How Pope Leo Became Trump's Most Effective Moral Rival with Christopher Hale

0:00Hello, hello, once again from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center in New York City. I am Carlo Versano, and this is once again the 1600. This country was stone cold dead. Coming at you here on Wednesday on a beautiful hot day here in the Big Apple. It went from spring to summer sometime in the last 48 hours. So I guess that's just how it is now with now that we don't really have seasons anymore. But anyway, we've been talking in the newsletter this week in the column about the fracas, the feud, perhaps even the Holy War, you could say, that has developed between the Vatican and the White House, President Trump.

0:36Today I'm talking with a man at the center of all of it, not Pope Leo. Sadly, he was unavailable. But I do have the next best thing with me, Christopher Hale. Christopher is the author of the excellent Letters from Leo substack. Can't recommend that newsletter enough. It describes itself as a chronicle of how Pope Leo's papacy intersects with American politics, faith, and the digital age during the presidency of Donald Trump. Christopher, welcome. Thanks so much for being with us. I appreciate you having me. So we have a lot to get to, and the timing is excellent. I'm so glad we got you this week.

1:12I know you're a busy man. And I want to get to the reporting, the original reporting that you've done in the Letters from Leo Substack. But let's start with where we are. So President Trump attacked Pope Leo on Truth Social on Sunday night. He called him, quote, weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy, which, I mean, is a hilarious thing to say about the pope. One sentence, one critique you'd ever imagine of a pope would be his crime policy. Weak on crime. So let's put that aside for a moment. Leo responded on Monday when he was on the papal plane going to Africa, I believe. He said, quote, I am not afraid of the Trump administration.

1:50That quote stopped me in my tracks. You don't often hear the Bishop of Rome speaking like that about any administration, but particularly the American presidential administration. You've been tracking this collision for a while now, since Leo's election at the Conclave, I guess a year ago almost exactly. Did it escalate faster than you expected, or was this sort of inevitable? It was inevitable, I think. I think that what we have seen, though, is things have happened below the surface. It was like a raise in the sun, like the like the poem goes and it just exploded. But you could see this ebbing up again and again and again.

2:26I go all the way back. But even the past few weeks, the press gaggles that President Trump has been involved in the name Leo XIV has come up more and more. And you can see in the president's movements. I'm one of the rare people that watches all of them. But you can see that he restrains himself not to talk about Leo XIV in these preceding weeks. Leo had been critical, increasingly critical of the president's war against Iran. But what changed everything, there were really two things. There was this bombshell report that I helped participate in some of the follow-up, but the original report became from the free press about this Vatican Pentagon meeting that we didn't know about in January.

3:03But then Leo's remarks himself, he said that God does not hear those who wage war. He said that on Palm Sunday. He used a phrase about the colonialist control on Holy Thursday. And on Easter Sunday, he said that to lay down their arms. And then in the past week alone, he's used President Trump's name twice. He had not used his name and factored out in the entirety of his pontificate. On Tuesday, a week ago, he had asked for an off-ramp. and then he asked for members of the Americans to call Congress. So he has involved himself more and more in this. And so that caused the ire of the president, but really what set the president over, I'm not sure if you're a golfer, I'm not much of one, but I do watch the Masters on CBS.

3:55Obviously the president's a huge golfer. He was watching the Masters on Sunday on CBS. Roy McIlroy won. Scotty Scheffler got second. Scotty Scheffler, if he had won, we think the president would have called Scotty Scheffler. where he usually calls the winner of the Masters if they're Americans, but he did not. And then the next thing on CBS is 60 Minutes. And the leading segment that night is three top U.S. cardinals, and they're close to Leo XIV, and they critique the president harshly on three things, on the war and Iran, on the deportation, ice raids, and on his general rhetoric. And they said they were emboldened, empowered to speak out by Leo XIV, and it was game over.

4:35That's when the president reacted. You think that's the thing that he clocked as, okay, now I'm going to get involved. Interesting. I had not thought of that. But it makes sense. I mean, he does get his news that way, sort of like through the osmosis of television. So yeah, it makes sense. We had two sources on that on Sunday, and Nora O'Donnell actually confirmed it from CBS News with the president on Monday. So the other night you wrote that it was, quote, one of the most important days in the history of American Catholicism. That's a big claim. Can you defend it and just sort of talk a little bit about what you meant and what you're referring to explicitly?

5:11Sure. Well, I think that really we could put the entire construct of these past few weeks into that category. Look, the Catholic Church is two millennia old. It's 2 ,000 years old. the United States pales in comparison. We're celebrating our 250th anniversary. So the Catholic Church, it's not the most important moment in the history of the Catholic Church. But in terms of stateside, yes. I mean, it's a huge escalation. You hear these battles and they sound medieval. They sound like historical. They don't sound like something that's happened. You really haven't seen since modern times, since the modern papacy, a nation state go this hard through its leader.

5:53after the Pope. And so that is what makes it extraordinary. But, and maybe we'll talk a little bit more about this, but the lead up to this is also important. This meeting between the Vatican and the Pentagon. I mean, your listeners can understand that sounds strange in itself. Why would the Vatican meet with the Pentagon? And so there was these escalations that were happening behind closed doors that precipitated this moment. But yes, I think that, I think the leader of the free world calling out the Pope, who is also an American, that absolutely takes the pie. I think this is the most critical juncture and the most perilous juncture between these two institutions.

6:33Hey guys, sorry for interrupting, but we have a quick ad break right now and we'll be right back. Let's jump right into it. So tell us exactly what happened during this meeting based on the reporting, not just in the free press, but the reporting that you've done on Substack. Sure. And I want to I'll clarify what is confirmed and what is contested by the authorities that were there. Please. And I'll and I'll say that I think that it's in the best interest of both of the Vatican and and the Pentagon to deny a lot of this. So I'll say that from the outset. So the free press reporting came out last Monday, a week ago Monday, and it actually sat silent for about two days.

7:11No one picked up on it for some reason. But we talked about this meeting that happened between the Pentagon and the Vatican on January 22nd. It said that Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican ambassador to the United States, was called in to the Pentagon. So this took place in Washington. This is not happening in the Vatican. It does. Yeah, it takes place in Washington at the Pentagon itself. The story was broken by an Italian journalist. And I think that is a really noteworthy thing. Um, that communicates to me that this got, this caused so much heat in Rome that it leaked out there first rather than here first.

7:50And of course, Pete Hexsef has more or less stripped the ability of the Pentagon press corps to do its job. So there's less, uh, uh, there's less, uh, I would say goodwill, good faith actors covering the Pentagon right now. But that's the first thing that I think is a hint of how serious they took this. And the reporter in the free press talked about, I mentioned that the Abingon papacy which is a phrase that in the Google search trends will never have a higher Google search trend result than like the past week. The Abbeam papacy is very simply a 14th century operation by the French regime, by the French crown, to basically take the papacy under its own auspices because it did not like the power of the pope.

8:34The French regime kidnapped Pope Boniface VIII and moved the papacy for about 75 years, seven pontificates to Avignon, France. So the free press reports this. And I confirmed that and the Financial Times confirmed that these comments were made. I further confirmed that this was deeply disturbing to some of the Vatican. And they saw a militaristic part of this. Now, people on the right took that to mean that people in the Vatican were saying that they were going to bomb the Vatican. No, but they thought they were using the threat, a military might, to keep the Pope in line. And in retrospect, so everyone has confirmed the existence of the meeting.

9:15All the secular press has confirmed the tenor and tone of the meeting. The Vatican has pushed back, and the Pentagon has pushed back on the reference of the Abingon papacy. But we'll let readers take for what they want on it. But we do know it's contentious. so just to be absolutely clear the mention of the avenue on papacy was by our people by elbridge colby i believe right or or one of our yeah yes let me let me tell so there's three different accounts the first account from the pre-press puts it on this man uh that he took it my sourcing told me that it was someone else in the meeting and the department of war actually released photos of who was present at the meeting.

9:59And I don't want to get into the deputies' personal lives per se, but they are both radical traditionalist Catholics, and we can talk about what that means. They have a skepticism of the Catholic Church's reforms at the Second Vatican Council, so they're very pro-Latin mass. They like a more militant church. They like a church that existed centuries ago. They're more skeptical of the modern church. So it does add up that perhaps one of those deputies was the source of those remarks. And the Catholic Herald also confirmed that what they call the, they used the word, a belligerent remarks did not come from the principal but one of the deputies.

10:39But the point being that members of the American, of the White House, of the presidential administration made remarks to the ambassador to the Vatican, the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S., I should say, that the Vatican took as threatening—the U.S. threatening the Vatican in some sort of oblique way, not necessarily that we were going to bomb St. Peter's, but it was enough for them to—this is the part that I want to understand—this was enough for them to decline the invite for Leo to attend the 250th anniversary celebrations in the U.S., or are those two separate things? There is a connection to them.

11:19We think this is the final straw on that. Now, I will say I think it was odd in the first place that the Vatican ever had a consideration of taking this trip for two reasons. Number one, because there was always the possibility that the Trump administration would politicize it. A lot of people ask me, oh, are they afraid that there will be like a Zelensky-Trump type meeting at the White House? And it's actually quite the opposite, that there would be an attempt by Trump to basically buddy himself up with the pope and try to politicize his visit months before the midterm election. That's the second one, is the Vatican tries to avoid trips close to election.

11:57So it's surprising to me that this was ever considered in the first place. But it was. There were dates set in place. It's the first American pope, and this is our big birthday. So I can imagine why they would at least have it under consideration. Sure. Sure. And so from my understanding is this was the last, this was after this, it was put on ice. The Vatican ambassador to, sorry, the US ambassador to the Vatican, who's a friend of mine, he's very conservative, he's a Trump activist. He thinks that President Trump, sorry, that Pope Leo XIV will come next year. I do not think that's the case. I do not think we will see Pope Leo XIV as long as Donald Trump is president.

12:36I think he will wait until his successor. Wow. I mean, again, pretty amazing, given that he is the first American pope from, you know, a guy from Chicago feeling that he can't come here for whatever reason. But again, I just want to make sure everyone understands this reporting, which has, again, been backed up several times now. It's not just one guy saying this, is that our people from our administration made representatives of the Catholic Church and the Vatican uncomfortable at the least in the bellicosity of their language, including, again, I believe this was in your reporting, Christopher, that one of the people in the Pentagon delegation picked up some sort of 14th century weapon during this meeting to, I guess, make their point about the Avignon papacy.

13:21Is that correct? That's correct. And I've actually created a website because we do these things now. If you want to go to Avignon, you're going to have to Google how to spell that, but you can find it. Avignongate. We've got to create a scandal, right? Avignongate.com. You can see every report that exists on it to date. So that's great. We'll put the link to that in the description here. You know, okay, so let's back up for a minute. I want to talk about Vance. Before we talk about Vance, actually, so we're recording this on Wednesday afternoon. I was a little bit worried that by the time I spoke to you, you know, the news cycle moves so fast now that it's like this was all going to be yesterday's news.

13:58People were going to have moved on. Trump actually just moments ago posted a new meme of himself. This time instead of as Jesus Christ, he's merely hugging Jesus Christ. which to me is astounding because he has done really immense damage to himself politically over the last couple of weeks with his spate of sacrilege and blasphemy. Even putting the Pope stuff aside, right? I mean, Easter Sunday, he comes out with the message praising, saying Allah Akbar, and follows that up with his threat to annihilate the Persian civilization, follows that up with his meme of Trump as Christ the healer. And then when he's asked about that at the White House this week, he says, I don't know what you're talking about.

14:43I thought it was a doctor. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor. And it had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one. I thought it was a picture of me as a Red Cross doctor, which is like, how stupid do you think we are, man? You don't even believe that. Come on. Like, what are we doing here? but just and again people talk about this all the time they say oh you know look it's just Trump being Trump like it doesn't matter like people who are with them are with him and people who are against him are against him it doesn't matter what he does I've actually seen in my own life the way that this stuff is starting to to break through a little bit to people who aren't necessarily pro or anti-Trump who are just not political who don't pay attention to everything the way that you know people like you and I do and they're saying to me including you know nannies I talk to at the park when I bring my daughter there.

15:30What is wrong with this guy? Why is he acting like this? Why is he going against the Pope? Why is he being so blasphemous to Christ? I mean, he is theoretically a Christian, at least. Can you speak a little bit to that? I mean, does he understand the political damage he's doing? I think he only understands half of it, and I'm going to explain what I mean by that. I think one of the things you said that's actually extraordinary insight is that among people who aren't involved in politics. And as we remember from the 2024 election, that's where my party struggled. The Democratic Party struggled significantly with those who were just not involved.

16:06They just took the culture writ large, the vibe, as we call it, writ large. And so I think it's really important that that's the part he's struggling with. There were two tweets on Sunday night, and I think that which one got deleted and which one didn't is very revelatory. There was a first tweet attacking Pope Leo XIV. Catholics believe that Pope Leo XIV, theologically, historically, that he's the vicar of Jesus Christ. Vicar of Christ, yep. Very layman's terms is he acts and operates and ministers in the name of Jesus. So is he Christ on earth? No, but he's the next closest thing. And so that tweet stays up.

16:44The other tweet of him depicting himself in AI as Jesus, that gets deleted the next day after that fake story of it being a doctor. That's because evangelical leaders spoke up that were in his coalition, and he responded by deleting it. But Catholic leaders... Which he never does, by the way. He never does that. Which is interesting, but go ahead. Yeah. So the MAGA Catholic leaders, of which there are many, and also conservative bishops, also said, called for an apology, called for him to step back from it. No deletion. To me, that signals two important things. The evangelical ear has power in this administration, and it is something that will move him to change his ways.

17:29The Catholic ear does not. And I think he has a historic skepticism of Catholicism. He famously got into several fights with Pope Francis, But in 2016, talk about bombing, 2016, February 2016, Pope Francis said the wall that Donald Trump was proposing wasn't Christian. And then he responds with this tweet. He says that when ISIS bombs the Vatican, Pope Francis is going to wish that Donald Trump was president. And so I think there is – I forgot about that. And there's an historic bias towards listening to the evangelicals, but I also think that Catholics in the MAGA movement are having a moment of realizing that they don't have much cachet in this movement.

18:08They can't influence the president. Well, also, I mean, they just hit—you know, if you hitch a wagon to this guy, he is going to either humiliate you or, you know, make you question everything that you believe in because that's just what he does, right? So it's like, I mean, as a Catholic, I hate seeing this, but at the same time, I'm like, look, I mean, what did you expect, guys, to the sort of MAGA-Catholic coalition to the extent that it still exists? But Christopher, let's talk about Vance, right? So Vance has now sort of turned, or at least until this morning, he had been sort of the tip of the spear in the White House's decision, I guess, to keep this feud going.

18:46So he was at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia last night where he warned Pope Leo— If you're going to opine on matters of theology, you've got to be careful. You've got to make sure it's anchored in the truth. And that's one of the things that I try to do. And it's certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they're Catholic or Protestant. OK, something about the vice president who was an atheist until six years ago when he converted sort of mansplaining Catholicism to the pope. What did you make of that exactly? Well, I mean, it was extraordinary. And this is just breaking just as we're talking now.

19:27The USCCB, the United States Bishops, they have a doctrine committee. And the doctrine committee just put out a statement saying that Pope Leo XIV is pretty much free to opine on Catholic just war theory. And not only that, he's correct on it. And the origins of Catholic just war theory were created by a guy named St. Augustine, who is the patron of Pope Leo. He's an Augustinian. So his boss, if you will, his patron created this. So it's an absurd statement. I think, though, it represents a big struggle that J.D. Vance is going to have. We're cradle Catholics. So if you practice or not, cradle Catholics, we had the grandmother who always put the photo when we were growing up of Pope John Paul II.

20:05But our parents, they had John XXIII and Paul VI. So it's an historic notion that even if you disagree with the Pope, you never put the Pope on blast. You never criticize the Pope publicly. and every cradle Catholic knows that in their bones. But this man is new to the fate. Right, exactly. And this is the point that I was having talking to the nannies to go back to my conversation with the nannies of Brooklyn who are Catholic. And that's why they were so upset by this, because the way that I was reading what they were saying to me is, look, you don't come against the Pope, period. No matter who you are and what you believe and who the Pope is, you just don't do it.

20:46And that's, I think, why it has stuck in so many Catholics' craw, this whole thing, right? Absolutely. And I think that—like, I'm a progressive, but I have fond memories of Pope Benedict XVI, and you look through my Twitter feed, I've never said a negative word about the man. I lift him up. I don't agree with his political worldview as much, but that's just what Catholics do. Even if we disagree with the politics of the pope, we leave him alone. Exactly. So that's a good point about, I think, how maybe Vance doesn't really understand this because he's new to the faith. And I want to get into the just war theory for a second because I think that's an important part of this.

21:18Because the thing that Vance was specifically talking about when he kind of like told the pope to shut up basically or told him that he – stick to your own – get out of our politics was basically his point. Shut up and pray. Shut up and pray. Oh, that's good. I got to write that down. I'm going to steal that from you. What was I saying? OK, so he was talking about how – this was the quote, right? he was saying that, you know, followers of Christ are never on this. Leo was saying, I'm sorry, that followers of Christ are, quote, never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.

21:51So Vance was essentially saying, look, wars can be just. And the church has, in fact, been on the side of, you know, the warrior. Right. I mean, he didn't mention the Crusades. That's the first thing that came to my mind. But what he did mention was World War Two. I like that the pope is an advocate for peace. I think that's certainly one of his roles. On the other hand, how can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps and liberated those innocent people from those who had survived the Holocaust?

22:29But here's the problem with that, right, Chris? They didn't sell this war as a just war, right? Right. This was they've never attempted to make the point, the Trump administration, that is, that, you know, the Iranians are Nazis and we need to go in there and change the regime. Trump's talking about doing a deal with the remaining members of the of the regime. Right. So this idea that we're supposed to think of this war as some sort of, you know, just battle between good and evil, it's falling flat because they never tried to sell that. No, and I think that's what Cardinal McElroy in the CBS News interview, number one, a scholar.

23:03I mean, he's got a double Harvard degree, one of the smartest men on this planet. And he said that the back and forth of what the objectives were, what we were trying to do, and the fact that they weren't actually publicly articulated. He said that there was actually a requirement in just war theory that it be communicated effectively to the populace and that they understand the purpose and the goal of the war. And I just want to read something that I – I mean I want to go back to the just war theory because he said that Pope Leo XIV – this phrase I found offensive was opining on theology. Yeah.

23:41Right. The pope opining on theology. I hate when he does that. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of his job. I mean, it's also remarkable, too, because the Pope is the protector of the faith. So it's not like when Joel Osteen or some pastor kind of goes, or even a figure parish priest kind of speaks off the cuff. He has a authority behind his office that is given to him. So, I mean, I'm going to read very quickly from what the bishops said. I mean, this is a remarkable critique of the bishops. But they defend the Pope's teaching on just war and what he said. But this is where they end. They say, When Pope Leo XIV speaks as a supreme pastor of the universal church, he is not merely offering an opinion on theology.

24:23He is preaching the gospel and exercising his ministry as the vicar of Christ. The consistent teaching of the church is insistent that all people of goodwill must pray and work towards lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany all wars. That is, I mean, people can walk around it. that is a direct frontal rebuke of what J.D. Vance did last night. And the Catholic Church, we operate very slowly. They did this quickly. They think this is a big deal, and they're escalating things in themselves. They think it's an—they're using the institution of the Church to defend the pontiff against this White House's attack on him.

25:00It's really—I mean, it's amazing. You get so wrapped up, especially, you know, people like you and I who kind of like work in this field of politics slash news. You forget how crazy some of this stuff is, but for the Catholic Church to essentially be one of the last remaining institutions we have that's willing to go up as essentially the moral, you know, opponent of this White House when no other institution exists to do so is remarkable, right? I've never seen anything like it. And I think I just want to add something to it. So this is a religious belief I have. I hope your listeners know that journalism is a strange entity, but I'm a person of faith and I have opinions, et cetera.

25:45I don't hide those opinions. I don't pretend to be a straight news journalist. I come with a belief. And the belief I have is just as God raised up a Pope from behind the Iron Curtain to defeat communism, God raised up Pope Leo XIV, a Pope from the Americas, to defeat Maga-Adoritarianism. That is my foundational belief of how I see Leo operating. I'm referring to the Polish Pope, John Paul II. We call him a Polish Pope, but that's a bit of an anachronism. He was a Soviet Pope. He came from the USSR. He came from the Soviet bloc of Poland. And he helped, conservatives would agree with this wholeheartedly, he helped defeat communism, they would argue, with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.