MAGA's Vatican Cold War
Like the rest of us, Pope Leo, the first American Pope, is under siege by MAGA. We discuss MAGA’s war on the “globalist,” “culturally Marxist” Catholic Church with Colleen Dulle, Vatican reporter for America Magazine and author of Struck Down, Not Destroyed.
Christian Nationalists have captured the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court. Now they are targeting the Holy See. We track the strategy from Steve Bannon’s "gladiator school" for disinformation agents to recently converted Catholic JD Vance using his faith to justify mass deportations and ICE terror squads. MAGA has launched a financial boycott of the Catholic Church, provided safe haven and amplification for its biggest crackpots, while deploying dark-money disinformation and a Fox News-style Catholic press to target reformers.
We also confront the Vatican’s long history of abuse and gaslighting. We discuss the erasure of trans people and women leaders like Mary Magdalene, arguably the true first pope. We also look to what the first American pontiff, Pope Leo, will bring in this time of crisis, and whether he will continue Pope Francis's war on Opus Dei–the far-right human trafficking crime cult that gained prominence during Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. Opus Dei has set up shop in Washington, DC, counting among its allies Vance and the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts, architect of Project 2025.
Note: This conversation was recorded on June 17, 2025. Look out for our bonus episode later this week on the latest hellscape headlines!
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Show Notes:
Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Colleen Dulle’s new book on keeping the faith while covering the Vatican’s crises https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/struck-down-not-destroyed-colleen-dulle/1146546457
Steve Bannon’s "Gladiator School" Evicted: How the far-right strategist lost his fight to turn an 800-year-old monastery into a training ground for culture warriors https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/steve-bannons-school-far-right-nationalists-officially-evicted-800-year-old-italian-monastery-leased-2007256
The Problem with JD Vance’s "Ordo Amoris": A theological breakdown of how Vance manipulates the teachings of St. Augustine to justify ICE terror https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/02/13/ordo-amoris-stephen-pope-vance-249926/
Project 2025 Architect Linked to Opus Dei: The Guardian reveals the deep ties between Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation, and Opus Dei https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/26/kevin-roberts-project-2025-opus-dei
MAGA Tries to Starve the Church: An investigation into "Peter’s Pence" and how conservative groups are financially undermining the Church https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/12/12/vatican-misleading-donors-peters-pence-explained/
Gaslit Nation’s Episode on Opus Dei: https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2024/12/31/opus-dei
Andrea Chalupa (00:10):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide feminine Ukraine, the film The Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it.
(00:23):
This week, we're joined by Colleen Dulle, a Vatican correspondent for America Magazine and the host of the podcast Inside The Vatican. Colleen is also the author of the new book, Struck Down, Not Destroyed, Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter, an intimate look at covering the Vatican. Welcome to Gaslight Nation. It's really exciting to have you here because big news, new Pope, American Pope, lot to get into to understand what's really going on in those halls of power in the Vatican.
Colleen Dulle (00:54):
Yeah, no, no, no. There's a ton going on. So I don't know. Where do you want to start? There's so much to get into.
Andrea Chalupa (00:59):
Tell us about ... So Pope Francis, correct me if I'm wrong, is considered one of the more liberal Popes in recent years.
Colleen Dulle (01:07):
Yeah, certainly in recent history, for sure, for sure.
Andrea Chalupa (01:10):
And there is an American-driven far right conspiracy, let's say, to challenge him. Could you go into that? And there's even a link to Bannon and Trump world.
Colleen Dulle (01:21):
Yeah, sure. So the resistance to Pope Francis in the United States was very, very strong. There are a number of great books written on this by some of my colleagues, but essentially as soon as Francis started criticizing unfettered free market capitalism, this gained a lot of resistance from particularly wealthy Americans. So kind of the global layout of the Catholic Church. It tends to be the Americans and the Germans who have been the wealthiest churches, and they're the ones that give the most to the Vatican. And because of that, have in the past felt that they had the right to kind of sway things. And for the Americans, a lot of the times that meant swaying things in a more conservative position in as far as that is a useful word when describing church politics. And for the Germans, it's been in a more progressive position.
(02:10):
Same disclaimer on the phrasing there. When Francis starts talking about we need limitations on capitalism, it is not the be all end all of economic systems.
Andrea Chalupa (02:19):
Tax the rich.
Colleen Dulle (02:20):
Yeah, exactly. Or just his, again, preferential option for the poor, which is a kind of fundamental tenant of Catholic social teaching, although not one that some wealthier people want to highlight. They started withdrawing their donations. They started speaking out very strongly against Francis. There's a lot of interesting background here in that throughout the 20th century, you have this kind of movement of American Catholics starting to really want to be seen as Americans. The magazine I work for is called America in part because it was like a, "We'll show you we're all immigrants and you don't think that we're American enough, but we'll show you that we can be real Americans," whatever that means. And you get a big boost during the red scare in the fees to people starting to go to church more as a way to be seen as more American. Ultimately, you end up getting a JFK, your first Catholic president.
(03:18):
And throughout this, we're trying to almost make Catholicism more palatable to Americans. Then you kind of fully assimilate by the time you get JFK, but then through the '80s, especially you have John Paul II speaking out against communism. He is your Polish Pope.
Andrea Chalupa (03:38):
And this was a very consequential appointment by the death.
Colleen Dulle (03:42):
A huge deal.
Andrea Chalupa (03:43):
Because we were at war, America, the West was at war with atheist empire, the Soviet Union, and the Catholic Church was still allowed to operate inside Poland. And so the first non-Italian Pope coming from Poland where he's widely popular and influential, especially among a lot of communities, grassroots groups that are actively organizing against communism. And Poland ends up becoming the site that the country that gets so politically revved up that it is the first domino to fall in bringing down the Soviet Union from within, go on.
Colleen Dulle (04:14):
Yeah, absolutely. Right. And you know all about this because you've done your research on Ukraine, right? So in this time period, you have these kind of conservative or neoconservative Catholic commentators who are interpreting the John Paul papacy for the kind of Catholic popular audience in the US and conveniently are leaving out some of the things that we would deem more progressive in John Paul's teaching. So things like workers' rights, like the
Andrea Chalupa (04:41):
Unions. Unions were literally on the front line for decades resisting Soviet oppression. Go on.
Colleen Dulle (04:47):
Absolutely. And a huge part of Catholic social teaching. The very first big social and cyclical, big papal document about social justice is Rarem Navarum by Leo the 13th who Julio the 14th took his name after, which is published during the Industrial Revolution and advocates strongly for the rights of workers to organize.
Andrea Chalupa (05:05):
Right. Pope Leo took his name from the Union Organizer Pope.
Colleen Dulle (05:08):
Yeah, yeah. So that kind of stuff is getting left out in American Catholic consciousness. And instead you're just getting all the anti-communism stuff, the kind of reactionary conservative stuff. And this is all outlined super well in this book called Playing God by Mary Jo McConaughey, American Catholic Bishops in the Far Right that talks about how this alliance was built. But essentially that's kind of the process by which we end up where we are today where the overwhelming image of Catholicism in the US is very allied with this economically super conservative kind of politic.
Andrea Chalupa (05:39):
Basically the oligarchy.
Colleen Dulle (05:41):
And so under the Francis papacy, these Catholics who had had an ally in the papacy for so long end up being really unhappy with the Pope. And so now they are kind of switching to a more resistance focused approach to the papacy. And so that looks like organizing conferences opposed to Francis.
(06:02):
It looks like finding their own figureheads. They tried to do that in some ways with Benedict the 16th, because remember it's the first time in centuries that we had had two Popes at the same time, a retired one and a new one.
Andrea Chalupa (06:14):
Oh, I see the German Pope.
Colleen Dulle (06:15):
He retired to a monastery. He was a very prayerful guy. Yeah, people were trying to use his image or use his name in the years that he was retired and honestly declining in health to push forward messages that were anti-Pope Francis. And then at the same time, these wealthy Catholics in the US have continued to gain more and more political power domestically. So there's one part of this that's their relationship with the Vatican, but then there's the other part of it that is them rising into higher and higher political positions, forming these think tanks, et cetera.
(06:48):
You have your Leonard Leos, your Steve Bannons, et cetera. Then there's kind of this whole vegano thing. So there's this Bishop Carlo Maria Vegano. While Pope Francis was in Ireland in 2018, obviously super tense visit, he's going in and they've had this massive sexual abuse crisis. They've had the scandal of the Magdalene laundries, which were these awful homes for unwed mothers and stuff. Francis is going into this very tense situation. They've already had this whole 2018 wave of the abuse crisis in the US Catholic Church too. So this was when the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report came out. And in the middle of the Pope's trip to Ireland, Carla Maria Vigano drops a letter alleging that Pope Francis knew about abuse allegations against Cardinal McCarrick, who recently died. He was removed from the College of Cardinals for being basically a serial abuser. Vegano drops his letter accusing Francis of knowing about McCarrick's abuse.
(07:50):
Then he is rebutted in a 500-page report that came out from the Vatican in 2020, laying out the whole advancement of McCarrick's career. But Vegano's whole deal was that Francis should resign. He should give up his power because of this. Ultimately, his allegations didn't really hold any weight. They were shot through very quickly by journalists. And Vegano went into hiding, but we still don't really know where he's living. There are some different rumors. But yeah, Vegano used to be the Nuncio, which is the papal ambassador to the United States. He played a role in appointing bishops for the US.
Andrea Chalupa (08:29):
So some of his bishops are still working across the US?
Colleen Dulle (08:34):
Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely.
Andrea Chalupa (08:35):
And he's connected to Bannon, I read.
Colleen Dulle (08:38):
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely parallels between him and Bannon because Vegano started to publish this series of letters after he went into hiding, accusing Pope Francis of being part of the deep church, which was a parallel of the deep state and echoing a lot of these conspiracy theories. He started writing open letters to Donald Trump, basically saying the children of the light is a phrase that he would use, are the Trump supporters. And then the children of darkness are the deep church who are behind Pope Francis. It's like a whole crazy web of conspiracy theories. Vegano came out very QAnon. Bannon's link to some of the Catholic far right stuff is that he tried to fund the opening of a monastery or in a monastery space in Rome.
Andrea Chalupa (09:30):
Bannon was trying to launch a Catholic base, as I understand it. He was trying to join forces with Catholic elements in Rome to basically open up a fascist school of the dark arts where he was going to teach propaganda, information 101, bring in all of these global far right speakers, like Aleksandr Dugin, who's considered the Bannon of Russia would've been there. And this never got off the ground. Something happened where they got sidelined.
Colleen Dulle (09:57):
Yeah, I think that there was some issue with the venue. They wouldn't let him have the building ultimately. She was calling it a Gladiator School, I think.
Andrea Chalupa (10:06):
Yes, a gladiator school for disinformation merchants like him.
Colleen Dulle (10:10):
Yeah. So it's a few years ago, so the details are a little foggy for me. But all this to say, yeah, there definitely was just a lot of collaboration between Bannon. You would have Mili Yiannopoulos was part of this kind of circle. There's the well-funded resistance against Pope Francis that kind of had allies in some of these places. Yeah, there's much more in- depth reporting on exactly how all of these are linked and there are different corporations and all of that. That's been done by Heidi Schlump and the National Catholic Reporter. So highly recommend that series if you want to dig more into this.
Andrea Chalupa (10:44):
Yeah. No, we'll link to her work in the show notes. And in terms of Opus Dei and this sort of the far right elements by and large in the American Catholic Church, under this new Pope Leo, surprise, surprise in American Pope, Pope Leo comes from Peru. Peru had a strong Opus Dei presence. The business leader who is the mayor of Lima, the capital of Peru, he's a member of Opus Dei. And so it's really interesting that Pope Francis by Vatican Standards tries to contain Opus Dei. I don't want to say goes to war on Opus Dei, but he understands that they are a threat and that they stand against what he stands for because they basically are, they're human trafficking. They're creating a global network of slaves, largely women, to work for free and it's just horribly misogynistic. And so Pope Francis is trying to crack down on this.
(11:41):
And what's interesting is that Pope Leo is sort of seen as maybe not directly his successor, but somebody that was brought up in the Vatican by Francis. And he came from a country where Opus Dei was strong. So are we seeing a continuation of Francis's policies towards Opus Dei under this new Pope?
Colleen Dulle (12:02):
I think it's a good question. I think it's a little bit early to tell because as we're talking, we're only a little more than a month into the Leo papacy, but right away people were paying attention because one of his first meetings that was scheduled, which I think was already on the Pope's calendar, no matter who the Pope was going to be, was with some of the leadership of Opus Dei. And I know that they are really hoping to get some of the restrictions placed on them by Francis lifted. Essentially, he just tried to limit some of their power, get some of their operations more closely under Roman supervision. Gareth Gore goes into this a lot in his book.
Andrea Chalupa (12:37):
Yeah, Gareth Gore we had on the show. We wrote the book, Opus. Yeah, Gareth said he's like, Pope Francis put Opus Dei on a leash. Okay.
Colleen Dulle (12:44):
Essentially.
Andrea Chalupa (12:44):
Yeah. They're trying to get the leash removed under Pope Leo.
Colleen Dulle (12:47):
Yeah, exactly. If I'm like to look in my crystal ball here, I don't know how much Pope Leo is actually willing to do that because Pope Leo has a lot of experience, especially in his decades in Peru with groups that operate this way. So another one that he was involved in disciplining was the Sotalisium Christiane Vite. It's sometimes called the Sotalisio in Spanish. They were a group similar kind of lay Catholic group with really, really strict rules, ended up being kind of a hotbed of various types of abuses, spiritual, sexual, I think even financial, and they had a lot of power in Peruvian society. And Pope Leo, as the head of the Vatican's office for bishops and also as a bishop in Chiclayo, Peru had to make moves to get these guys under control. And ultimately, while he was a close advisor to Pope Francis, that was when Pope Francis ultimately repressed the group, shut them down in response to a lot of these abuses.
(13:51):
So I think that given that as a track record, that Leo is probably not going to be doing what Opus Dei wants him to do.
Andrea Chalupa (13:59):
Let's hope. What should we be thinking about here in terms of this hard right Catholic ... Could you talk a little bit about that movement, the sort of Catholic control of the Supreme Court? The Federalist Society, you talked about Leonard Leo earlier, how he was behind that court packing. It was intentional that they had-
Colleen Dulle (14:18):
Leo's had a falling out with Trump now too. Did you see that?
Andrea Chalupa (14:21):
No. Tell us about that.
Colleen Dulle (14:22):
Trump posted on Truth Social that Leonard Leo was a sleazebag. So I guess that the alliance is over. I don't know. Leo played it very diplomatically. Leo said, not Pope Leo, Leonard Leo, said that he doesn't understand where this came from and he hopes to continue collaborating with the Trump administration. But
Andrea Chalupa (14:41):
Yeah. Where did it come from?
Colleen Dulle (14:44):
Calling out what comes from? No idea.
Andrea Chalupa (14:46):
The discrimination against Hispanics who primarily tend to be Catholic and increasing numbers, they're voting for Republicans for Trump. So this does put this far right religious elite of which Leonard Leo is very much an architect of their successes. The people that are part of their church are now being kidnapped off the street and having their businesses raided by ICE using all these sort of very over the top aggressive tactics. Are you seeing in the Catholic press or just anybody saying...
Colleen Dulle (15:23):
Some bishops certainly are speaking out against it. But interestingly, Pope Leo, again, when he was running the Vatican's Office for Bishops, which was his role right before he got elected Pope, turns out he was, and one of my colleagues got confirmation of this, was involved in writing that letter clapping back against J.D. Vance. The one where, remember J.D. Vance, he made a lot of waves in the Catholic world, one for basically saying that the US bishops want illegal immigration because it would benefit their churches. But another thing was that J.D. Vance had gone kind of quoting Saint Augustine saying, "Well, there's this order of love, or to Amoris that teaches that you should love the people closest to you first, love your family, then your immediate neighbors. And then you can finally, at the end of it, all worry about people in other countries.
(16:12):
Now Pope Leo, but then Cardinal Prevost writing with Pope Francis, and ultimately this letter came out from Pope Francis' pen. They write a letter to the US Bishops saying, Vance's understanding of this is completely wrong. And if you go forward with the Trump plan of mass deportations, he said it would be a disgrace. Right. So here you have the guy who was writing that with Pope Francis. Again, also an Augustinian, really probably pretty frustrated with this understanding, misunderstanding of St. Augustine coming up very strongly. One thing that was raised when Leo was elected was maybe now American Catholics have a prominent person to look to who is one of their own, who is not J.D. Vance. He was the most prominent American Catholic. Now you have an American Pope and he's presenting a very, very different understanding of how things should be, understanding of our politics, understanding of our policies.
Andrea Chalupa (17:05):
Okay. So we've established that the Catholic Church has huge political and financial influence, especially in the United States today. And America is heading off this cliff of this Christian nationalism, whether it's evangelicalism or the Catholic church. They've now joined forces to establish religious doctrine deciding social issues, even though the Founding Father is a Constitution was very clear a separation between church and state. And this is putting a threat the rights of women, abortion healthcare being just common sense healthcare. I had a high risk pregnancy and my doctor told me that if I bled out, they would have to abort the baby in order to save my life. And there was no discussion about it. The doctor just said," That's what we're going to do. "And my husband was like, "That's fine. "There was no preacher coming in and saying," Wait a minute, I've got opinions on this too.
(17:57):
"And so it's a very scary time because people are going to protest dressed up as the handmaidens from a handmaid's tale. And there's this very real fear. Just like Iran used to have women out and about without having to be covered up. And now it's this Islamic dictatorship that we're going to become a Christian dictatorship where women are forced to back in the home being treated as vessels. And everything comes down to scripture and very twisted interpretations of scripture in my opinion and many people's opinion.
Colleen Dulle (18:30):
Many people's opinion. Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (18:31):
And that we're headed there. What are your thoughts on that?
Colleen Dulle (18:34):
I mean, yeah, I agree with you that it's totally terrifying. I also, I think I've been alluding to this throughout our conversation, but this understanding of Christianity is a very politically driven one. It's not the thing that I believe in as a Catholic. And I have hope that it's certainly not what the pope believes in who is the ultimate kind of teaching authority of the Catholic Church. This is something that you can watch over decades in American history be created in order to further certain political ends. And that's terrifying because it's ... If I can get kind of religious for a sec, I had a professor in college who was a Jesuit and he would say that the definition of heresy is taking a small part of the truth and acting like it's the whole truth. And I kind of think that that's what some of these folks are doing.
(19:26):
They're taking a very small, narrow understanding of some parts of the Christian tradition and saying," No, this is the be all, end all this should be imposed upon all people. "And that is not correct. And more importantly, as you were getting at in your question, the values of any religion are not to be the values that are imposed upon an entire society. So I have my beliefs, but I also don't think that you can legislate every part of morality.That's simply not how things work.
Andrea Chalupa (19:57):
Exactly. And the whole influencer world of trad wives, they rely on all of these Bible verses from the Old Testament, Ephesians, if I'm saying that correctly, wives you must submit to your husbands and be an Old Testament wife. I appreciate the New Testament. And I believe that in the gospel, Jesus was very clear, give to Caesars, what does Caesars give to my father? What is his?
Colleen Dulle (20:22):
Yeah, sure.
Andrea Chalupa (20:22):
Or hers, because I believe in a divine feminine. In the gospel, in the historical record of the gospel of what we understand to be passed down teachings of Jesus, the oldest we have on record was separation of church and state. Right?
Colleen Dulle (20:41):
Render to Caesar thing. Yeah, totally.
Andrea Chalupa (20:43):
There.
Colleen Dulle (20:44):
That was what they were talking about. It's also worth remembering that Jesus was killed for being an enemy of the state. He was seen as being too opposed to the Roman occupation.
Andrea Chalupa (20:54):
The oligarchy, the Roman oligarchy, one can say. Indeed. So I am fascinated by the early church for so many reasons. My father is a neuroscientist, so I grew up with science in the household. And then my mother was very spiritual. She studied the three main religions in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. And she just studied it just to find common themes. She always had this very strong conviction and the power of love and begin within the establishment of the Catholic church feels very externally driven. It puts up all these barriers with all the ornate Vatican, these power structures that are very complicated and very difficult for just anybody to join and navigate and rise up in. And it feels sort of the church itself doesn't ... It's like sort of the Sarah Silverman viral video, sell the Vatican, feed the world. So as a reformer, how do you see all that if you're someone that wants to also see progress in the church?
Colleen Dulle (22:03):
This is what my whole book is about, is this tension between the Catholic Church as a spiritual home, which I have found it to be, even though there are many times when it doesn't feel so homey and a spiritual hurdle because many times, at least for me, it's the institution itself that is presenting the hurdle. I write in my book about ... The first chapter is obviously on the child sexual abuse scandal, which I've covered in depth. And Jesus Christ, if I could come through all of that and still be here, clearly there's something else keeping me here.
Andrea Chalupa (22:37):
And then how the Catholic Church played a role in the genocide of First Nations groups.
Colleen Dulle (22:42):
Absolutely.
Andrea Chalupa (22:42):
Across Canada and the US.
Colleen Dulle (22:43):
Yeah. I did a lot of reporting on that around the Pope's trip to Canada. It's not so much in my book, but then the second chapter is all about the exclusion of women in various places in church leadership. And in some cases, the abuse of women who work for bishops and cardinals in the Vatican, cleaning their houses and so on, which nobody becomes a nun to do that.
Andrea Chalupa (23:04):
And that's also Opus Dei too.
Colleen Dulle (23:06):
Yeah. Well, and Opus Dei is perhaps even more nefarious because Opus Dei is keeping these women brainwashed and locked in there. In the case of the Bishops and Cardinals, it's often that they are ... Not that this happens all of the time often, but in the cases of women who are abused, they have really precarious immigration situations. Many of them come from Africa, and they're also in precarious financial situations. They aren't getting paid for their work, for example, or they don't feel that they can leave their religious order, their order of nuns, because in some cases their order is taking care of their families back home, recognizing that the women are not generating income for their families. And so as a thank you to the families, the order is providing for them. This was all uncovered by this great Italian journalist, Luche Catafia and some of her colleagues actually at a Vatican sponsored magazine, which they all resigned in protest from.
(23:59):
It's a fascinating story. But yeah, I mean, all that to say, I don't have a clean answer that I give in the book, and that's just two of six chapters on different scandals. But I say in the book, and this is something that I've kind of come to believe on a spiritual level too, is just the grappling, the wrestling itself, the thinking critically about this institution, about my belonging in it, that is valuable in itself. I've taken some inspiration from the story of Old Testament story, Jacob wrestling the angel, where it's like they're evenly matched all night long. And in the end, he finds out that it was God he was wrestling with. And that wrestling itself is like, it must have been valuable because otherwise God would've just shut him down, just beat him. So I want to communicate to people with the book that there are Catholics like me.
(24:51):
There are probably other people who grew up with some kind of fondness for this religion or for this community who are thinking that maybe they're alone and being totally embarrassed and scandalized by the headlines by the institution and to say, Hey, there's other people who feel this way too, and you're not by yourself and you're not a bad Catholic or the wrong kind of Catholic if you are pissed off about this.
Andrea Chalupa (25:22):
Yeah. And whether you're Catholic or not, the Catholic church is hugely globally influential. And there's very much an obvious war for the soul of the Catholic church being waged right now. We see it. The American Catholic Church has, I'm not saying all of it, but there's an influential-
Colleen Dulle (25:39):
So much. Yeah, that is much stronger here than in many other places. I think the kind of other stronghold would be Brazil. You get a lot of right-wing Catholic resistance, again, tied up with money. In that case, you see a lot of resistance coming from people who want to exploit the Amazon rainforest. And so they were very unhappy with Pope Francis's focus on Amazonia. And then you kind of get France and French-speaking Switzerland have some vestiges of host Vatican to traditionalism where they just thought that all the changes in the '60s and '70s that the Catholic church made were wrong.
Andrea Chalupa (26:15):
Right. And this has always been my issue and many people's issues with any organized religion, even though the churches were on the front lines of the civil rights movement, which was hugely historic for human rights and inspired the whole world. So I'm kind of like, in that case, organized religion, good thing. If you're organizing for human rights, if you're literally saving people's lives, that seems very much what that radical Jesus Christ and his friends were up to against the mighty Roman Empire. But organized religion just feels largely just power hungry, power-based, money-based, money, money, money. So I think that's why these conversations are so uncomfortable and faith is always such a personal thing based on personal experience, based on family, based on culture, what you grew up doing with grandma.
Colleen Dulle (26:57):
The values proposition or the value proposition that the value most people find is much more abstract than the material harm that is done. And so it's hard to put those things in comparison with each other.
Andrea Chalupa (27:12):
Let's talk about Mary Magdalene because this is my understanding of what we're doing.
Colleen Dulle (27:16):
Oh yeah, let's go.
Andrea Chalupa (27:18):
So Jesus had the 12 disciples, but then there was another who doesn't really get mentioned much as being among the 12 as I understand it. And that was Mary Magdalene, even though she's all over the New Testament during these very key moments in his story.
Colleen Dulle (27:30):
Always there.
Andrea Chalupa (27:31):
She's always there.
Colleen Dulle (27:32):
She never leaves, dude. Even when the men leave.
Andrea Chalupa (27:34):
And so she's there when she discovers like, "Hey guys, he did it. He told us he was going to resurrect and he did it." That's kind of a big revelation to be witness to that. And so what goes off is that after Jesus' death, all the disciples, they do what they prepared to do and they go across the world spreading the message. And the church is fascinating to me as an organizer because it spread like wildfire with its message of all are welcome, we are all equal, just treat each other with love. And a lot of lowly people across society were like, "I need this." And it spread like wildfire against the mighty Roman empire. And you even had rich people, especially a lot of rich women who were throwing money at this. Women were essential to the founding of the church.
(28:28):
A huge number of women established the church. We see it in Paul's letters, including wealthy women who had a lot to lose with this whole feed the poor message. And so women really were the democratization of this church, forcing it into higher echelons of society. And while the majority of the disciples die, a horrible martyred death, as far as we understand of what is believed to have happened, Mary Magdalene wins that life by living out her life to a ripe old age in Provence, Southern France, nonetheless, after she has just established the church here, Bishop of Marseille, my brother, okay, bishop of this other part of Provence, my brother-in-law or whatever. She's putting her family members, men, of course, because that was the rule of the day. She's a freaking mob boss, Mary Magdalene. And she's like, You're going to be a bishop here. You're going to be a bishop there.
(29:26):
And then I'm going to just retire in ecstasy in Provence, just having all these spiritual experiences with Jesus and just live out to a ripe old age. So I just think it's fascinating how she basically won the life lottery, and yet they erased her.
Colleen Dulle (29:40):
Yeah, the evolution of Mary Magdalene is super interesting. And look, I don't know how much I believe the historic veracity of either the Mary Magdalene gospel or
Andrea Chalupa (29:51):
But we know she was in Provence. We know she was in Provence because she started the church. I mean, the church, I guess-
Colleen Dulle (29:58):
Yeah, I think this is all pious tradition. I don't know how real it is. I don't know, but again, I'm not the historian.
Andrea Chalupa (30:06):
There's a medieval French king, one of the Charles' who's obsessed with finding her grave and found her grave. They have her relics there still in Provence. I've been, I've seen it all. I stumbled upon it by accident. I was like, wait a minute. Yeah.
Colleen Dulle (30:20):
I mean, I think the incredible thing about Mary Magdalene is, like you said, she is, at least according to a couple of the gospel accounts, the first witness of the resurrection. And so the way that I always think of this is on her way to go tell the guys who do not believe her about this, she is the soulkeeper of the gospel message, the Christian message, the thing that makes this not just a nice set of teachings, but-
Andrea Chalupa (30:47):
The pitch.
Colleen Dulle (30:47):
The pitch, the sales pitch. And for whatever amount of time it took for her to go from the grave to go find the guys, she was the church. She was the whole church. There was no hope, there was no bishops. It was her. In some ways, you could understand her as first hope, although I get in trouble when I say that. Look,
Andrea Chalupa (31:08):
I will say it here on Gaslit Nation. Mary Magdalene was the first Pope and the founding of the Christian church.
Colleen Dulle (31:14):
Yeah. There is a real teaching authority that is given to her directly by Jesus. And I think that any discussion of women's leadership in the Catholic Church needs to start from that, needs to start from that essential thing. But instead, over the development of the centuries, like you said, in the early church, these wealthy women of whom Mary Magdalene may have been one, there's different ideas of who she was and what kind of resources she brought to the table. They were deeply important members of the Catholic Church. There are deaconesses described in the New Testament. And again, historians disagree about what exactly their responsibilities were. Were they equal to men deacons? Were they not? In the second or third century, I think it's with Gregory the Great. You start to see Mary Magdalene's reputation just get totally diminished. She gets dismissed as a sex worker, which in the view of the Catholic Church was a shameful thing.
Andrea Chalupa (32:11):
Not shaming sex workers, but I mean, she went from being a disciple, this woman who was central to the very founding of the church to having what, as you said, as the worst of the worst according to the church.
Colleen Dulle (32:28):
Yeah. Mosaics of her are covered up in ancient churches for sure. Yeah. There's a scholar, I think it's Rita Houlihan who wrote a book on this and I watched a presentation that she gave once on it. No, so Mary Magdalene just gets kind of belittled and belittled. So you were saying you've been to where she supposedly died. I have been to Magdala where she's from. There, there's almost nothing. There's a sort of recently built church there that's run by a group that has a reputation for being pretty conservative. And the church is named after, it's called Duke and Altom. That's something that Jesus says to Peter, put out into the deep, not to Mary Magdalene. And the only picture of Mary Magdalene there is her surrounded by seven demons. It's like it's supposed to be the scene of Jesus driving out the demons. But I'm like, dude, even in her own hometown, she's just getting shat on.
(33:20):
She was the most important person in the church, in Christianity. She was the soul keeper of that message and entrusted personally to deliver it. And now you can't even have women give a homily and a Catholic church. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
Andrea Chalupa (33:35):
Thank you. Thank you. And it sort of seems like, I don't know if this existed between them. I don't know what's in Paul's letters, if this is ever mentioned, but you sort of get the impression that there was a very clear tension between what Paul was doing and what Mary was doing, and that Mary had to be disparaged and essentially erased because Paul's power was growing. And I don't know if this was the historical Paul who believed this. I don't know if there's any evidence of that.
Colleen Dulle (34:05):
I know nothing of this history. Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (34:08):
Okay. Because I mean, obviously from what you're describing, it sounds like the movements that came after him definitely pushed this.
Colleen Dulle (34:15):
Yeah, popes, certainly. Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (34:17):
How can they do that? The fact that they did as much as they did to try to sideline her and yet she still persists is pretty telling.
Colleen Dulle (34:27):
I kind of feel like the fact that she only recently, only within the last decade or so was given her own feast day on the calendar of Catholic mass celebrations. It was raised to the level of, they call it a memorial. So you have to talk about her during mass, that kind of thing.That only happened recently, but that feels like the beginnings of historic justice, historical justice for Mary Magdalene. And the prayers they gave her for that mass are really, really gorgeous.
Andrea Chalupa (34:56):
Really?
Colleen Dulle (34:56):
Yeah. Yeah, they did it right.
Andrea Chalupa (34:59):
And so what is the movement like inside the Catholic Church to try to get more women in power?
Colleen Dulle (35:05):
Yeah, it's interesting. And I've done tons of reporting on this. Pope Francis made a lot of moves to open up positions of leadership in the Vatican for women, but also kind of ministerially. So women can now be instituted officially as lectures and acolytes. These are kind of liturgical positions. He created the Ministry of Catechist, which catechists are already majority women, and especially in South America in more rural communities, catechists are the ones running local church communities. So you have a priest who comes around in some places maybe once every couple of years or at least gets by once a month, but not on a Sunday. So it's the catechists and often they are women who are keeping the faith communities alive. And so Francis took some steps towards actually recognizing that. And then in the last years of the Francis Papacy, so 2023, 2024, he had these big meetings that used to be limited to just bishops and they're called Synods.
(36:06):
And he included women as full voting members for the first time, which really irked some bishops. There was a story about one of them marching out of the meeting saying, "This is not a sinative bishops." So he kind of forced them to stay alongside women to be making decisions with women. He appointed the first female prefect, number one person in any Vatican office. He made the governor of the Vatican City State a woman. This predates him, but the head of the Vatican Museums was a woman. So he increased and kind of accelerated the rate at which women were being appointed to higher up roles. And then interesting, legally, he changed the Constitution of the Roman Curious. This is the kind of churchy offices of the Vatican, the central church offices. He made it so that holding governing positions does not necessarily have to be joined with holy orders.
(36:57):
So you don't have to be a priest, you don't have to be ordained to hold an important position. That was a huge issue of contention at the conclave this year. So one cardinal who was thought to be an ally of Pope Francis stood up and was like, Francis was completely wrong to do that. Said he imposed his own ideas by separating governance from holy orders and we need to go back. The resounding response from the College of Cardinals was, absolutely not. We are not going back. He was completely right to do this. They elected Pope Leo who first thing, his first Roman Curio appointment after he got elected was a woman. So made very clear right off the bat, he's going to continue putting women into roles that they're able to hold. Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (37:38):
Fantastic. 2,000 years later, we're getting back to where we were, getting that ratio set.
Colleen Dulle (37:44):
Yeah. I mean, it's weird. It's such a strange culture in the Vatican around the advancement of women because when you're worshiping a God whose whole deal is humility, any talk of trying to give power to somebody, it's always kind of looked down on. People are not supposed to advocate for themselves to be advanced in certain positions. And so it's kind of a convoluted way that these things end up having to come about. It's like a woman being put in a high up position in the Vatican is not going to come out and be like, yes, I am representing women. Representation is important because they'll instead talk about themselves much like any Pope or high up bishop will talk about themselves as like, "Well, I'm serving the church." So it's frustrating because there's no attitude of we need gender parity. There's no attitude of we need to be trying to shift towards a place where women are in positions of power because then it gets into questions of power and authority.
Andrea Chalupa (38:46):
Is there any movement within the church to try to push back against the Catholic Church being used ... Or how do I say this? Reproductive healthcare, let's just say. Women are dying in parking lots from denial of reproductive healthcare from infections of miscarriages and worse. And we don't even know because some of these states are under counting the mortality rates. Is the Catholic Church just going to stay silent on this? Or could you envision Pope Leo? Is he on a track to say, look, if women are dying or if they're at risk, people need to take that into consideration when it comes to abortion healthcare or is that just a bridge too far at this point for the Catholic Church?
Colleen Dulle (39:23):
Yeah, I wouldn't count on it. I think that Leo himself, I know from talking to people who have worked closely with him that he is very cautious man. He does not want to be seen as doing anything that he thinks would divide the Catholic Church. And remember, he has to not only get progressive Germans on board, but also he has to get conservative Africans on board. And so any move he makes, he has to consider how it's going to be taken by all of those folks. And he's, I think, very aware of the risk of schism. So I would say he's probably not going to make a lot of big moves toward advocating even against conservative abortion policies. I think that he's certainly not going to make moves towards ordaining women priests. What I would say is I think we have a bit of a framework for how he could talk about this that came from Pope Francis on trans rights, which is that somewhere near the end of his papacy, somebody under him came out and said, "We need to be considering the pro- life, what they call the pro- life issue of for trans people, their mental health." So if people are being excluded and it's making them more likely to die by suicide, then this becomes a life issue.
(40:45):
And so I think that following that model, you could have Leo come out in good conscience and without risking too much division, although there certainly would be some to say, "Women are dying from this. We need a solution to this problem." And perhaps the solution is in a different place than what the US bishops have been hyper focused on as what they've long called the preeminent issue of Catholic social teaching, which Pope Francis said, you cannot call abortion the preeminent issue anymore. It's not the one thing that trumps all other things.
Andrea Chalupa (41:17):
So what's now the official position of the Vatican when it comes to trans lives?
Colleen Dulle (41:21):
The thing is that the Vatican has said very little about trans people. There's just not a lot of official Vatican teaching on it, but it said that this needs to be a concern pastorally that if people are dying, you need to be making moves to include them more. I think that the Vatican also said recently that trans people can be godparents, can be baptized. So we're starting to see very initial baby steps towards recognition that trans people exist and inclusion of them. Beyond those though, almost everything that is said about trans people in Catholic teaching, like official Catholic teaching is along this line of intrinsic disorder or saying that it's some kind of mental issue where people are just misunderstanding who they are. I don't know how quickly or whether that might change. I think that there are Catholic theologians working on it certainly, but theologians who are exploring ideas that are challenging to existing church teaching have always had a strained relationship with the Vatican.
(42:28):
So we'll have to see how that relationship continues to grow and change. We've got a new doctrine chief as of a couple years ago in the Vatican, and he's much more progressive. He was a Francis ally. Love to see one if he keeps his job under Leo. And then two, how that office's work continues. What I think though is that we'll probably see less on issues like that coming out of the Vatican's doctrine office because that office is also in charge of disciplining sex abuse. And I think that Leo was going to tell them, "You guys need to be focused way more on this, " which I understand totally.
Andrea Chalupa (43:00):
And is the sex abuse persisting? Did we just get lucky with spotlight that column, I believe, in the Boston Globe, which led to the investigation in the Boston ... I forget, maybe it was a Washington Post column.
Colleen Dulle (43:13):
Spotlight was a team within the Boston Globe.
Andrea Chalupa (43:17):
Yes. But I think they were first turned on to the issue by a column, and I forget if it was in the Washington Post or Boston Globe. And then the team of reporters at the Boston Globe got on the issue and covered mass, mass coverup going back decades. Do you see any inkling that that is still persisting in the church anywhere?
Colleen Dulle (43:38):
Yeah, of course. So when you compare the stats, abuse is happening at the same rates within the Catholic Church and by Catholic clergy as in any other part of society. But the insidious thing is the coverup in the Catholic church where you have people who are, one, using the fact that they claim to be directly linked to God and holding that over people to keep them quiet, but then two, this mishandling where priests were just shuffled around instead of being taken out of ministry. So the battle within the worldwide Catholic church and on the Vatican's part has been to get all the bishops around the world to understand that this is happening wherever they live because there's plenty of places that we're like, no, see how many questions the English speaking journalists ask about this? Clearly this is just an Anglophone issue that is honest to God a thing that was said often in the early 2000s.
(44:32):
Yeah. So now the US Catholic Church, having had the whole reckoning with the spotlight investigation in 2002 right away snapped into action, developed a bunch of safeguarding procedures that are seen around the world as the best possible that are in the Catholic Church. And so then a lot of other Bishops conferences are either trying to adopt those or being pressured to adopt those. I think there's some hope. I just did a story last week talking to an abuse survivor and then two survivor advocates about their hopes for the Leo papacy. And they're like, yeah, maybe the fact that he is American, even though he hasn't lived in America in a long time will mean that he's much more on board with these kinds of policies, what they call zero tolerance, which is removing a priest from ministry as soon as there's a credible allegation. We'll see.
(45:23):
But no, certainly I think that there's a lot of hope that Leo's going to be taking decisive action on this. There's some questions about his past handling of abuse cases, but when I talk to other bishops at least, they're like, no, he handled it all according to the canon law, according to the guidelines that were laid out for him. So the question is, how much is he going to try to strengthen those? And I think that there's a willingness on his part to do that. When he was dealing with that group, the Sotalisio in Peru, he put his neck on the line for survivors there. He did more than he was supposed to do. He stood up for them and he knew, there's a quote at the end of the story that I read, I think it was reported by the Associated Press where one of the survivors contacts him and they're like, "You know that they're going to try to retaliate against you.
(46:08):
"And he's like, ‘I'm very aware essentially, but I don't care.’"
Andrea Chalupa (46:11):
And now he's Pope.
Colleen Dulle (46:12):
And now he's Pope. So I feel pretty good about where he's going in terms of abuse prevention. There was some concern that I should echo based on the fact that he is a canon lawyer by training. So that means that one advocate I talked to said, this could mean that he's very sympathetic towards a church law system that really favors priests, that is in the interest of protecting priests, protecting their priesthood, their ministry. On the other hand, I talked to another guy who's a civil lawyer, but who does a lot of work on abuse and he says, "Well, maybe that means that he knows where the loopholes that need to be closed are. "
Andrea Chalupa (46:50):
Let's hope. So what a time in world of history to have the first American Pope when America is in crisis. Could you speak a little bit about Pope Leo and Trump and Vance? There's a video that went viral where Pope Leo gave sort of an icy, what was being interpreted as an icy reception to meeting JD Vance.
Colleen Dulle (47:08):
Yeah, yeah. I saw that video and I saw the reactions to it. So in fact, what was happening in that video is he's going down a line of greeting people and Leo and Vance were scheduled to have a meeting the next day. So I think Vance wanted to continue the conversation right there and then. And Leo was like, "No, let me continue greeting other people. I'm going to talk to you tomorrow." Yeah, they did talk. We don't know a lot about what was said in the meeting. We know that he brought up that Leo talked with him about issues of peace and justice in the world. I think certain world conflicts that they said were brought up.
Andrea Chalupa (47:41):
JD Vance is interrupting him going, "You haven't even said thank you.
Colleen Dulle (47:43):
Do you even have a black suit? Yeah, I don't know. But I remember right after the pope was elected, James Longman from ABC leaned over to me right before we went on air and he was like, "Let's talk about the trump of it all. " And I was like, "Oh my God." The fact is that the Cardinals were not trying to elect somebody to be a counterweight to Trump, but now you have to-
Andrea Chalupa (48:04):
That's what we're all hoping.
Colleen Dulle (48:04):
I know. I know.
Andrea Chalupa (48:07):
It's like this natural biologically ingrained instinct to want a Savior syndrome, a savior to come in and the progressive wing of the Vatican is rising up. But yeah, it wasn't that. It was just sort of progress begets progress. Francis was a radical Pope by Vatican standards. And of course, what comes next?
Colleen Dulle (48:25):
And he appointed, in political terms, like a super majority of the Cardinal electors. And we saw that coming from the College of Cardinals that they wanted somebody who was going to continue a lot of the Francis moves. I mean, his style's really different from Francis. He's a much quieter, more reserved guy. He's probably not going to be giving freewheeling press conferences where he says things like, who am I to judge, which we all adored from Pope Francis, or at least I did. But yeah, he's made clear from the second he came out on the balcony that he was going to continue a lot of the Francis moves. He dropped the word synadality, which is a super Catholic insider term that even a lot of Catholics don't know, but said that in his address to the world. But it meant that he's going to continue this effort of pushing forward to share power and authority and decision making and responsibility in the Catholic Church between the hierarchy and regular laypeople.
(49:15):
And so I was very heartened by that. As for what his relationship with Trump and Vance and this whole Catholic right movement is going to be, I don't know. He's a guy who I think keeps his cards really close to the chest. I think there was a Twitter account that in as far as we're able to verify, it was associated with an email address that is known to be his, but he was tweeting out articles, including one from my magazine that were critical of Vance, especially on this Orto Amoris migration situation. I have talked to people in Peru who were saying that under the authoritarian regime there in the late '90s, he was helping organize and then marching in protests against that regime. I don't know. I think that he will, again, try to be super measured in his public statements and stuff, but at the same time, he knows he's a moral authority.
(50:08):
He knows there's a weight on him. And I think that he will speak out when he sees something as being deeply unjust. So yeah, I have hope for it. I think it's always going to seem like a little bit less than we want from him if I'm going to make a prediction there.
Andrea Chalupa (50:25):
Well, personally, I want him to just have the world's biggest yard sale and sell it all and feed the poor.
Colleen Dulle (50:30):
Can I say something on that?
Andrea Chalupa (50:30):
Yes, go ahead.
Colleen Dulle (50:31):
The Vatican is asset rich, but liquid poor. So the Vatican has these dope buildings and everything, but nobody's buying the Sistine Chapel and their bank accounts are not super full. They're just getting out of a deficit right now. I mean-
Andrea Chalupa (50:48):
From all the lawsuits.
Colleen Dulle (50:49):
Well, there's that, but there's also, they've had just financial scandals, people poorly advising them on deals. A lot of the people who were making the decisions in Vatican Finance were not always ... They went to seminary. They didn't go to business school. And so they would find people to advise them who didn't always have the best intentions, who wanted to enrich themselves while seeming like good Catholics. Anyway, Vatican finance is a hot mess, but the solution is not necessarily take apart Bernini's colonnade and sell it because I don't think anybody's in the market for gigantic stone columns right now.
Andrea Chalupa (51:22):
Oh, Elon Musk will buy it in a heartbeat and turn it into a shrine to Elon Musk. I want to ask you about Gaza. Is the new Pope continuing Francis's policy of checking in on Gaza?
Colleen Dulle (51:33):
I mean, checking in, I'm sure that he's following what's happening, but he's not calling the parish every day, which Francis did. And part of that is because the parish priest in Gaza was Argentine. So he had a kind of very cordial relationship with Francis. They spoke the same language. Leo speaks Spanish. He could call, and I wish that he would, but yeah, he just doesn't have that kind of close relationship with the community. It just detail breaks my heart, but every night at the hour that Francis would usually call the parish, they ring the bells and I call it the hour of the Pope. Oh my God, that almost brought me to tears. Yeah, dude, I think about the kids there who called him the grandpa. It really breaks my heart. But I mean, also at the same time, Leo at his inauguration in front of the Israeli, I think, president spoke very strongly against what was happening in Gaza and didn't have to do that.
(52:24):
And I think considering how careful of a person he was, that was a pretty bold choice.
Reporter (52:31):
Those bells are from Holy Family Church, the only Catholic parish in Gaza that the late Pontiff was close to. Holy family has been ringing those bells every night at 8:00 PM to honor when Pope Francis would call the church every night to check in on them.
Andrea Chalupa (52:52):
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