Free Republic

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Leo urged the world's Catholics to help immigrants in his first major document, which was released on Thursday and invoked one of the late Pope Francis' strongest criticisms of U.S. President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies.Leo's document, known as an apostolic exhortation, is focused on the needs of the world's poor. It calls for widespread changes to the global market system to address rising inequality and to help people living paycheck-to-paycheck.The 104-page text started as a writing project by Francis, who was unable to complete it before his death in April after 12 years leading the global...

Pope Leo tells US bishops to address Trump's immigration crackdownPope Leo told U.S. bishops visiting him at the Vatican on Wednesday that they should firmly address how immigrants are being treated by President Donald Trump's hardline policies, attendees said, in the latest push by the pontiff on the issue. Leo, the first U.S. pope, was handed dozens of letters from immigrants describing their fears of deportation under the Trump administration's policies during the meeting, which included bishops and social workers from the U.S.-Mexico border. "Our Holy Father … is very personally concerned about these matters," El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz,...

I used to work in a parish religious education office, and once when I was at that job, a parishioner asked me when the rapture would happen...Now, when this person asked me about it, I was initially surprised, but then after a few moments, I realized that the question actually wasn't as odd as I thought it was. See, the rapture is a Protestant idea; we Catholics don't believe in it. In fact, even most Protestants don't believe in it. The belief is barely a few hundred years old, and it's found mainly in American strands of Protestantism. In other...

Pope Leo XIV continues to make thinly veiled jibes against the Trump administration’s stance against illegal immigration.Speaking in front of thousands of pilgrims at St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Leo warned that migrants must not be treated with “the coldness of indifference or the stigma of discrimination.”Without singling out any country in particular, Leo said that Catholics should “open our arms and hearts to them, welcoming them as brothers and sisters, and being for them a presence of consolation and hope.”Leo explained that the church was living through a “new missionary age” that tasked its members with providing “hospitality and...

The strange death of ProtestantismThat broad body of Christian belief and practice known to the world as Protestantism originated in Catholic Western Europe in the 16th century, mostly the fruit of the highly original, expansive mind of Martin Luther, and then of the rather narrower and derivative mind of John Calvin. The pivotal doctrine of Protestantism was encapsulated in the easy and elegant slogan: justification by faith alone.In a Catholic culture in which the passion and death of Jesus on the cross were at the very heart of religious sensibility, Luther's message that Jesus's sacrifice was so overwhelmingly sufficient that...

U.S. Catholic Bishops Warn of the Greatest Threat We Face: IslamophobiaTalk about poor timing! On the same day that news broke of an Islamist attack on a Catholic Parish in the Congo that left 64 dead and many wounded, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops published a 15-page booklet, “Islamophobia: A Guide for U.S. Catholics on Anti-Muslim Bigotry.”The purpose of the booklet is to warn Catholics about “the rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment.” I’m not aware of any “rising tide” of anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S., but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a rising tide of anti-Muslim...

Miracles and the True Faith: Why Only Catholicism Is Confirmed by GodFrom the very beginning of salvation history, miracles have been among God’s most powerful tools to confirm divine revelation. Moses confronted Pharaoh with the ten plagues, Elijah called down fire upon Mount Carmel, and Christ Himself demonstrated His divinity through cures, resurrections, and His own Resurrection from the dead. The Catholic Church, established by Christ and perpetuated through His Apostles, has continued to be marked by miracles throughout her two-thousand-year history.In this ten-part series, we have examined the countless miraculous signs that God has given to His Church: the...

On Tuesday evening, the Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV spoke out against anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bellicose rhetoric. At an unusual gathering of military leaders earlier that day, Hegseth had told the top brass to be “prepared for war, not for defense,” while espousing the use of “overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy” and promising to “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country.” Speaking to reporters in Italian, Leo called Hegseth’s rhetoric “worrying,” per the Catholic News Agency, “because it shows...

The claim that Marian devotion in Catholicism is derived from pagan goddess worship—specifically Ishtar, Diana, or Astarte—is a persistent but thoroughly discredited myth rooted in 19th-century anti-Catholic propaganda, most notably Alexander Hislop’s *The Two Babylons* (1853). This narrative, often recycled in modern social media and evangelical circles, alleges that Mary’s veneration as the Mother of God (Theotokos) or Queen of Heaven is a Christianized version of ancient pagan goddess cults. However, linguistic, historical, biblical, and cultural evidence reveals no connection. This compiled text is inspired by discussions with our fellow freepers and I hope offers a detailed, accessible refutation of...

Social media posts from Robert Prevost, newly named Pope Leo XIV, show recent criticism of the Trump administration's immigration policies. Why It Matters President Donald Trump's push for mass deportations has been getting held up in courts nationwide. Within the first 100 days of his second term, the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act, granting him authority to deport and detain noncitizens. The implementation was originally blocked in court. What To Know Prevost, 69, on Thursday became the first American pope selected by the Catholic Church. He was a missionary, then a Vatican official after spending years in Peru as...

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....

The newly elected Pope Robert Francis Prevost, who has since been renamed Pope Leo XIV, spent the last several years reposting criticisms of President Trump’s policies. Robert Francis Prevost spent the last several years retweeting posts on his official X account, @drprevost, dozens of articles and posts critical of President Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Before Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost became pope, a social media account under his name shared criticisms of the Trump administration’s positions on immigration.Months before Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost became the first American pope, a social media account under his name expressed criticism of Vice President JD Vance, sharing an article that called the vice president’s interpretation of Christian doctrine “wrong.” The piece, published in The National Catholic Reporter, was a rebuttal to Mr. Vance’s interpretation of a Catholic teaching that he had used to defend the Trump administration’s deportation policies. The post on X, which the account shared in February,...

As you’ve likely heard by now, Pope Francis has died. The 88-year-old progressive Pope had been battling pneumonia and passed away just one day after Easter. Many viewed Francis as “Obama’s Pope,” a nickname he got thanks to long-running rumors that Obama played a role in replacing traditionalist Pope Benedict with the more liberal Francis. And let’s be honest—after the Wikileaks Podesta/DNC dump exposed the Dem Party’s obsession with infiltrating the Catholic Church, those rumors didn’t seem so far-fetched. These tweets from 2016 are a reminder of the backlash: We now know that Dems created fake Catholic groups to try...

In a shocking release from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera ahead of the release of leftist Pope Francis’ autobiography, titled Life: My Story Through History, it was shown that the pope has reaffirmed his support for same-gender civil unions. Doing so, he wrote that “it is right” that such couples “who live the gift of love can have legal coverage like everyone else.”The Amazon description of Pope Francis’s autobiography states, “For the first time, Pope Francis tells the story of his life as he looks back on the momentous world events that have changed history—from his earliest years during...

Pope describes Trump’s planned deportations of immigrants as a ‘disgrace’Pope Francis has criticized US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport immigrants as a “disgrace.” The pontiff, speaking during an Italian television interview, was asked about the incoming Trump administration’s plans to expel undocumented immigrants through an aggressive slate of immigration executive orders by the incoming president, who will be inaugurated Monday. “If it is true, it will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing to pay the unpaid bill. It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things,” Francis said during the Sunday...

[Catholic Caucus] With Vatican Approval, Italian Bishops Change Criteria for Gay SeminariansA new directive from the Italian Bishops Conference will allow gay seminary candidates to be assessed in the same way that heterosexual candidates, clearing up two decades worth of confusion caused by ambiguous Vatican statements about gay men and the priesthood. This directive was approved by the Vatican.ANSA Brazil reported that the conference statement said that “an orientation towards celibate life” is what will be required of gay candidates. This is the same requirement which heterosexual candidates must meet. The conference statement continued:“In the formative process, when reference is...

Now that Pope Francis has named his wokester ally, Cardinal Robert McElroy, to be chief of the Washington, D.C. archdiocese, it's pretty obvious the appointment isn't about shepherding the 667,000 Catholics of that area. Right out the gate, McElroy made clear his appointment's real purpose: To harass President Trump from his bully pulpit. According to Catholic News Agency:Cardinal Robert McElroy, the new archbishop of Washington, D.C., says he wishes success for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration but that he’ll be watching closely to see how Trump deals with immigrants who are in the country without legal status.“The Catholic Church teaches...

How Do We Address the Fact that Francis is Only One Heretical Bishop Among Many?For understandable reasons, there is growing debate about whether Francis is the pope. One common argument that he has either lost the papacy, or never had it, posits that a non-Catholic cannot possibly be the pope, and Francis is not Catholic — as such, Francis cannot possibly be the pope. As interesting as that line of reasoning may be, it raises another question that receives far less attention: how do we address the fact that Francis is only one heretical bishop among many?To begin to answer...

Miracles as Proof that Catholicism is From GodGetting your Trinity Audio player ready...Yet the signs of my apostleship have been wrought on you, in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds (2 Corinthians 12:12).New Series on the Miracles of the Catholic ChurchThis article is the first of a 10-part series that will explore miracles as proof of the truths of Catholic doctrine. The series cover the following topics:What Are Miracles and What They Are NotMiracles in the Scriptures (Old and New)Miracles Worked by the Saints Throughout the Centuries Part 1Miracles Worked by the Saints Throughout the Centuries Part...