WASHINGTON — Christopher Hale texted Father Prevost shortly after he was duly sworn in as Pope Leo XIV by the College of Cardinals last May 8th at the Vatican. Leo added a thumbs-up emoji to Hale’s text. True story.
“Letters From Leo” is Hale’s timely Substack about the first American Pope—a defiant, introverted Midwestern priest who seeks to understand the world but stands on principle against the signature policies of the Trump White House.
Mass deportations. Genocide in Gaza. Israeli-American attacks on Iran. Leo opposes all three, and more. Hale expects Leo’s upcoming encyclical on artificial intelligence to be a global banger, echoing the impact of Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change. “The ability to impact the Catholic worldview in the U.S. is his superpower,” Hale told me during our interviews.
An upcoming papal encyclical on AI could be the next flashpoint between the Vatican and Trump. As the technology reshapes our humanity, Leo is drawing a line in the sand that the none can ignore.
