Leo has generally been prudent, grant- ing fewer interviews than Francis and thereby minimizing the scandal caused by improvised or reckless words. He started a practice of holding


press gaggles once a week — something no pope had done before — but fol- lowing some unhelpful remarks, these seem to have halted. In terms of governance overall, he


has shown himself reluctant to make hard decisions, especially when it comes to taking a firm stand on neu- ralgic issues related to the church’s moral teaching. He has, for example, refrained from


MAKING NEWS During the first week of his pontificate last May, Leo held an audience with journalists at the Vatican. Previously, he had accused Western media of promoting “anti-Christian lifestyle choices.”


takable signal to the White House that his priorities lay with the Mediterra- nean migration crisis. When the public relations misstep


became evident, he announced that he would address Americans via video link from the island, but the message of his choice remained clear. When it comes to communications,


rescinding Francis’ highly controver- sial 2023 decision to allow non-liturgi- cal blessings of same-sex couples. He has praised Amoris Laetitia,


Francis’ 2016 document that caused unresolved uproar over its relaxation of rules on divorced and remarried Catholics. He has yet to directly weigh in on


the errant Catholic Church in Germa- ny which, through its “synodal way,” is unilaterally pushing for heterodox


Future Pope’s Tough Words on Media Prevost lamented how the secular


BY PAUL KENGOR T


he future Pope Leo XIV first caught the attention of Vatican oficials in 2012 with


his views on abortion, marriage, sexuality, and secularization at a synod on the New Evangelization.


The pope at the time was Benedict


XVI, and the focus of the synod was the challenge of maintaining the faith amid the West’s rapidly secularizing and de- Christianizing societies — what Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prior to his election as pontiff in April 2005, had dubbed “the dictatorship of relativism.” The Vatican press ofice released


summaries of 11 statements — so-called “interventions” — by various church oficials of different rank, from priests to bishops to cardinals. Robert Francis Prevost’s text was posted first among the 11 by the Holy See Press Ofice. Catholic News Service’s Rome bureau


chief, Francis X. Rocca, remembered it as “quotable and provocative.”


66 NEWSMAX | MAY 2026


Western mass media was promoting “anti- Christian lifestyle choices,” including (as he named them) “abortion, homosexual lifestyle, euthanasia” as well as the “redefinition of marriage” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.” Prevost went on: “Western mass media


is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel. “For example, abortion, the homosexual


lifestyle, euthanasia. Religion is at best tolerated by mass media as tame and quaint when it does not actively oppose positions on ethical issues that the media have embraced as their own. “However, when religious voices are


raised in opposition to these positions, mass media can target religion, labeling it as ideological and insensitive about the so-called vital needs of people in the contemporary world.


“The sympathy for anti-Christian


lifestyle choices that mass media fosters is so brilliantly and artfully ingrained in the viewing public, that when people hear the Christian message, it often inevitably seems ideological and emotionally cruel, by contrast to the ostensible humaneness of the anti-Christian perspective. “Catholic pastors who preach against the


legalization of abortion or the redefinition of marriage are portrayed as being ideologically driven, severe, and uncaring, not because of anything they say or do, but because their audiences contrast their message with the sympathetic, caring tones of media-produced images of human beings who, because they are caught in morally complex life situations, opt for choices that are made to appear as healthful and good. “Note, for example, how alternative


families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children are so benignly and sympathetically portrayed in television programs and cinema today.”


MASSIMO VALICCHIA/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES


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