Pope Leo’s immediate comments in the aftermath of the Minneapolis murders of two Catholic elementary school children—and many more injured during Mass—signal a big disappointment to American Catholics. It appears that Pope Leo may become a Catholic Lite version of his radical, “reformed” Jesuit  Liberation theology predecessor, Pope Francis.

First of all, here’s a look at a general framework of violence against American Catholics since May of 2020 (most years under Biden, a confirmed faux Catholic):

Arson, Vandalism, and Other Destruction at Catholic Churches in the United States

At least 390 incidents have occurred across 43 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020.  Incidents include arson, statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted, gravestones defaced with swastikas and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned, and other destruction and vandalism.

Here are Pope Leo’s comments in recent days subsequent to the Minneapolis terror event:

Pope Leo XIV called for the ‘pandemic of arms, large and small’ to end during a weekly public prayer with crowds in St Peter’s Square on Sunday that also addressed the plague of mass shootings in the US.

The first US pope in history, a native of Chicago, spoke in English as he prayed for the victims of last week’s shooting during a Catholic school mass in Minnesota which saw two children killed and others seriously injured.

‘Our prayers for the victims of the tragic shooting during a school mass in the American state of Minnesota,’ he said. ‘We hold in our prayers the countless children killed and injured every day around the world. Let us plead God to stop the pandemic of arms, large and small, which infects our world.’

Most conservative Catholics in the U.S., and many not, might object to the priorities expressed above by Pope Leo regarding violence against Catholics, especially children. The liberal and leftist press in the United States grabbed on to Leo’s words here with enthusiasm, as they apparently support a major leftist plank: the revocation of the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd amendment, the right of the people to keep and to bear arms.

Pope Leo chose to circumvent the elephant in the room, the transgender factor, as did the majority of the liberal and radical press in America:

A man pretending to be a woman killed two children and injured 17 others while they attended Mass at a Catholic church in Minneapolis last week. Many ‘journalists’ covering the tragedy have done their best to downplay or even conceal facts about the perpetrator’s identity that are relevant to this anti-Christian act.

The word ‘transgender’ doesn’t appear in many of the online articles by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Politico or The New York Times. The Gray Lady even claims ignorance of any motive for the despicable deed while taking care to refer to the assailant as Robin Westman using the pronoun ‘her.’

‘Since she identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification, it’s now Robin Westman,’ CNN host Jake Tapper solemnly intoned on his show.

This brings us back to papal remarks. Why is Pope Leo promoting anti-gun points while avoiding those regarding the damage of transgenderism? What of the attacks on American women in sports? What of the pharmaceutical and surgical inventions in America that are mentally and psychologically ravaging our young?

Here is the sticking point: if a Pope, even the first one from America, is going to wade into America’s ills, he should do so comprehensively, fairly, and courageously. It is hard to imagine either Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI pulling any feints on moral details.

There is a verified history on transgender violence:

This is not the first incident involving a gender-swapping assassin. The 2018 shooting in Aberdeen, Maryland, the 2019 shooting in Denver, and the 2023 shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, were perpetrated by people posing as members of the opposite sex.

Mental illness is a common theme in these monstrous offenses. A National Institute of Justice review of 172 multiple homicides from 1966 to 2019 found ‘nearly all persons who engage in mass shootings were in a state of crisis in the days or weeks preceding the shooting.’

It’s entirely possible those crises were at least in part accelerated by chemical cocktails. As a Food and Drug Administration scientist wrote in an internal 2022 email: ‘We did find increased risk of depression and suicidality” among children using puberty blockers.’

Is Pope Leo up to speed with what’s going on in America? Like Francis, does he go with the major media here without further consideration? Are we expected to endure another Pope’s politics? We hope not.

At the Catholic chapel we frequent, one of the parishioners is a cop and she wears her gun in view and holstered during Mass, making us all feel safer. Our local parish’s beloved priest was brutally murdered, along with a female parishioner and volunteer, by an unstable homeless man, several years ago. Neither these murders, nor the events in Minneapolis last week, would have been even considered a remote possibility by American Catholics in past decades.

But Minneapolis did happen last week. And it was not about guns, despite how much the left wants it to be:

The sheer horror of it. The overwhelming sadness for all those affected by it. The fear for the safety of our own little ones. (Five of my seven kids attend Catholic schools. A sixth teaches at one.) The danger of transgenderism, both the ideology and the scientific quackery, is making all of us less safe. The obtuseness of politicians who want us to ignore every possible reason for school shootings except for guns, always guns, and only guns, the only thing we are ever allowed to talk about. The outrageousness of public officials who criticize prayer. The anti-Catholic discrimination by state governments who refuse to fund security for private schools at the same level they do for public schools. And on and on.

When Pope Leo talks about the “pandemic of arms,” might it be suggested, with respect, that he consider making reference to the spiritual “pandemics of faithlessness” that precede these political “pandemics” in every Western nation’s ongoing decline?

Image: Edgar Beltrán, The Pillar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.