MAGA rages after Pope's closed-door warning to bishops rattles the far right

Pope Leo XIV leads the Angelus prayer from a window of the Apostolic Palace, at the Vatican, February 15, 2026. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

President Donald Trump has not yet commented on a recent report that Pope Leo XIV privately warned Spain’s top bishops that far-right ideologies are a greater threat to their nation than secularism or economic instability — but his MAGA movement is raging.

"I'm not even a Leo fan," wrote one critic on X while casting doubt on the story without providing evidence, "but this is just conjectural nonsense. No proof of any of this."

In the private meeting last November, Pope Leo cautioned against far right movements all over the world that “win the Catholic vote” by manipulating Catholic identity and issues for partisan ends, El País reported. As a result of the Pope’s words, Spain’s bishops surprised the world by reversing their previous opposition to compensation talks for clergy abuse accusations and announced support for granting legal residency to over 500,000 undocumented migrants, the most generous regularization in modern Spanish history.

MAGA did not react positively to this news. One X user dismissed the El País report as "confirmed fake news," while another wrote without citing evidence “confirmed fake news." Yet another acknowledged the story’s truthfulness but simply said that “Pope Leo Strives For The IGNOBLE Piece Prize.”

This MAGA rage is analogous to the right-wing dyspepsia which emerged after Pope Leo XIV refused to send delegates to Trump’s Board of Peace, with one X user proclaiming on Monday that “Trump has done more for world peace over his two terms than the last seven Pope's combined. Reality doesn't care about your TDS. 🤣🤣🇺🇸🇺🇸” Another pro-Trump X user attacked the Pope by arguing that Trump’s recent actions against Mexican cartels vindicate the president’s policies, saying “the same cartels burning down Mexico that Trump & ice Wanted out of America & deported & The pope demonised him for it. Pope was wrong”

In October, MAGA had a meltdown after the Pope criticized Trump’s immigration policies by saying "no one should be forced to flee, nor exploited or mistreated because of their situation as foreigners or people in need! Human dignity must always come first!” One critic, conservative content creator Matthew Marsden, wrote that Pope Leo was "disenfranchising millions of Catholics. Please do not be like your predecessor. I am already tuning you out. You will probably be the last Pope of my lifetime. I urge you to reflect on how this affects law-abiding Catholics."

Another user wrote that the Pope’s tweet “confused” him. “The situation these foreigners find themselves in results from them breaking the laws of the countries they are illegally residing in,” this person wrote without evidence. “They are fleeing because they broke the law and will be held accountable. I am confused how holding people accountable for a country's laws is characterized as exploited or mistreated. Can you please clarify your statement?”

The Pope has not been shy about critiquing the Trump administration. In January, after 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross, Vice President JD Vance claimed Good's death was "of her own making."

"The gaslighting is off the charts and I'm having none of it,” Vance said. “This guy was doing his job. She tried to stop him from doing his job. When he approached her car, she tried to hit him. A tragedy? Absolutely. But a tragedy that falls on this woman and all of the radicals who teach people that immigration is the one type of law that rioters are allowed to interfere with."

In response to this statement, the Pope described Vance’s language as “Orwellian.”

"It is painful to see how, especially in the West, the space for genuine freedom of expression is rapidly shrinking," Pope Leo XIV said. "At the same time, a new Orwellian-style language is developing which, in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding those who do not conform to the ideologies that are fueling it."

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