You’ve probably seen the headlines: Pope Leo chose as the new bishop of West Virginia a certain Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, a once-deported illegal immigrant who snuck into our country in the trunk of a car in 1990 and later wangled U.S. citizenship. This bishop’s elevation was clearly a gesture—in fact, an obscene one—on the part of a Church that, in theory, claims not to promote open borders, but in fact condemns every effort of Western countries to control mass immigration, legal or illegal.

It is noteworthy, however, that neither the Vatican nor local bishops ever intervenes when African, Asian, or Latin American countries enforce their immigration laws. Likewise, Vatican observers will note that while the Church still claims to adhere to the historic Just War doctrine, in practice, it reflexively condemns virtually every U.S. military action, however wise or unwise.

The Christian Post did a solid report on this appointment, noting the breathless excitement of leftist Catholics such as Greg Erlandsen (formerly of Catholic News Service), who crowed, “At this time of tension caused by Trump Administration policies regarding immigration and DEI, Pope Leo has quietly affirmed the Church’s position concerning both immigrants and racial justice.”

The Post quoted evangelical author and political pundit Steve Deace on what this “quiet” affirmation really amounts to:

Barely 2% of West Virginia is Hispanic. Barely 1% of the state speaks Spanish. This is a purely political appointment by a woke pope trying to shoehorn his open borders agenda into a state Trump has won by 40 points three times. There’s nothing prophetic here, but it’s all shamefully political.

I agree. I would love nothing more than to see the Trump administration set its best lawyers to the task of investigating whether Bishop Menjivar-Ayala committed immigration fraud, such that his citizenship could be revoked and he could be deported—to an El Salvador that’s now peaceful and prosperous, thanks to a solid law-and-order government that doesn’t pay attention to the bleating of clerics infected by Liberation Theology. That would be a glorious gesture, affirming the right of American citizens to see their own just and democratically enacted laws and national sovereignty respected—which is Caesar’s proper role, whatever overreaching, Utopian clerics say to the contrary.

Menjivar-Ayala’s appointment is the latest escalation in an ongoing war of words between the Vatican and U.S. bishops (with the support of leftist Democrats who happily permitted the persecution of faithful Catholics under the Biden regime) and the Trump administration, which came into office with a clear majority of U.S. Catholics’ votes. This pope, and the cardinals who elected him—most of whom were appointed by the ham-handed globalist innovator, Pope Francis—is clashing with the Trump administration not over points of solemn Christian principle, but rather over politics. Put bluntly, the bishops of the Church in the West are, in general, far to the left both of their congregations and most priests under age 60, having long-ago soft-pedaled personal holiness and traditional morality in favor of turning the Church into a humanitarian NGO that relies heavily on taxpayer funds—like Amnesty International, with incense.

Conflict between popes and secular leaders has been a running theme of Western history since Constantine’s conversion. It’s all too tempting for my fellow Catholics today, surveying such incidents, to thoughtlessly side with the papacy in any conflict. But countless faithful believers over the centuries did not.

The Ghibellines, who backed the Holy Roman Emperors against the grander claims of medieval popes, were equally Catholics in good standing; they simply regarded the pretensions of given popes as excessive, misguided, or wrong. The great theological poet Dante was technically a Guelph (the pro-papal party), but he wrote in De Monarchia that a strong, faithful emperor was equally crucial to the health of Christendom. Going back to the 10^th century, it took the Emperor Otto the Great invading Rome and deposing a corrupt pope to free the papacy from what historians call the “Pornocracy,” or “rule by harlots,” the dominion of local nobles who picked the popes, sometimes delegating that power to influential courtesans.

Sometimes God uses Caesar to rebuke or correct sinful heirs to St. Peter. I’d like to see the Trump administration act in that direction, relying on the faithful Catholics in its midst, such as JD Vance and Marco Rubio, to explain to the public that it’s acting on behalf of Catholic laymen against corrupt and politicized clerics. While too many online Catholics are busy complaining about Jeffrey Epstein and his depraved network it’s easy to forget that the U.S. bishops in the past 40 years have enabled far more sex crimes than Epstein could have imagined.

U.S. Catholic bishops have had to pay out $3 billion in legal settlements for their conspiratorial shuffling and hiding of child-abusing priests—a number which would have been higher had they not been able to shelter behind bankruptcy. Just think how much human misery that represents, how many boys saw their faith and sexuality mutilated at the hands of predator priests. The Vatican sits safely protected from further legal claims, hiding behind the legal fiction that individual dioceses are somehow “independent” corporations, even though the Vatican hires and fires all the bishops and intrudes on their sex abuse policies. (Pope Francis intervened directly in 2018 to stop the U.S. bishops from holding accountable bishops who cover up sex abuse.)

As if to clear that tab, Catholic dioceses have garnered another $3 billion over 15 years in taxpayer funds for the purpose of serving immigrants. The DOGE attack on USAID uncovered just the tip of the iceberg of taxpayer funds sloshing into the U.S. bishops’ captive nonprofits, such as Catholic Charities USA. A RICO case from the Justice Department looking into conspiratorial conduct in sex abuse coverups and possible human trafficking of immigrants is long overdue. Overnight, it would render nonprofits linked to the bishops ineligible for federal contracts, bankrupting the Catholic Left.

That should get Rome’s attention. But if this pope continues to make a mockery of the Church’s own teaching that immigrants are obliged to obey the laws of countries they hope to enter, Trump has one more nuke in his legal arsenal. He could reexamine the Vatican’s sovereign immunity to sex abuse lawsuits. I explained the legal rationale for such a move back in 2023, in case the reader is interested.

Such actions by the Trump administration would surely be painted as anti-Catholic. But in fact, they’d represent Caesar wielding his sword correctly and justly, to protect lay Catholics (and other Americans) from the corruption of our politicized shepherds. Maybe a Church that isn’t swimming in taxpayer funds, and replacing the 40 percent of native-born Catholics who abandon the Church with sheep stolen from Latin America, would cease to be a cozy career path for lavender leftists of the kind whom child-molester Cardinal Theodore McCarrick groomed as his proteges—and whom Pope Francis appointed as our bishops.