Pope Leo’s secret letter to U.S. bishops just leaked. TrumpWorld is not going to like what it says.

This week in Rome, Pope Leo XIV quietly handed a letter to a group of visiting U.S. bishops.

Inside were messages from migrants families separated by deportations, children afraid to sleep and one unmistakable command:

“You must speak. You must not remain silent.”

According to Vatican officials and border clergy, Leo told the bishops to publicly confront Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, calling it “inhuman” and “morally indefensible.”

This is the first time the new pope has explicitly addressed Trump’s second-term raids — and he didn’t hold back.

“Where the world sees threats,” Leo said, “the Church sees children. Where walls are built, she builds bridges.”

That line, delivered to stunned bishops, echoes through his new 104-page exhortation Dilexi te (“I Have Loved You”), a sweeping document about dignity, inequality, and the moral cost of indifference.

Leo’s warning is clear: A society that treats compassion as weakness is already in decay.

He called the growing cruelty toward migrants “a test of our humanity,” adding that a nation that forgets mercy “falls into a cesspool.”

The message is not subtle.

It’s a direct challenge to Trump’s so called “Christian nationalism” a movement that claims to defend life while supporting family separations, mass deportations, and detention camps.

“Someone who says they are against abortion but supports the inhuman treatment of immigrants,” Leo said, “is not really pro-life.”
That single line has conservative Catholics scrambling and MAGA media fuming. But

Leo isn’t here to please politicians, he’s here to call their bluff.
His tone is fatherly but firm.

Where Trump demands obedience, Leo calls for conscience.

Where Trump trades empathy for applause, Leo reminds the Church that silence is complicity.

This bears repeating: “Either we regain our moral and spiritual dignity,” he writes, “or we fall into a cesspool.”
https://toad.social/@wdlindsy/115355973131640335

William Lindsey :toad: (@[email protected])

Claire Giangrave offers a succinct and comprehensive guide to Pope Leo's "I Have Loved You," noting that "Leo has been increasingly vocal in his appeals to welcome the stranger, especially in his native United States, where the Trump administration is carrying out aggressive deportation policies." #PopeLeo #immigrants #EconomicElites #poverty #ChristianNationalism /7 https://www.npr.org/2025/10/09/nx-s1-5567702/pope-leo-issues-new-document-on-poverty

toad.social

@suzannealdrich
Aren't most American Christians Protestant or thereabouts? Don't they hate Catholics? I think that the trumpers won't care in the least, or else treat it as one more thing to rage against.

Also I'm curious why this letter was secret. If he wants the church as a whole to speak out, why does he hide the encouragement of it?

Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi te of the Holy Father Leo XIV on Love for the Poor (4 October 2025)

APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION   DILEXI TE  OF THE HOLY FATHER LEO XIV  TO ALL CHRISTIANS  ON LOVE FOR THE POOR [ Multimedia ] _____________________

@murdoc @suzannealdrich "Protestant" isn't really a coherent set, and no, they do not all hate Catholics.
As for why a letter from the Pope to his Bishops is not public, that's a corporate management and communications question. It is entirely normal for the top leader of any large organization to speak privately to his subordinate leaders about major issues before announcing their positions publicly.
@grumpybozo @murdoc @suzannealdrich It appears that it was only intended to be temporarily private (giving the bishops a heads up before making it public).
@not2b @murdoc @suzannealdrich Very much in keeping with the top-down structure of the Catholic Church

@murdoc
Many MAGAts consider themselves more evangelical than Catholic, additionally after Chump's tussels with Pope Francis, many of them feel the Catholic church is too woke and too liberal.

Most likely the letter was "secret" only in the form that most internal memos are "secret". Likely Pope Leo had a few choice exhortations that were not meant for public consumption, but to demonstrate his intent to the Bishops.
@suzannealdrich

@murdoc @suzannealdrich
I’m an atheist American and I don’t hate any person because they look to religion. Wackos don’t count. And hard core segregationists and anti-feminist people.

Well, gosh, I’m more biased than I thought.

@murdoc @suzannealdrich probably an early heads up to the American bishops, so they weren’t surprised by the coming press release
@murdoc @suzannealdrich I would say that most American Christians are "Protestant or thereabouts" but I don't know any who "hate Catholics." Many of them would say that Catholics are wrong on most or all points of theology, true, and would even say that Catholics are going to Hell for their beliefs. But nowhere near all of us American Protestant Christians feel that way.
@murdoc @suzannealdrich Most American Christians are usually Evangelical... And they absolutely hate Catholics. The fact that the likes of Opus Dei are in a coalition with the likes of Ziklag will be a very short lived dynamic. These people are fucking crazy and are normally at each other's throats.
@murdoc @suzannealdrich Of the Christians in the US, 22% are Catholic. Trump and his ilk are doing their best to pry them away from the pope, but this is still *massive*.

@murdoc @suzannealdrich They will care. Nearly a quarter of Americans are Catholic, so it's not at all negligible: protestants are more numerous but split between more denominations so it's the largest single church. The US has long had a Catholic base especially via people of French, Italian, Irish, and Spanish/Latin American descent.

Also Trump's win was partly predicated on improving his margin among some very Catholic swing voting blocs, especially Hispanic/Latin American descent voters.