Pope Leo XIV

With Dilexi Te – a papal exhortation published on Oct 4th 2025, Pope Leo XIV is putting in an ‘awkward position’ those Catholics who may be attracted to ‘Christian Nationalism’ – according to commentators in the USA.

Christian Nationalism is a political ideology  that seeks to attach the church to attitudes of ‘our nation first’ and opposition to immigration, as well as to international structures such as the UN and to foreign aid.

This passage especially from Dilexi Te is seen as an implicit clear rejection of US Christian nationalism, at a time when the US administration is extolling its own success in repelling immigrants from the global south:

“The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges. (Dilexi Te 75)

An article by Katie Kaleidis in New Republic declares: “With Dilexi Te, Leo is making clear that the moral center of contemporary global Catholicism is Latin America, where the theology of the poor and marginalized first formed half a century ago. To reject it is to reject official papal teaching. This puts conservative American Catholics, who for that same half-century have been more influenced by American evangelicals than any global Catholic force, in what might be delicately called an awkward position.”

The US National Catholic Reporter gives prominence to the following passage in Dilexi Te:

“There is no shortage of theories attempting to justify the present state of affairs or to explain that economic thinking requires us to wait for invisible market forces to resolve everything. Nevertheless, the dignity of every human person must be respected today, not tomorrow, and the extreme poverty of all those to whom this dignity is denied should constantly weigh upon our consciences.”

An editorial in NCR concludes:

“Leo’s words are especially challenging when Catholics and some of their leaders either openly support or look askance at the dehumanizing treatment of the poorest and most vulnerable among us.”

To read Dilexi Te in full, click here.