No pope can afford to be completely apolitical, but Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, is proving to be more political than most — and he’s siding with the left.
It’s a grave mistake that can only hurt the Catholic Church on both sides of the Atlantic.
Leo has been in Spain the last few days, where immigration is today the dividing line between left and right.
Vox, the Spanish populist party, is surging in popularity, and recently the older conservative People’s Party has signed on to Vox’s idea of giving Spanish citizens priority for receiving government services and benefits — a policy known as prioridad nacional.
The country’s left-wing prime minister Pedro Sanchez, on the other hand, is pursuing the Spanish equivalent of Joe Biden’s immigration policy.
Spain has been flooded with immigrants both legal and illegal, and Sanchez is working to legalize hundreds of thousands who arrived unlawfully.
Addressing the Cortes Generales, the national legislature, on Monday, Pope Leo called for “safe and legal pathways, a respectful welcome and real opportunities for integration” for migrants and refugees.
Even when invoking “the right to remain in one’s own land,” the pope framed the issue as “working to ensure that no one has to leave their home due to lack of peace, security or decent living conditions, including economic inequalities and the effects of the climate crisis.”
Those last words are the stinger. A pope’s message will always include peace and compassion for the poor, but economic inequality and climate catastrophism are characteristically left-wing preoccupations.
World media have been taking the pope’s remarks as a rebuke to Vox — and populists everywhere — and a tacit endorsement for Sanchez and his left-wing governing coalition, which faces a general election by the summer of next year.
“Although polling indicates Spanish Catholics gravitate toward the right of the ideological spectrum, the pope’s focus on the suffering of migrants places him in greater political proximity to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s left-leaning administration,” noted Jonas Loesel in Politico’s European edition.
The Associated Press made the same observation about the similarity between Leo’s and Sanchez’s views on foreign policy:
“The overlap is noteworthy since the Catholic Church in Spain has traditionally been closer to the conservative Popular Party than the left, which championed social issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and euthanasia.”
The New York Times summed up Leo’s relationship with Sanchez in a headline: “One Is the Pope, the Other an Atheist. They Both Oppose Trump.”
Read Full Article: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/daniel-mccarthy/2026/06/11/pope-leo-courts-global-left
