I hate the fucking American media! I found an article but it was a super-lazy garbage job by the reporter. At the very, very end there was this tripe.
While Prevost is seen overall as a centrist, on some key social issues he’s viewed as progressive. He has long embraced marginalized groups, a lot like Francis, who championed migrants and the poor. But, also like Pope Francis, the Illinois native opposes ordaining women as deacons, for instance, so on that point he’s seen as conservative on church doctrine.
“Progressive” is a word that hardly has any meaning in the US. And that’s quintuplely true for somebody like the pope. So - he’s not in favor of death camps for the homeless - I guess.
he publicly rejected Vance’s defense of Ordo Amoris – that’s something. but doesn’t appear that he’s a liberation theologian or anything.
and as @funkystuff implies, taking the name leo suggests probably a renewed articulation of Catholic social thinking.
bro the world will be a nuclear wasteland before there’s a liberation theology pope.
he publicly rejected Vance’s defense of Ordo Amoris – that’s something.
As a filthy pagan, what does this mean?
Vance argued that an old theological doctrine from St Thomas Acquinas meant that Christian love is hierarchical, where one must first love their family, their community, then the rest of humanity.
Provost called him out for completely distorting that doctrine. Provost showed that the implication of Ordo Amoris is not that one must love one’s family/community over others, but instead it’s just explaining the nature of that love.
To put it in Marxist terms, it’s like if a patsoc said that Starbucks baristas are nonproductive labor and don’t deserve to benefit from socialism, then Claudia de la Cruz explained how Marx never said one kind of labor is more important than another.
Lib Pope with strong ties with Peru. He helped convince Pope Francis to dissolve a Catholic Far-Right group in Peru that abused children. Is pro-immigrant and said some anti-trump and anti-fujimori stuff. The Peruvian Far-Right hates him. He cares about climate change.
He also said anti-lgbtq+ stuff, anti-abortion and doesn’t seem he wants to give eomen more power within the church. There are some accusations that he let some pedo priests in the US live near places children visit, and some about him not caring about victims in Peru (the Peru ones seem fake, only right-wing newspapers were publishing it. The US idk).
So not good but could be worse?
Better than the average Pope candidate but not woke Pope. He’s definitely part of the afrancis faction and his anti LGBT stuff was a single comment 15 years ago.
Still better than most of the others (the better ones were Tagle and Zuppi). I think this came as a compromise between the US catholics and the Latin Americans + Progressive/Liberals catholics
I would’ve elected a non-white Pope just to piss off TradCaths. Or really anyone who could piss off TradCaths.
Can we find a gay black Catholic for next time?
The tradcaths are malding or doing some “well I’m going to reserve judgement” cope. It’s the Catholic Church it was never going to be good. But it seems like he’s pretty much just some milquetoast lib, less progressive than Francis but not the worst guy.
“reserve judgement” yeah they better. Better reserve it forever. They’re not even ordained. Who gave them them the idea they could interpret religion. Buncha protestant-ass invaders.
The tradcaths seem confused about what religion they belong to. You don’t like the pope? Tough shit, the cardinals pick the Pope, not the laiety. Oh you wanna really be trad and go back to papal selection from pre-1059? Ok then the current Pope picks the next one, or the King of Bohemia or whoever picks the Pope. You don’t meaningfully participate. Deal with it.
It gets worse yet, in Catholic doctrine the pope is not just elected by a bunch of old men, the holy ghost is interceding in the election, making the pope selected by God.
When tradcaths are mad about who get to be pope, they are being mad at God.
In their defense, a lot of lay Catholics are extremely ignorant of the mystical and theological foundations of their religion.
And that especially includes the radtrads/tradcaths, who are some of the most performative “Christians” I’ve ever met.
That’s not really how it works. Benedict XVI himself famously said that the Holy Spirit doesn’t choose the pope directly, it just makes sure that whoever the Cardinals select isn’t a complete nutter who destroys the Church. Read up on the bad popes, we’ve had literal murderers and men who bought the papacy. John XII was absolutely wild.
Sidenote, a lot of people get papal infallibility completely wrong when dunking on tradcaths. Yes, Catholic doctrine holds that the pope can be infallibe, when speaking ex cathedra. That’s not when the pope gets asked something in an interview, it’s a whole thing with a whole celebration and ritual for when they declare a new dogma of the Church. This has only happened twice, to establish 2 doctrines: the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. That’s all any pope has said infallibly. Everything else a pope has ever said is just pastoral guidance from the most important figure in the Church, who is still very fallible.
This glosses over the corrolary catholic doctrine that the pope cannot promulgate heretical doctrine as he is guided by the holy spirit. If the pope said some crazy shit in an interview, it’s not “infallible”, but it also can’t be wrong on a doctrinal level.
The idea that there has only ever been two Ex Cathedra statements is also incorrect as per the Congegation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Ratzinger declared that letters written by John Paul II on matters like women ordination were Ex Cathedra and also that in general a lot more stuff is Ex Cathedra than is “traditionally presented”.The angry atheists, as per usual, are closer to being right than the apologists.
He’s someone who looks centrist but is solidly in Francis’s camp.
I think he was elected for a singular purpose and that is a specially forged dagger aimed at the Anglosphere Catholic right.
I think this is why Tagale lost influence, Francis was increasingly concerned with the heretical tendencies in Tradcaths and has moved to crush them once and for all before they can schism.
Basically Vance may have killed Francis but Francis had his revenge stacked up long before.
You’re making hopeful. Stop
Picking an American with South American heritage seems pointed and specific at this time. I hope that was their intent.
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” - francis to vance in his last moment probably
https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/05/08/pope-robert-prevost-lgbt/
However, The New York Times reports that in 2012, Prevost was critical of entertainment media that held “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel,” including the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”
Your basic milquetoast lib was still anti-gay marriage in 2012. That was the year Obama completed his “evolution.” Wonder if this guy has undergone a similar “evolution” on this topic in the years since. This was also pre-Francis. Not that I expect him to be extremely pro-lgbt or something, but a lot has changed since then and in many other respects he seems like a milquetoast lib.
That’s fair, I only had a minute of phone time this morning and that was the only thing I saw about him.
Yeah to be clear I’m not gonna fall on my sword defending the pope lol. Also I think “progressive” means something very different in the Catholic Church vs the real world, and I don’t think this pope is even necessarily that, probably more moderate. But this pope does seem to follow Francis in a number of ways so it’ll be interesting to see where he falls on this issue. Personally, I don’t think he’ll be horrible, but this is also the Catholic Church so not horrible still isn’t that great. I just don’t think he’ll be a hardline conservative or something.
That quote above tbh wouldn’t be out of place being said by a lib during the gay marriage debates. Maybe without the religious angle, but the general sentiment was there.
Hes the pope, don’t expect much
he’s a catholic priest, which means he’s either a pedophile who should be executed, or a pedophile defender who should be executed. there’s nothing else you need to know
all priests are bastards
Hey that prediction became true! A mild conservative who will likely struggle with elements in the papacy in his early reign, who predicted to become pope.
from what i’ve seen? radlib pope. he has a twitter and a blog i think if you want to see his thoughts as he writes them.
same or worse than francis?
More moderate and fluent in church legalese (doctorate in Canon law and part of the Roman curia), so he has an investment in working within the establishment and caring more about process than about outcomes. While Francis was more of a “fuck around and find out” pope, in that he would say random shit as doctrine and let his aides figure out how to make it work within the church, this guy will spend much more time and energy making sure the ts are crossed and the is are dotted.
he would say random shit as doctrine and let his aides figure out how to make it work within the church, this guy will spend much more time and energy making sure the ts are crossed and the is are dotted
forgive me if I don’t quite understand Catholicism, but I thought whole point of the pope is that he’s the one guy in the whole organization who’s not fully constrained by the millennia of rules that have built up. Like, Divine Providence, or whatever.
Sort of. The Pope is the head of state of the Holy See as well as the head of the Catholic Church. He technically has absolute power to operate the Church as he sees fit, but because the Church is a gargantuan organization with a fuckload of tetchy old men governing its branches he has to play nice or risk schisms or political opposition. He can decide to create a new diocese for instance, but if he’s pissed off the people actually doing that work, it won’t get done. Popes also occasionally make divine proclamations, but it’s typically about christian canon and not church operations.
It’s all that fox said, and the pope is pretty much the ultimate authority when it comes to doctrine (what to believe, and how to interpret scripture and so on), but he’s also the head of a massive bureaucracy with hundreds of years of legal codes and institutions that work together to run the catholic church.
If Francis said “from now on all priests have to wear silly hats”, his aids would have to translate that into “what is a hat”, “what counts as silly”, “who’s gonna provide the hats”, “who’s gonna make sure everyone wears the hats” and “what happens if they don’t wear the hat”. This new guy seems to be much more in tune with the legal part of the job, and that makes him a much more conservative option than the guy before him in my opinion, because he will try to operate using the tools the church already has.
The pope is an absolute monarch, but he’s like the captain of a large ship: he can’t run the thing all by himself, and in order for the church to do what he says, he has to play the game.
He’s to the right of Francis overall. But he’s to the left of the dems mostly on the poor, but to the right of them on some social stuff.
less lib than francis but pretty much the same thing
If he doesn’t talk about gaza I’ll hate him anyway
I just KNOW he throws down at Giordano’s
I’d wait for Magnificast or Know Your Enemy to drop a podcast on him.
Wikipedia claims that in his capacity as head of the Augustinian order he refused to remove an SA priest from his position. I have no idea if that is true but I can confirm at least that said SA allegations against that priest are true:
https://patch.com/illinois/newlenox/providence-ex-president-dismissed-order-whereabouts-unknown
His Wikipedia page seems to be pretty much useless.
Criticism
Prevost has faced criticism from advocates for clergy abuse survivors regarding his handling of sexual abuse allegations during his leadership in the Augustinian order and in Peru. The advocacy group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) has alleged that Prevost may have failed to act against abuse claims involving Richard McGrath, a former president of Providence Catholic High School, allowing him to remain in his position despite longstanding accusations.
Something about the mild-mannered phrase “has faced criticism” triggers a primal rage within the depths of my being
Lenin, who previously had faced criticism for distributing illegal revolutionary literature, has now joined the editorial board of Novaya Zhizn.
