President Donald Trump’s avoidance of the first American pope is becoming harder to ignore. While other world leaders engage with Pope Leo XIV daily, Trump remains silent. Why? He fears a moral rebuke — and the image of standing beside a fellow American who has eclipsed him on the global stage.

As Trump’s ICE raids target Catholic parishes, Bishop Earl Fernandes, a prominent conservative leader in the Church, is pushing back. He has lifted the obligation to attend Sunday Mass for immigrant families living in fear, arguing that faith should never come at the cost of a family’s safety.

Defying Trump, Miami’s biker archbishop celebrated Christmas Mass at Alligator Alcatraz — the migrant camp where the Trump–Vance White House once barred Catholic clergy and banned Bibles. Pope Leo later condemned the crackdown as a violation of religious freedom.

As Trump’s ICE raids target parishes, a conservative bishop is defying the White House. Bishop Earl Fernandes is lifting the Sunday Mass obligation for immigrant families living in fear, declaring: “No one should have to choose between their faith and their family’s safety.”

Defying Trump, Miami’s biker archbishop celebrated Christmas Mass at Alligator Alcatraz — the migrant camp where the Trump–Vance White House once barred priests and banned Bibles. Pope Leo later condemned these crackdowns as a violation of religious freedom.

The Gospel of Matthew is clear: Jesus was born into a refugee family. The flight into Egypt is not a metaphor. It is the framework for understanding Christmas. God comes for exiled families, for the exiled within our own homes, and for the parts of ourselves we work hardest to ignore.

NEW: To honor the birth of Christ, Pope Leo XIV has sent three truckloads of food into Ukraine’s war zone for Holy Family Sunday — a move Vatican officials say continues Pope Francis’s legacy of mercy. The aid comes days after reports revealed Francis left part of his will to the Ukrainian people.

“Christians have no enemies.” With those four words on St. Stephen’s feast day, Pope Leo XIV challenged the logic of war and violence — from Gaza to Ukraine to the U.S. border — and reminded believers what Christmas actually demands.

After offering Christmas greetings in ten languages, Pope Leo XIV condemned the treatment of migrants bound for the United States, placing their suffering at the heart of the Nativity story.

In his Christmas homily, Pope Leo drew a stark parallel between Jesus’s birth in a stable and the war in Gaza. He said the Nativity reveals a God who “pitched his fragile tent” among humanity, then asked: “How can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind, and cold?”

In his Christmas Day homily, Pope Leo XIV condemned the “falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send young to their deaths.” He warned that the world’s indifference to Gaza, migrants, and the poor is a rejection of Christ himself.

2025 brought conflict abroad and dysfunction at home. Still, the Christmas story insists: love enters where it’s least welcome.

Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s was standing-room-only — and thousands stood outside in the cold. Before Mass began, Pope Leo went to greet them. It was a visible sign of the homily to come: a society that shuts out migrants and the poor shuts out Christ. www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/to-deny-th...

Pope Leo XIV only wants one gift for Christmas — for us to make peace. In his final address before the holiday, he called on people to reach out to those they’re in conflict with — and make amends before Christmas night.

NEW: President Trump has rejected Pope Leo and the Catholic Church’s plea to pause deportation raids over the holidays, including those targeting Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Masses nationwide.

In 2014, the future Pope Leo passionately sings “Feliz Navidad” at a Christmas party in Peru.

Near the end of Home Alone, Kevin stands outside in the cold, looking through a window longingly at a perfect Christmas he can’t have. If that’s ever been you — today is your day. It’s a day where the darkness itself shines, and no one is without a home.

“A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.” — Pope Leo XIV

Echoing Pope Leo XIV, Florida bishops urged Trump to stop deportations during Christmas Masses. Trump said no — and the bishops called him the Grinch.

Every Advent, I fall for the same scam: that if I prepare properly I’ll be truly ready for Christmas. But Christmas isn’t a reward for the perfect. As Pope Francis said, “A small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than anything else we could do.”

In the first round of ballots, the candidate who actually led was Cardinal Péter Erdő of Hungary — the great hope of the conservative bloc. Their movement mustered enough votes on the initial ballot to put Erdő on top, This is how Leo came back to be elected the 266th successor of St. Peter.

In his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Pope Leo XIV pledged to advance the reform agenda of Pope Francis, calling for a Church that is less egotistical, less rigid, and more committed to service and the poor.

God’s concern for the poor and excluded is central to the Christmas story. Less acknowledged is the claim at its heart: Mary’s Christ child also comes to heal the poverty within each of us.

In perhaps its most brazen deflection yet, Donald Trump’s Justice Department is using a photo of Pope John Paul II with Jeffrey Epstein to launder Trump’s own ties to the sex offender. This gambit comes on the heels of a year of unprecedented Trump-Vance attacks on Pope Leo and the Catholic Church.

Joseph had a plan, but God had a better one. The miracle of Christmas begins with a man who was free enough to listen to the signs of the times — and brave enough to change course.

On behalf of Pope Leo, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa delivered a big Christmas greeting to the children of Gaza.

Stephen Miller’s wife Katie Miller openly attacks Pope Leo XIV.

A cardinal voted twice. Another smuggled in a phone. And the conservative frontrunner reportedly looked terrified when he thought he might win. These revelations and more from the conclave that elected Pope Leo are out in a trilling new book Here’s what you missed behind the Sistine Chapel doors.

Pope Leo XIV just appointed Fr. Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez — an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who became a U.S. citizen in 2018 — as bishop of Palm Beach. That’s right: the Catholic diocese that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is now led by an immigrant priest who’s marched against ICE’s abuse.

If love never costs you anything and never hurts, Christmas has bad news for you. Real love always demands a costly yes — and a hard no.

If “God with us” means anything, it means this: children are not acceptable collateral. Not in Gaza. Not in Ukraine. Not anywhere. Christmas isn’t just about tidings of comfort and joy — it’s about accountability and justice.

“Every one of us — whether we were born in the United States of America or on the North Pole — we all are given that gift of being created the image and likeness of God. “And the day we forget that is a day we forget who we are. We forget who Christ has called us to be.” — Pope Leo (August 2024)

Pope Leo XIV has named Bishop Ramón Bejarano — known for his apology to LGBTQ Catholics and his presence at immigrant protests — as the next bishop of Monterey, deepening the pope’s efforts to elevate leaders aligned with his vision of a more inclusive American Church.

In the end, it won’t be power brokers or politicians who save us — it will be wisdom, the kind that bends low, walks with the poor, and welcomes the stranger.

Today is the late Pope Francis’s 89th birthday. I love Leo, but I miss Francis every day. Rest in peace, Holy Father. We'll never forget you.

NEW: In an historic pick, Pope Leo XIV will appoint Bishop Ron Hicks — a protégé of progressive Cardinal Blase Cupich — as the next Archbishop of New York. He replaces the retiring Cardinal Dolan, who recently faced criticism for calling Charlie Kirk a “modern-day St. Paul.”

In a Vatican audience marking the Feast of St. Lucy, Pope Leo XIV offered unusually candid remarks about his daily routines — and, more consequentially, said he wants to travel to Ukraine.

Pope Leo reminds us Christmas is for the bottom dwellers. The forgotten. The humiliated. The ones who’ve been told they don’t belong. God’s with you.

Advent begins with a strange demand: decrease. But in a week when Trump turned a man’s murder into a story about himself, that demand feels almost unbearable. Here’s why Pope Leo and the Church refuse to legitimize that kind of power.

“We should be less afraid of Islam.” — Pope Leo XIV

America locks up more people than any democracy on earth — and we’ve built a prison system that can’t even pretend it’s about rehabilitation anymore. Today, Pope Leo XIV took direct aim at overcrowding, dead-end sentencing, and our scarcity of mercy. His message lands hardest back home.

Over the past year, the Trump-Vance White House has ratcheted up a campaign against the Catholic Church. The latest target is Pope Leo’s ally Sr. Norma Pimentel and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, which runs a famed humanitarian respite center for migrant families.

If you want to know whether the Gospel is real, Jesus gives a simple test: What happens to the poor? What happens to the sick? What happens to the oppressed? Gaudete Sunday says joy is justified — not because everything is fine, but because God is coming to set things right.

The conclave is built to withstand empires, spies, and kings. Not iPhones. Yet during the very first vote to elect Pope Leo XIV, Vatican security detected an active SIM card inside the Sistine Chapel. Someone had brought a phone. Here’s what happened next.

Openly gay MSNBC Rachel Maddow said during a live event in Chicago that she’s returned to the Catholic Church. She cited the moral witness of Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV, calling the new pope’s election “divine intervention.”

Advent isn’t an intellectual abstraction. It speaks to us here and now. It looks like the Child of Aleppo — pulled from rubble of an unjust war, covered in dust, the world watching and moving on. Christmas dares us to ask whether God is still taking on flesh in places we’d rather not see.

In late 1974, sophomore Bob Prevost and the newly formed Villanovans for Life found themselves grappling with a defining question: Who counts when we talk about the dignity of life? Normally quiet and reserved, 19-year-old Prevost didn’t hesitate. “Everyone,” he said. “It must include everyone.”

In honor of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo — the nation’s first Jewish president — spoke with Pope Leo XIV to thank him for his ministry to the world. Donald Trump remains one of the only leaders of a major nation not to have spoken with the pope.

A new book reveals Pope Leo XIV nearly wasn’t elected at all. After the first ballot, arch-conservative Peter Erdo of Hungary led the conclave. Here’s how Robert Prevost reversed the momentum — and became the first American pope in the Catholic Church’s two millennia history.

Pope Leo XIV, who has repeatedly denounced Trump’s MAGA agenda, used today’s Guadalupe feast to demand that leaders stop lying, reject division, and serve with dignity.