Critics of the vice-president of the United States, sexual violence in the Church, the death penalty … Robert Francis Prevost was an active and taboo religious on social networks, not hesitating to tackle thorny subjects, making him the first extremely connected pope.
When JD Vance suggested that Christians had to love their family first, before their neighbors, their community and their fellow citizens, Mgr Robert Francis Prevost, today Léon XIV, had responded on X by republishing a scathing editorial titled “JD vance wrongly: Jesus does not ask us to prioritize our love for others”.
Which had earned him tens of thousands of “likes” and an avalanche of harsh comments.
If Benoît XVI had perhaps the very first pope to tweet in 2012 under the pseudonym @pontifx, Robert Francis Prevost @DrPrevost is undoubtedly the first to take the head of the Holy See with a long history of publications on social networks.
Over 400 publications
In 14 years of presence on Twitter, which has become X, he published more than 400 times, expressing his opinions on world news: racism in the United States, scandals of sexual violence within the Catholic Church, pandemic of COVVI-19, invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
And for this American born in Chicago, but who lived more than two decades in Peru, of which he is a national, immigration is a subject dear to his heart, like his predecessor François.
He echoes criticism from Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies by republishing a 2017 article evoking a “dark moment in the history of the United States” and the abandonment of “American values”.
-From his many online comments, it clearly appears that republish almost always for him approval value.
In 2020, a few days after the death of the African-American George Floyd killed by a white policeman condemned for murder, he urged his colleagues member of the clergy to express himself: “We must hear more from the leaders of the Church, to reject racism and seek justice”.
He also demanded more transparency against priests guilty of sexual violence on minors: “If you are the victim of sexual violence by a priest,” he has just declared this month to the Peruvian newspaper the Republica.
“We reject the culture of concealment and secrecy, it causes a lot of wrong. We have to help people who have suffered from these misdeeds,” he said.
In 2014, he wondered if he was not “time to end the death penalty”.
A traditional position of the Church which he has repeated over the years during interviews, homilies or public declarations.
“You have to be in favor of life at any time,” he said in a perfect Spaniard, tinged with a slight accent, in front of Peruvian journalists.
As with many, the rhythm of his publications had intensified during the pandemic of Covid-19 but nothing says that he will continue to be an extremely connected sovereign pontiff.
