(LifeSiteNews) –– The conclave has chosen an anti-Trump, pro-Synod American – Robert Prevost, now known as Leo XIV – to succeed Francis.
Vocal critic of Trump immigration policy
Prevost is a vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and has consistently used his X account to promote material hostile to Trump’s immigration policies.
In one instance from February 3, Prevost reposted an article by NCROnline titled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” The article criticizes the U.S. vice president for correctly arguing that we owe more immediate responsibility to our own family members and country than to those overseas – a position taught by St. Thomas Aquinas and reiterated in the “social encyclicals” of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century popes.
He shared a similar article by dissident America Magazine on the same topic days later.
Persecuted Bishop Strickland, appointed McElroy
As head of the Congregation for Bishops, Prevost was instrumental in the removal of Bishop Strickland from Tyler, Texas, and the leading French conservative bishop, Dominique Rey, from his diocese of Fréjus-Toulon.
Meanwhile, he has placed openly heterodox bishops in sees worldwide. The most notorious is Cardinal McElroy, who was installed as Archbishop of Washington despite being implicated in the cover up of sexual abuse by ex-Cardinal McCarrick
Banned Communion on tongue, promoted invalid confessions
During COVID, Prevost imposed receiving Communion on the hand, and Confession by telephone, which is both invalid and sacrilegious.
He also reposted a call for the abortion-tainted COVID-19 vaccines to be “available for all” and a USCCB post that called getting vaccinated “an act of love.”
Support of synodality and the ‘synodal church’
A strong supporter Francis’s radical agenda, Prevost supports “synodality.” He has suggested that “synodality” is the solution to “the current polarization currently gripping the Church.” He dismissed those who “prefer the security of answers already experienced in the past.”
Prevost restated this goal during his speech from the loggia in his first public appearance following the conclave, in which he said, “we want to be a synodal Church.”
