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Dear friends,
This was the month the first American pope was tested.
For weeks, Donald Trump and his allies threw everything they had at Pope Leo XIV — slander, mockery, and retaliation.
There was even a bomb threat aimed at the pope’s brother in suburban Chicago.
But the most important moment of the month came on the tarmac of his Africa-bound papal plane, where Leo said.
“I have no fear of the Trump administration.”
You and I should have no fear either. God is always on the side of the just, and by God’s grace, I’m confident that this movement of Catholics and people of goodwill will defeat MAGA authoritarianism once and for all and reclaim this nation for our posterity.
As April closes, I want to write to you from the heart.
April 2026 may go down as one of the most consequential months in the long history between the Catholic Church and the United States — and Letters from Leo was here for every hour of it.
This month was a hinge. The first American pope flew to Cameroon and warned that the world is being ravaged by tyrants. In a rain-soaked Bata prison, he told the men inside that God never abandons them. Reporters on his return flight from Africa heard him say plainly that he could not be in favor of war.
He saluted the global movement to abolish the death penalty as Donald Trump revived federal firing squads. And the month closed with new polling showing the pope’s moral authority stands head and shoulders above the president of the United States with the American people.
Trump tried to cut him down. The administration stripped Catholic Charities of $11 million. A bomb threat came for the pope’s brother in suburban Chicago. The president falsely claimed Leo backs Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, then deleted an AI image of himself as Jesus the next morning.
Border czar Tom Homan mockingly invited the pope to ride along on an ICE raid. Sean Hannity took to national radio to lecture the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics on the Bible. The Holy See is also reportedly being spied on by the United States government.
The Church did not blink. Cardinal Cupich, Cardinal McElroy, Bishop Rojas, Archbishop Broglio, even Bishop Rodríguez of the diocese that holds Mar-a-Lago — name a fault line in the American hierarchy that used to cut Republican, and you can find a bishop who chose Pope Leo over the president this April.
The U.S. bishops are at the Supreme Court arguing the administration is threatening the moral foundations of American society. Two essential new books appeared this month: Christopher Lamb’s revelatory portrait of the pope, and what may become the standard biography of this papacy from Elise Ann Allen.
We were here for all of it. Every action, every attack, and every noble response from the Holy Father — if you read Letters from Leo this April, you saw the story unfold with a depth you could not find anywhere else in American media.
We were splashed across national and international press this month: in The Washington Post, in USA Today, in The Financial Times, in The New Republic, in Washington Monthly, on Newsweek’s The 1600, on CBS News, on CNN, on Crooked Media’s Offline with Jon Favreau, on Slate’s What Next, on The Times of London, and more.
Your eyes are not deceiving you. Together, you and I are making a real difference in the life of our Church and our country.
I sat down with Jon Favreau in DC and gave him the honest origin story of this project — that I started Letters from Leo as a struggling Catholic and a heterodox Democrat, a man who did not fit neatly anywhere on the American religious or political map.
When I stood in St. Peter’s Square on May 8, 2025, I wasn’t exactly sure why I was there beyond curiosity.
But when I saw Leo XIV emerge on the loggia, it became very clear to me why I was there.
I knew deep in my bones that God had placed this American pope — and all of us — here for a reason.
We’re now seeing that truth unfold. Under Pope Leo’s guidance, American Catholics are rising to reclaim the soul of both our Church and our country.
Here’s my promise to you today. We are together for the long haul, and by the grace of God, we will win this fight.
This burgeoning movement of faithful citizenship has grown at a pace no one expected. Letters from Leo is proud to be at its heart.
With over 30,000 members, we are now the fastest-growing Catholic community in the United States — and we’re just getting started.
I have a dogmatic belief that you and I are living through a providential moment.
Just as God raised up a pope from behind the Iron Curtain to help defeat communism, God has raised up a pope from the Americas to defeat MAGA authoritarianism.
I dedicate my entire heart to that mission.
To paraphrase Peter: I bring neither silver nor gold to this project. I bring the greatest gifts I’ve received — my back, my mind, my heart, and my faith. I offer them in the belief that you and I were made for this moment — to be repairers of the breach.
In the words of Blessed John Paul I, “I offer you the little that I have and am.”
Letters from Leo is sustained entirely by readers like you. There are no corporate sponsors. No billionaire benefactors. Just ordinary people choosing to invest in something they believe matters.
What it has become, with you, has been one of the great surprises of my life.
So tonight I am asking you to invest in this mission.
If this hour stirs the same urgency in you that it stirs in me, and you believe people of faith and goodwill must refuse to bow to the idols of fear and authoritarianism, I am asking you to join us.
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The pope said he is not afraid. The American Church remembered, this April, what courage looks like. Now it is our turn.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being part of this work.
Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
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