Before he became Pope Leo, he was on Twitter trashing Trump, calling for open borders…

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The account was deleted shortly after he was elected…

Factcheck:

  • Before becoming Pope Leo XIV (elected May 8, 2025), he was Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost and maintained a personal X/Twitter account under the handle
    @drprevost

    .

  • On that account, he:
    • Shared posts critical of Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric (including retweeting or sharing a 2015 Washington Post piece by Cardinal Dolan calling Trump’s rhetoric “problematic”).
    • Criticized or shared content against JD Vance’s views on immigration and the “ordo amoris” (ranking of love: family first, then nation, etc.), with posts like “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
    • Promoted COVID-19 vaccines as an act of care for the vulnerable (multiple shares in 2020–2021).
    • Posted or shared messages supporting racial justice after George Floyd (“We need to hear more from leaders in the Church, to reject racism and seek justice”).
    • Advocated positions aligned with more open or compassionate immigration policies (often framed as Gospel-based concern for migrants and refugees).

These were mostly retweets/shares rather than original aggressive attacks, but they clearly opposed Trump-era policies on borders, immigration, and related issues.

  • The personal account
    @drprevost

    was deleted shortly after his election — reports indicate it was wiped around May 14, 2025 (within days of becoming pope), along with other old personal social media.

On April 9, Pope Leo XIV met with David Axelrod, one of the most seasoned operators in the Democratic Party and the architect of Barack Obama’s rise to power; four days later, Leo delivered the first in a series of pointed public critiques of President Donald Trump and his Republican administration.

Hal Lambert, the founder of Point Bridge Capital and one of the more clear-eyed observers of the intersection between American politics and institutional power, saw coordination where others saw coincidence.

‘This is 100 percent political, ok? This is all about trying to hurt President Trump’s Catholic vote during the midterms and Republicans in the midterms,’ Lambert said Monday on CNN.

A Pope who breaks bread with partisan operatives and emerges days later to attack a sitting president has ceased, in my mind, to function as a shepherd of souls. He has become, instead, a political actor—and a graceless one at that. And this fits a recent pattern for the Vatican.

When Hamas butchered 1,200 Israelis on October 7th, the condemnation of Israel came readily from Pope Francis, while the slaughter and kidnappings passed without an explicit condemnation of Hamas.

Pope Leo has been conspicuously silent about the systematic persecution of Christians at the hands of Muslims in majority-Muslim countries. This includes the burning of churches and the slaughter of Christian communities across northern Nigeria—along with forced conversions in Pakistan and disappearances in Egypt.

Each of these is a direct expression of a civilizational clash that Pope Leo refuses to name. I have said this for more than twenty years. I have paid for saying it. And I will say it again: the West is losing this war. Not on the battlefield, but in the cathedrals, the chanceries, and the press conferences of men who were elected to be shepherds and have chosen instead to be diplomats.

As I write this, Pope Leo is in Algeria bowing at the Great Mosque of Algiers, shoes removed, pen in hand at the Golden Book.

I do not begrudge Muslims their mosques. I object to the theology being performed in such gestures — the implicit suggestion, increasingly explicit in Vatican discourse, that the differences between Islam and Christianity are merely cultural and that interfaith harmony can be achieved by erasing doctrinal distinction.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15736491/Pope-Leo-Trump-Iran-Immigration-AYAAN-HIRSI-ALI.html?ns_mchocial-
h/t Nina Sharp