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Americas first Pope gives me hope [1]
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Date: 2025-05-16
I’m not a religious person. Catholic schools, and my mom’s reliance on Catholicism as a surrogate for normal things like grocery shopping, complicated my relationship with the church.
We moved to Southern Indiana when I was about 9, and my mom was going through some stuff. She enrolled us at St. Benedict’s Catholic school down the street, where daily lunches compensated for my dirt-crusted uniform. In those years we enjoyed one family trauma after another; suffice it to say I conflated food, fear, and God at an early age.
When I graduated high school, probably still confusing education with yeast rolls, I thought Catholic college was a good idea. It was familiar, plus, it would give my mom bragging rights and reserve her seat in heaven. So I got a scholarship and set off to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College.
A Catholic women’s college founded before women voted
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana’s oldest Catholic college, was founded in 1840 by a religious order from Ruille-sur-Loir, France. The Sisters of Providence obtained the state of Indiana’s first charter to educate women in 1846, and set up a chapel in the wilderness that still stands today. As school legend has it, the sisters endured a treacherous sea journey from France. Tossed in a violent storm, they made a pact that if the sea didn’t swallow them whole, they’d build a chapel made entirely of sea shells on their new campus. Today the shell chapel still stands; if you’re ever in Southern Indiana, it is worth seeing.
In 1840, women weren’t exactly encouraged to get a formal education, so I greatly admire what the Sisters of Providence set out to do—they were feminist bad-asses of their time. But, sorry to say, things didn’t go to plan.
All it took was one look at their campus cemeteries.
Nearly two centuries of lives were laid out in a picture that said it all: male priests are buried under headstones, carved in marble, personalized, and adorned. The nuns are buried in rows of plain white crosses, fungible, subservient, and beholden to hierarchy. I was out of there.
A friend drove a couple hours and backed his pickup to the Le Fer Hall dorm. I threw my boxes and clothes out the 2nd story window and made a run for it.
All of this TMI is to convey my deeply personal yet complicated joy at the ascension of America’s first pope.
America’s first Pope is the moral voice we urgently need
Pope Leo XIV is a perfectly timed antidote to the craven man in the oval office who seems hellbent on destroying forces of good. Pope Leo, like his beloved predecessor, walks the walk. Augustinians live simply and frugally, never ostentatiously. They believe in the pursuit of truth and humility, which puts them in diametric opposition to our current president. Like the Sisters of Providence, Augustinians live in service to the poor and underserved, something MAGA equates with weakness.
Pope Leo has already warned the world about the destructive combination of wealth and power. In his first papal press conference, he nailed the crisis of our current moment: Rising dictators use language of hatred and division, and suppress the media, to advance their own pursuit of power.
Defending free speech without naming Trump directly, Pope Leo stressed the need for leaders and the media to engage in more nuanced speech, condemning “loud,” i.e. boisterous communications: “We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice.” He encouraged the world to soften and “disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred.”
He champions “the precious gift of free speech and of the press,” as Trump tries to destroy both.
In love vs. hate, my money is still on love
The world just watched Trump shamelessly accept lavish gifts and royal treatment from Saudi Arabia’s royal rulers, the same people who ordered the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist, because he criticized them. Pope Leo delivered an urgent message in contrast, reiterating the Catholic church’s “solidarity with journalists who are imprisoned (and worse) for seeking and reporting the truth.” No doubt it was an unwelcome rejoinder to Trump, who has weaponized federal resources, barred journalists who fail to fawn over him from his press conferences, and filed repeated lawsuits to punish his critics as ‘enemies of the people.’
I get it that the Pope opposes abortion and gay marriage, two personal, Constitutional rights I hold dear. But unlike the U.S. government, leading by religious creed is literally the Pope’s job. More importantly, while Trump spews violent and divisive hatred trying to split the nation, including even the Catholic church, Pope Leo talks and walks the more evolved path of love and compassion.
He also plainly condemns the nativism endorsed by the MAGA movement. When Pope Leo was still Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, he posted a slap at JD Vance’s newly-minted cruelty disguised as Catholicism. Responding to Vance’s claim that Christians should “rank” their love to put poor, needy strangers at the bottom of their hierarchy of concerns, Prevost said plainly, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.”
I’m aware that I’m failing the Pope’s directive
The most brazenly corrupt president in our nation’s history considers himself anointed by God. He has perpetrated fraud on the nation by accusing others of fraud, weaponized the federal government by accusing others of weaponization, and claims license to sell the presidency to brutal foreign dictators.
In naming Trump’s vile, self-serving avarice, I’m aware that I am violating Pope Leo’s admonition against heated rhetoric.
In my defense, I, like JD Vance, rank my moral commitments: Identify the evil confronting the nation first. Then defend the Constitution, particularly the First Amendment. Then defend my neighbor’s right to fly his MAGA freak flag.
From my lapsed-Catholic and legal perspective, these commitments are actually one and the same.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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