Catholics have a new Pope, and for the first time in the church’s history, it’s an American. It took the College of Cardinals only two days to elect U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost as the successor to Pope Francis. Prevost — who has taken the name Leo XIV — was by no means a frontrunner for the papacy, and as the world scrambles to learn about the new pontiff, it’s clear he harbors at least one very American habit: posting.
Prevost appears to have been an active user of Twitter, now known as X, since 2011. The first tweets from the account @drprevost date back to the reign of Pope Benedict XVI and include rather mundane updates like “In Rome, Council meetings.”
But Prevost has also used the platform to criticize Donald Trump and his administrations’ approach to immigration policy. In 2015, Prevost tweeted an article critical of then-candidate Trump’s “problematic” “anti-immigrant rhetoric.”
In a recent February 2025 post, which has gone viral since Prevost’s elevation, he wrote that Vice President J.D. Vance — a Catholic convert in adulthood — was “wrong” about his attempts to find a theological justification for the administration’s treatment of migrants. “Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” Prevost wrote. (He added a second post critical of Vance’s misunderstanding of the doctrine of “ordo amoris.”)
In his most recent post before entering Conclave, Prevost criticized Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for making light of the deportation and detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Prevost linked to an article from the website Catholic Standard comparing the plights and persecutions experienced by immigrant and refugee communities to the Passion of Jesus Christ.
The reaction from the MAGA right — which in recent years has also taken a liking to ultra-conservative Catholicism — was immediate and predictable.
“WOKE MARXIST POPE,” wrote Laura Loomer — a far-right 9/11 conspiracy theorist who is close enough to Trump to advise him on national security staffing decisions. In another post, Loomer wrote that Prevost was “just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican,” and that “Catholics don’t have anything good to look forward to.”
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Sean Davis, the founder of the right-wing website The Federalist, wrote that he had been worried the cardinals would “select a left-wing, Western European pope to use the Roman Catholic Church to counter the rise of national populism in general, and Trump in particular, and to bolster globalist forces against those who believe the purpose of a country is to safeguard its own people.”
“The new pope was born in America, not Western Europe, so I was wrong on that score, but I fear I wasn’t wrong about the rest,” he wrote.
Right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly, who was initially thrilled over the election of an American Pope, later wondered if it was “too much to hope that some 20-year-old ran the new pope’s X account and he never looked at it?”
Through his tweets and retweets, Prevost has waded into several hot-button topics in American politics — from gun control to the death penalty to climate change to the murder of George Floyd.
In 2013, he retweeted anti-capitalist political cartoon. It features a drawing of Pope Francis standing beside a poster reading “GREED IS NOT GOOD,” and behind a trio of men in suits with briefcases reading “Wall Street,” “Banks,” and “Big Biz.” The men are pointing back at the pontiff and shouting, “Blasphemy!”
In 2015, Prevost tweeted an endorsement of environmental advocacy within the church, writing: “SIGN THE CATHOLIC CLIMATE PETITION.”
In 2017, in the aftermath of the mass shooting massacre at a music festival in Las Vegas, Prevost retweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) criticizing Republicans and their reliance on divine intervention to solve gun violence. “To my colleagues: your cowardice to act cannot be whitewashed by thoughts and prayers,” Murphy wrote. “None of this ends unless we do something to stop it.”
In 2017, in the aftermath of the racist rally in Charlottesville, Prevost retweeted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ condemnation of “the abhorrent acts of hatred.” In 2020, Prevost retweeted prayers for the murdered George Floyd, and his family, and posted a call for more “leaders in the Church to reject racism and seek justice.”
Of course, the Pope is still Catholic. Prevost’s social media also contains a flurry of anti-abortion posts, such as a meme in which the “B” and “R” in “ABORTION” have been replaced to spell “ADOPTION.” In another post, Prevost shared a now-broken link to the White House website with the caption: “Rescind the HHS Dept. Mandate Requiring Catholic Employers to Provide Contraceptives/Abortifacients to Their Employees.” The new pope has also called for the eradication of the death penalty.
Trump and Vance have responded a little more diplomatically to Prevost’s election than their followers online.
“Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just named Pope,” Trump wrote. It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
The reverent tone was a shift for Trump. The president has recently flirted with blasphemy by telling reporters he’d like to be chosen as Pope himself, and even posting an AI-generated image of himself in papal vestments.
“Congratulations to Leo XIV, the first American Pope, on his election!” Vance wrote. “I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the Church. May God bless him!”
Vance met with Pope Francis a day before his death. The same day, Francis called for mercy for migrants in his Easter blessing.
Prevost will likely cease posting under his personal social media accounts now that he’s taken on the mantle of the global church. But who knows, maybe a dedicated poster in the pontificate is exactly what the Catholic Church needs.
From Rolling Stone US
