Why does the right hate the pope so much? [View all]

Why does the right hate the pope so much?
It might be the weirdest fact of this upside-down decade: The church is on the right side of history (sort of)

By Andrew O'Hehir
Executive Editor
Published April 5, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) My adult children and I amused ourselves recently with an absurd fictional scenario in which we reach Karl Marx by spectral telephone in the afterlife — where he is no doubt surprised to find himself — and try to explain that right-wing Americans of the 21st century, with no apparent sense of irony, sometimes accuse the pope of being a Marxist.

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On one level, the deepening right-wing antipathy toward Leo and his predecessor, Pope Francis, is easily understood. Neither of them made any substantive changes to core Roman Catholic doctrine, but when you’re the bishop of Rome and the head of the world’s largest single religious denomination, practice matters more than theory. Both Leo and Francis have subtly but noticeably downplayed the most unforgiving elements of church dogma on human sexuality and reproduction, while focusing far more visibly on issues like worsening global inequality, predatory capitalism, war, poverty and the fate of migrants and refugees.

Leo has often been described as a more conciliatory and less confrontational figure than Francis, who clearly emerged from what might be called the center-left of the Latin American church. But while the White Sox fan now in the Vatican almost never utters Donald Trump’s name, he has made little effort to conceal what he thinks of Trump’s mass deportation agenda, his support for the Israeli destruction of Gaza or the unprovoked U.S. war against Iran.

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It’s hardly surprising that Americans on the MAGA-adjacent far right, whether inside or outside the church, experience that kind of language as a startling political betrayal. They have long understood the Roman Catholic hierarchy, especially the notoriously reactionary American cardinals and bishops, as a fellow-traveler force of unbending moral rigor, devoted to the persecution and suppression of liberals, radicals, socialists, feminists, LGBTQ advocates and other political or sexual nonconformists. .....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/04/05/why-does-the-right-hate-the-pope-so-much/