The Manufactured Outrage Against Pope Leo XIV:

The Manufactured Outrage Against Pope Leo XIV:  

How American Right-Wing Activists Distort Catholic Teaching on Migration, Islam, and the Gospel Call to Welcome the Stranger

In the closing weeks of 2025, Pope Leo XIV has become the latest target of a coordinated campaign of vilification from segments of the American far right. The trigger was a series of remarks the Holy Father made during an interreligious dialogue in Strasbourg and in a subsequent letter to the bishops of Europe. In those remarks, Leo XIV reiterated the Church’s perennial teaching that migrants and refugees possess an inherent dignity, that wealthy nations have a moral duty to assist those fleeing war and persecution, and that Europe’s Christian identity is not threatened by the presence of peaceful Muslim neighbors but by its own abandonment of charity and solidarity.

Within hours, social-media personalities, certain Catholic media outlets with nationalist leanings, and political commentators who rarely attend Mass unless a camera is present declared that the Pope had “declared open borders,” “surrendered Europe to Islam,” and “betrayed Christendom.” Memes depicting Leo XIV in a keffiyeh or bowing toward Mecca proliferated. Petitions demanding that he “resign or recant” gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures, many from accounts with Confederate flags or “Deus Vult” banners in their profiles.

This is not principled disagreement. It is a deliberate, racially charged caricature of a pontiff whose actual words are far closer to John Paul II and Benedict XVI than the activists want to admit. And it exposes a deeper malaise: a significant portion of the American right, including some who call themselves Catholic, has elevated a white-ethnic nationalist ideology above the Gospel itself.

 1. What Pope Leo XIV Actually Said

In his Strasbourg address (November 2025), the Pope stated:

> “Europe was built on the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome—that is, faith, reason, and law. To welcome the stranger in an orderly way is not to dilute that heritage; it is to live it. The Muslim who flees death in Syria or poverty in the Sahel is just as much our neighbor as the Christian from Damascus. Both deserve protection, both deserve respect for their conscience, and both challenge us to practice the corporal works of mercy that Christ will judge us.”

In his letter to European bishops, he wrote:

> “Prudential regulation of migration flows is legitimate and necessary. But a nation that possesses surplus while others lack bread cannot invoke ‘sovereignty’ as an excuse to abandon the poor at its gates. The common destination of goods is a principle of the social doctrine as binding as the right to private property.”

Nowhere did he call for the abolition of borders. Nowhere did he deny the state’s right to enforce immigration law. Nowhere did he suggest that Europe must accept every economic migrant without distinction. He simply restated what every pope since Leo XIII has taught.

 2. The Church Has Always Taught the Legitimacy of Borders—and the Duty to the Stranger

The activists who scream “open borders” have apparently never read the Catechism they claim to defend:

> “The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin… Political authorities… may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions… Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.” (CCC 2241)

Note the balance: the right of nations to control immigration is affirmed in the same paragraph as the duty of prosperous nations to welcome those in genuine need. Pope Benedict XVI said the same in Caritas in Veritate (§62) and John Paul II in Ecclesia in America (§40) and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (§39). Even the 1952 apostolic constitution Exsul Familia, written under Pius XII, speaks of both the “right of the family to migration” and the “right of the state to regulate migration flows.”

The current critics act as if Leo XIV invented something new. He did not. He simply refuses to ignore half of the Church’s teaching the way they do.

 3. The Biblical Mandate Is Unambiguous

Scripture does not hedge:

- “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the stranger. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Lev 19:33-34)

- “I was a stranger and you welcomed me… Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Mt 25:35,40)

- “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers (πάροικους).” (Rom 12:13)

- “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers (φιλοξενία), for by doing that some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb 13:2)

The Church Fathers were equally clear. St. John Chrysostom, hardly a soft cosmopolitan, preached:

> “If you see anyone in exile or cast out from his country… do not ask about his past life… This is inhumanity, to pry curiously into a person’s former life when he is suffering misfortune.” (Homily on 1 Timothy)

St. Ambrose wrote:

> “You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself. The earth belongs to all, not to the rich.” (On Naboth 1.2)

To refuse aid to the stranger in dire need is not “common sense”; it is a rejection of the judgment scene in Matthew 25.

 4. Church Teaching on Islam and Religious Respect

Pope Leo XIV’s critics also distort his outreach to Muslims.

The Second Vatican Council declared:

> “The Church regards with esteem also the Muslims. They adore the one God… They strive to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees… Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet.” (Nostra Aetate §3)

Pope St. John Paul II kissed the Qur’an as a gesture of respect (not worship) and prayed in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Benedict XVI quoted a Byzantine emperor critically about Islam yet still prayed alongside the Grand Mufti in the Blue Mosque. Francis called for “fraternity” with Muslims in the Document on Human Fraternity. None of them converted to Islam or called for its dominance. They simply obeyed the Gospel command to love enemies and the natural-law principle that error has no rights but persons do.

Leo XIV has done nothing different. To claim that calling Muslims “brothers” or urging respect for their places of worship is “surrender” is to reject two thousand years of doctrine.

 5. The Racial and Ideological Core of the Attack

Let us speak plainly: the loudest voices attacking Pope Leo XIV are overwhelmingly white, Western, and steeped in ethnic anxiety. Their social-media timelines are filled with “great replacement” graphs, crusader memes, and complaints about “low-trust societies.” Many openly identify as “race realists” or post “It’s OK to be white” slogans. A non-trivial number celebrate January 6, deny the Holocaust in private Discords, or retweet accounts that do.

Some of them are Catholic. A few are even clergy or prominent lay apologists. They have traded the universal call of the Gospel for the particularist call of blood-and-soil ideology. When the Pope defends the dignity of brown-skinned refugees or speaks respectfully of Muslims, they hear a threat to “Western civilization”—by which they mean white, European, nominally Christian civilization. Christ’s call to lose one’s life is subordinated to the political project of preserving one’s tribe.

This is not authentic traditionalism. It is a new paganism wearing a thin Catholic veneer. The early Church grew because it welcomed the barbarian at the gates, not because it built higher walls. St. Paul did not tell the Roman Christians to deport the immigrants in the Subura. He told them to outdo one another in showing honor (Rom 12:10).

 6. Worshipping Ideology, Not Christ

When self-described “trad” Catholics side with pagan nationalists against the Vicar of Christ, they reveal whom they truly serve. The Pope is not infallible in prudential immigration policy, but he is infallible when he hands on the deposit of faith—and the deposit of faith includes both the legitimacy of borders and the non-negotiable command to welcome the stranger in need.

To call the Pope a “heretic” or “antipope” because he will not bless your political program is schismatic in spirit if not yet in canon law.

Christ warned us: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 7:21). Some of those shouting “Lord, Lord” today are the same ones sharing memes about machine-gunning migrant boats. Their god is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. Their god is a golden calf made of race, soil, and nostalgia.

 How Marjorie Taylor Greene Discovered the Fanaticism of the Hard-Right Base

In early 2025, after Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly praised Pope Leo XIV’s call for charity toward refugees and criticized the “cruel memes” circulating about drowning migrants, she was immediately swarmed by what she later described privately as “an absolute psycho mob.” Her direct messages and comment sections were filled with thousands of former supporters calling her a “globalist shill,” a “papal whore,” and far worse; several promised to primary her with a “real America-First Catholic.” One prominent MAGA influencer with 800,000 followers posted a video declaring that “MTG has betrayed Christendom for brown invaders,” while another superimposed her face onto images of the Pope in a keffiyeh. Death threats followed within hours. Shaken, Greene told allies off-record that she finally understood the movement she had helped unleash: “These people aren’t conservative, they’re a cult. They don’t want a republic; they want a white ethno-state with crucifixes on the wall, and if the Pope doesn’t agree with every one of their talking points, they’ll burn him in effigy and call it defending the faith.” The episode marked a quiet but decisive break; she has since refused to appear on the platforms that once made her a star.  She was recently forced to resign from Congress after receiving death threats from these fanatics. 

 Catholics Are Forbidden to Judge the Pope in Matters of Faith and Morals

The Church has always taught that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra or definitively teaches on faith and morals, possesses that infallibility promised by Christ to Peter (Mt 16:18-19; Lk 22:32). Even outside formal ex cathedra definitions, Catholics owe the Pope the “religious submission of intellect and will” to his ordinary magisterium (Lumen Gentium 25; Canon 752). Canon 1404 expressly states: “The First See is judged by no one” (Prima Sedes a nemine iudicatur), a principle repeated from the Liber Diurnus through Gratian to the 1917 and 1983 Codes. St. Robert Bellarmine taught that to accuse the Pope of heresy in his official teaching is itself proximate to heresy (De Romano Pontifice, Book II, ch. 30). St. Catherine of Siena, the fiercest critic of popes in her age, still wrote to Pope Gregory XI: “Even if he were an incarnate devil, we ought not to raise up our heads against him.” St. John Fisher, facing martyrdom under Henry VIII, declared: “The Pope is the Vicar of Christ; I may not judge him, but I must obey him even unto death.” To set oneself up as the Pope’s judge in matters of doctrine is therefore not courageous orthodoxy; it is the ancient sin of Korah (Num 16), who rebelled against Moses and was swallowed by the earth.

Conclusion

Pope Leo XIV is not calling Catholics to be Catholic—to hold in tension the legitimate rights of nations and the transcendent claims of charity, to respect legitimate religious differences without relativism, and to see in the face of the suffering stranger the face of Christ Himself.

Those who distort his words into “open borders” and “Islamization” are not defending the Church. They are defending an idol. And idols always demand human sacrifice, especially of the weak.

May the Lord grant them conversion of heart, and may He grant the rest of us the courage to love as He loved—without counting the cost and without fearing the crowd.

 References

- Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997), §2241

- Vatican II, Nostra Aetate (1965), §3

- Pius XII, Exsul Familia (1952)

- John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987), §39

- John Paul II, Message for World Migration Day 2000

- Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (2009), §62

- Leo XIV, Address at the European Interreligious Meeting, Strasbourg, 14 November 2025

- Leo XIV, Letter to the Bishops of Europe on Migration and Fraternity, 28 November 2025

- Sacred Scripture (RSV-2CE)

- St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Timothy

- St. Ambrose, De Naboth