Mastodawn

Rebecca Bravo Oct 27

Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)

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

Dark Phoenix 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇵🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈Oct 11

@suzannealdrich DAMN, I 💙 this Pope

Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)Oct 11

@Darkphoenix I share this sentiment. The most beautiful text in the Christian bible is the Beatitudes and I love to see a Pope who reminds us all of them.

Tom Halasz Oct 11

@suzannealdrich
Maybe they can confront him while they have dinner with him.
Again.

@suzannealdrich I grew up Evangelical but I feel very out of place and uncomfortable since Christian Nationalism infected it.

Between Francis and now Leo I'm starting to feel like I'd be more at home in Catholicism.

M. Grégoire Oct 11

@grendel84 @suzannealdrich
There's a place for all of us sinners to belong in the Catholic Church.

@grendel84 @suzannealdrich Catholicism is a wide place with lots of room for good and ill. Opus Dei is in there. There is some good in the evangelical space as well. For myself, I’m finding atheism an increasingly comfortable fit. At least agnosticism.

@su_liam @grendel84 @suzannealdrich I've never been religious, but from what I hear from friends, a significant part of the Episcopalian churches are made up of families leaving other churches for being intolerant to their queer kids, so that may not be a bad place to start looking.

Full Metal Archaeopteryx Oct 11

@grendel84
The Catholic Church is still heavily biased against women

It will be interesting to see how the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops responds to this missive. They lean conservative and many of the members were openly hostile to left-leaning Francis' pronouncements
@suzannealdrich

Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)Oct 11

@DelilahTech @grendel84
I am going to be interested, too. I am heartened by recent developments, but not holding my breath until there’s a female Pope, or acceptance of abortion rights.

@suzannealdrich @DelilahTech @grendel84 a black female Pope seems unlikely, but if you told me the richest man in the world would enthusiastically do a Nazi salute alongside a convicted rapist US president ten years ago I'd not have believed it either.

Let's have some more positive surprises now, to balance things out. Please dear God, make this happen, and please make them weird and funny and wholesome. #atheistPraying 🤯

I'll eat those dry round white thingies too if it helps. Pinky promise.

Li ~ Crystal System Oct 11

@suzannealdrich rare pope w??

MacCruiskeen Oct 11

@suzannealdrich Our xtian nationalists want to eliminate rules against clergy making political speech from the pulpit. They may not like what they get.

Knut Branson Oct 11

@suzannealdrich they were pretty quick to deny communion to pro-choice politicians.

Jen 🏳️‍⚧️Oct 11

@suzannealdrich
I really want to share this outside of Mastodon, but the only search results for this text is LinkedIn, and one FB post.

Can you add a link to a source about the leak?

Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)Oct 11

@jvw I have this Reuters article which refers to the meeting with US bishops. After this on the 9th the apostolic exhortation was published so it’s no longer a secret leak.

VATICAN CITY, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Pope Leo told U.S. bishops visiting him at the Vatican on Wednesday that they should firmly address how immigrants are being treated by President Donald Trump's hardline policies, attendees said, in the latest push by the pontiff on the issue.
Leo, the first U.S. pope, was handed dozens of letters from immigrants describing their fears of deportation under the Trump administration's policies during the meeting, which included bishops and social workers from the U.S.-Mexico border.

https://www.reuters.com/world/pope-leo-tells-us-bishops-address-trumps-immigration-crackdown-2025-10-08/

Robin Barton Oct 11

@suzannealdrich I never thought I would see eye to eye with the Pope but good for him

Level 98 🇺🇦Oct 11

@Robo105 @suzannealdrich Yes. I'm not sure how the Catholic institution promoted someone like him but one should take it when it happens.

[On the assumption this is genuine.]

Robin Barton Oct 11

@level98 @suzannealdrich True

Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻

@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?

Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)Oct 11

@murdoc The letter is out; you can read it from the source:

https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20251004-dilexi-te.html

Interview with US Archbishop Broglio:

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2025-10/archbishop-broglio-usccb-audience-pope-leo-xiv-church-u-s-unity.html

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 ] _____________________

🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦Oct 11

@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.

Joe ❌👑Oct 12

@grumpybozo @murdoc @suzannealdrich It appears that it was only intended to be temporarily private (giving the bishops a heads up before making it public).

🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦Oct 12

@not2b @murdoc @suzannealdrich Very much in keeping with the top-down structure of the Catholic Church

James Wells Oct 12

@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.

Lea de Groot TZ+10 Oct 12

@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*.

James Baillie Oct 13

@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.

Mattsdspatch Oct 12

@suzannealdrich Raised in the church; mom worked hard all her adult life to be a certifiable Catholic saint. Did a damned good job of it, too. As for me, I knew I was agnostic by age 8, long before I had a word for it. Rome refused to condemn the Viet Nam war, which, by the end, anyone with open eyes knew was based on lies . That stance would have made many hundreds of thousands of draft-age youth valid conscientious objectors . Glad to see they aren't whistling past this latest atrocity .

@suzannealdrich
Maybe the church will not sit by this time like they did when Hitler rose

@suzannealdrich

I support this citizen of Chicago in his global messaging to end the despotism in america

Unholy Ordnance Oct 14

@suzannealdrich

Powerful stuff - a much needed call to humanity - Leo the Lion - thanks for posting

Pino Carafa Oct 16

@suzannealdrich any link to the actual transcript of the letter?