the election of the first US pope – cartoon

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Politics

23 h. ago An American has become pope. Will he be the moral leader we desperately need? | Arwa Mahdawi

Pope Francis spoke for the most vulnerable, from Palestinians in Gaza to immigrants in the US. Let’s hope that Leo will follow in his footstepsAmerica is back, baby. Not only has the Gulf of Mexico been successfully Americanized, the Vatican is now officially US territory. OK, fine, not officially, but, on Thursday, the Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost was announced as pope. The 69-year-old, who has taken the papal name Leo XIV, is the first clergyman from the United States to lead the Roman Catholic church.While Prevost was a frontrunner for the papacy, his victory seems to have taken many experts by surprise. There has long been resistance to an American pope for a number of reasons, including the fact that it might make it appear as if the Vatican is aligned with the world’s strongest economic and military power. Continue reading...

Politics

36 h. ago Donald Trump welcomes new Pope Leo as pontiff's former brutal comments resurface

Old tweets of Pope Leo XIV have surfaced where he has criticised Donald Trump and JD Vance.

Politics

37 h. ago What will the new Pope be like? He’s chosen to be called Leo: that’s no accident | Catherine Pepinster

Popes who take that name tend to be progressive reformers. If Trump and JD Vance think they have an ally in the Vatican, I think not Catherine Pepinster is a former editor of The TabletWhat’s in a name? When it comes to a pope – everything. The white smoke from the Sistine Chapel earlier this evening told the world that a new pope to succeed Francis had been elected – and for the first time the pontiff is an American.But if Donald Trump and his Catholic convert Veep, JD Vance, are ready to cheer, then they should think again. Cardinal Robert Prevost has chosen the name Leo XIV – and if you’re a papal Leo, you tend to be a reformer at the progressive end of Catholicism. That Prevost has decided to become Leo XIV will make Catholics think immediately of the last Leo – Leo XIII – and his 1891 encyclical or teaching document, Rerum Novarum, which outlined workers’ rights to a fair wage, safe working conditions and the rights of workers to belong to trade unions. If Pope Francis was the ...

Politics

2 d. ago Rich MAGA Catholics fly to the Vatican after Trump said he'd 'like to be Pope'

US President Donald Trump joked he would like to be the new Pope after the death of Pope Francis. But some of his supporters are taking his comments a little too literally

Politics

1 week ago The interim pope is a guy called Kevin. Why do people find that funny? | Emma Beddington

The name was good enough for actor Kevin Costner and Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson, to say nothing of an actual saint, Kevin of Glendalough. Maybe the papal connection could make it cool againI don’t think I’m imagining a collective amusement at “a bloke called Kevin”, as one headline put it, becoming the camerlengo, or interim pope and conclave organiser. The Vatican is such an incense-scented swirl of robes and ritual, history and high camp that it feels pleasingly incongruous that the person temporarily presiding over all its weird arcana is the very ordinarily named Cardinal Kevin Farrell.But is there a kind of snobbery to it? That’s something the Kevins of France know all about. The name became exceptionally popular there in the early 1990s, especially among working-class families, peaking in 1994 when 15,000 babies were called Kevin. It caught on, the thinking goes, thanks to the prominence of a handful of US pop culture Kevins at a time when people were starting to be more ...

Politics

1 week ago Trump says he 'thinks' Ukraine is ready to 'give up' Crimea and tells Putin to 'stop shooting' after US president's meeting with Zelensky at Pope Francis funeral

The comments came after the pair met on the sidelines of Pope Francis ' funeral on Saturday, their first face-to-face since the disastrous White House summit in February.

Politics

2 w. ago As Pope Francis is laid to rest, is his legacy of a more compassionate Catholicism at risk? | Julian Coman

Some, especially within the US, see the conclave as an opportunity to establish a more conservative leaderFor Catholics who cherished Pope Francis’s relentless defence of the dignity of migrants and minorities, the footage of his deeply awkward meeting with JD Vance on Easter Sunday made for unsettling viewing. During his 12 years in St Peter’s chair, Francis railed against Christian complicity with “America first”-type nationalist movements across the west. Here, looming over him on what turned out to be the eve of his death, was the White House embodiment of the insular, bullying politics he spent so much energy fighting against.What now? The pope “from the ends of the earth” will be laid to rest on Saturday in an unadorned tomb in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore basilica, after a funeral attended by about 50 heads of state and 130 delegations from around the world. Progressives inside and outside the church will hope that encounter with the US vice-president was not an ominous porten...

Events

2 w. ago Péter Erdő is a strong candidate to be the next pope – and that’s reason to be fearful | Alex Faludy

The archbishop is traditionalists’ preferred candidate for a reason: his papacy would wind back the progress made under Pope FrancisWho might be the next pope? The question is famously difficult to answer. But we can be reasonably confident that if the successful contender comes from the traditionalist camp – as opposed to the reformists – then he is likely to be Hungary’s most senior bishop, Péter Erdő.If you follow Hungarian politics then you will know of Erdő – a highly cultured man, respected for his broad learning well beyond his specialism in church law. His expertise has made him a valued consultant to Vatican bodies, while his sermons and interviews abound with historical and literary references. Yet he’s also a remote figure, lacking the common touch that defined Francis’s papacy; ascetic-looking, he’s rarely pictured smiling.Alex Faludy is a British-Hungarian freelance journalist based in Budapest, specialising in religious affairs Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago What did Pope Francis think of JD Vance? His view was more than clear | Jan

Francis was as outspoken as could be without naming names, when he criticized Vance in his February letter to US bishopsWe might never quite know what Pope Francis said to the US vice-president during their very brief meeting on Sunday. In the widely shared video clip, it was hardly audible. The morning after, Francis died, and Vance jetted to visit India, finding time to tweet that his heart went out to the millions of Christians who loved Francis (implying, I suppose, that not all Catholics loved him) and patronizing the dead pontiff by calling one of his homilies “really quite beautiful”).Francis had been as outspoken as could be without naming names, when he criticized Vance in his February letter to US bishops; but he was not just registering his rebuke of Trump and Vance’s cruel treatment of refugees and migrants; he was reacting to a broader trend of instrumentalizing religion for nationalist and authoritarian populism. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago The global south has lost its pope. The world has lost its conscience | Nathalie Tocci

He was no liberal, but Francis embodied a spirit of international solidarity that is in alarmingly short supplyPope Francis died hours after meeting the US vice-president, JD Vance. If that wasn’t a bad enough omen, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump’s acolyte and self-styled “Christian nationalist”, appeared to welcome the pope’s death as a sign of “evil” being “defeated”.In fact, despite a series of clashes with the Trump White House, Francis was no liberal. While refraining from judging homosexuality, he explicitly disapproved of the liberalising synodal path embarked on by the Catholic church in Germany, which ruled in 2023 that church employees could not be sacked for entering same-sex relationships or remarrying after divorce. On abortion, euthanasia, women and LGBTQ+ rights, Francis betrayed the high hopes that liberals and progressives had bestowed upon him. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Mia Khalifa sparks bizarre backlash over Pope tweet as X users say people can't read

The controversial adult star posted a bizarre tweet on X sparking backlash from some users while others accused them of not being able to read her comment about the Pope

Politics

2 w. ago Look to his stand on Gaza: Pope Francis gave us moral leadership in amoral times | Owen Jones

With his outspokenness about Israel’s outrages, the late pope showed up the hypocrisy of the media and politiciansThe deaths of major public figures can provoke the most grotesque outpourings of hypocrisy. So it goes for Pope Francis, now lauded by leaders and media outlets that were complicit in the very evils he condemned. “Pope Francis was a pope for the poor, the downtrodden and the forgotten,” said Keir Starmer, a prime minister who stripped the winter fuel payment from many vulnerable pensioners before launching an assault on disability benefits predicted to drive up to 400,000 Britons into poverty. “He promoted an end to suffering across the globe,” wrote Joe Biden, enabler of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.Indeed, the fate of Gaza seemed to preoccupy the pope’s final years. In his last Easter address, he condemned the “death and destruction” and resulting “dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation” – a powerful sermon that hardly any western media outlets covered. I...

Politics

2 w. ago Pope Francis’ approach did not win him friends within the church bureaucracy. But he lit the path for us all | Francis Sullivan

While his legacy in confronting the sex abuse scandal is still incomplete, Francis demonstrated that change is possible and mercy can be realPope Francis, groundbreaking Jesuit pontiff, diesPotential candidates to succeed Pope FrancisEarly in his papacy Pope Francis said the name for God is mercy. He understood the church had become too doctrinaire, divisive and judgmental for too many people. The drift of Catholics from conventional practice in the west said as much. He knew the church had alienated the LGBTQ community, discriminated against women and resisted full participation for divorced and remarried Catholics. He acknowledged that previous popes had not confronted the clerical sex abuse scandal. He wanted to do better and the Catholic world was with him, the institution was not.The Catholic church by its nature is a conservative institution. It uses inertia as a management tool. Change is a slow and drawn-out affair. Francis regularly railed against clericalism because of its...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on Pope Francis: an outsider who was a force for good in the world | Editorial

The Argentine pontiff was a vital progressive influence on issues such as migration, and fought for a more merciful, less rigid Catholic churchDefying doctors’ orders to rest following his battle with double pneumonia, a weak Pope Francis last week visited Rome’s Regina Coeli prison, where he blew kisses towards inmates and spent half an hour in discussion with some of those incarcerated. Sadly, this Maundy Thursday encounter turned out to be one of the last acts of a supremely hardworking papacy. In retrospect, its location was entirely appropriate.Throughout his 12 years in Saint Peter’s chair, Francis sought admirably to refocus the Catholic church’s energies on the marginalised, while challenging the power of entrenched interests. Coming, as he put it, “from the ends of the earth”, the first non-European pontiff of modern times was an outsider pope and a radical one. Within the church, the Argentine was a sometimes spikily direct reformer; outside it, he was a signific...

Politics

2 w. ago Pope Francis brought an outsider’s eye to the papacy – with a focus on justice, ecology and humanity | Catherine Pepinster

He will be remembered as one of the great communicators of Christian faith – but healing the church’s divisions was beyond himCatherine Pepinster is a former editor of The TabletJust three days before he was admitted to hospital for bronchitis in February, Pope Francis delivered a strongly worded message to the US about Donald Trump’s attitude to migrants. In a letter sent to the country’s Roman Catholic bishops, he made clear that he completely disagreed with Trump’s mass deportation plans for illegal migrants. “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”The sentiment was not only reserved for Trump. Throughout his 12 years as pope, Francis, who died this morning at the age of 88, focused on the dignity of people, especially those viewed by others as outsiders – whether migrants, prisoners, whom he often visited, or LGBTQ+ people. “Who am I to judge?” he famously said when asked about his ...

Politics

2 w. ago Pope Francis brought an outsider’s eye to the papacy – even if healing the church’s divisions was beyond him | Catherine Pepinster

He will be remembered as one of the great communicators of Christian faith, with a focus on justice, ecology and humanityCatherine Pepinster is a former editor of The TabletJust three days before he was admitted to hospital for bronchitis in February, Pope Francis delivered a strongly worded message to the US about Donald Trump’s attitude to migrants. In a letter sent to the country’s Roman Catholic bishops, he made clear that he completely disagreed with Trump’s mass deportation plans for illegal migrants. “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”The sentiment was not only reserved for Trump. Throughout his 12 years as pope, Francis, who died this morning at the age of 88, focused on the dignity of people, especially those viewed by others as outsiders – whether migrants, prisoners, whom he often visited, or LGBTQ+ people. “Who am I to judge?” he famously said when asked about his attit...

Politics