By Andrea Widburg
Pope Leo, in his two Christmas homilies during the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day masses and his Christmas message from the balcony above St. Peter’s Square, showed himself to be unusually focused on Gaza. He seemed more exercised by the plight of Ukrainians and (Muslim) Gazans than by the mass slaughter and oppression of Christians across the Middle East and Africa. He also found time to attack immigration enforcement and capitalism. I know that, being Jewish, I’m the ultimate outsider, so I devoutly hope I’m not offending anyone here, but the whole thing struck me as a weirdly political way to welcome in the Christmas season.
Leo’s odd messages began with the Christmas Eve mass, when he attacked capitalism:
While a distorted economy leads us to treat human beings as mere merchandise, God becomes like us, revealing the infinite dignity of every person.
Yes, capitalism can be abused, but he’s got the whole thing bass-ackwards. It’s in Marxist economies where people are simply widgets of the state, forced to work at its command.
In a truly capitalist economy, one in which the state acts to prevent fraud and other criminal acts, individuals strive for themselves and, along the way, enrich others. There’s a reason that the wealth of the world—a world in which almost all people had once lived in abject poverty—skyrocketed when capitalism finally took hold.
By the next day—the Christmas Day homily—the Pope lost his focus on Christ’s birth and his ministry on Earth. Instead, he directed a lot of energy to Gaza:
Dear brothers and sisters, since the Word was made flesh, humanity now speaks, crying out with God’s own desire to encounter us. The Word has pitched his fragile tent among us. How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold…
Is it just me, or is it peculiar that the Pope—the head of the world’s largest Christian denomination—would include in his homily poetic tears for the Muslims in Gaza, and not mention the slaughter of thousands of Christians across the Middle East and Africa? (Incidentally, Muslims in Africa are also slaughtering their co-religionists, if they’re the wrong type of Muslim.) And of course, there’s the now-routine slaughter of Christians in Muslim Middle Eastern countries.
It also strikes me as a complete lapse into moral relativism, something the Church once stood against, that the Pope seems unconcerned with what led to Gaza’s destruction: Namely, the genocidal October 7 attack on Israel, followed by the Gaza population’s wholehearted support for Hamas to wage war, rather than to return the hostages and disarm. But again, I’m Jewish, so maybe my bewilderment is unique to me.
The Pope’s intense focus on Gaza continued in his later speech on the same day from St. Peter’s balcony. This time, he threw in the (Muslim) Yemenis for good measure:
In becoming man, Jesus took upon himself our fragility, identifying with each one of us: with those who have nothing left and have lost everything, like the inhabitants of Gaza; with those who are prey to hunger and poverty, like the Yemeni people…
The Pope also remembered the Ukrainians, who remain a cause célèbres among Democrats:
Let us pray in a particular way for the tormented people of Ukraine: may the clamor of weapons cease, and may the parties involved, with the support and commitment of the international community, find the courage to engage in sincere, direct and respectful dialogue.
However, when it came to the world’s beleaguered Christians—people attacked specifically for their faith—the Pope was more muted. Of those in the Middle East, he had a rather bland, “yeah, they’re facing hard times” statement:
…I wish to send a warm and fatherly greeting to all Christians, especially those living in the Middle East, whom I recently visited on my first Apostolic Journey. I listened to them as they expressed their fears and know well their sense of powerlessness before the power dynamics that overwhelm them.
No moving words about tents, rain, and rubble there. He was even more brief when it came to the slaughter in Africa:
I remember in a special way our brothers and sisters in Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He didn’t even mention Nigeria. That’s just cold.
Additionally, in the context of his concerns about the suffering Muslims in Gaza and Yemen, the Pope subtly argued for open borders, implying that not welcoming in the world’s Muslim refugees is a lack of compassion and a failure to abide by Christ’s words:
In becoming man, Jesus took upon himself our fragility, identifying with each one of us: … with those who are fleeing their homeland to seek a future elsewhere, like the many refugees and migrants who cross the Mediterranean or traverse the American continent…
You don’t need a degree in English literature to read between those lines. And almost to add insult to injury, the poem he quoted near the end of his homily was by Yehudi Amichai, a famous Israeli poet.
The Pope also took a second swipe at capitalism in his balcony speech. Thus, after his mention of the obligation to take in Muslim refugees, he also said Christ identified “with those who are exploited, like many underpaid workers.” Remember, workers are never exploited in a communist paradise.
Ultimately, I was neither impressed nor inspired by what Pope Leo had to say. Instead, all I could think is that this is what Democrat ideology looks like when it’s wrapped in religious rhetoric. (And again, my apologies if I have offended anyone, but to the extent he got political, I feel that I can comment politically.)
And that is why I gave Pope Leo the name Pope Leo the Muddled. I think it is perfect.