All world leaders are ordained by God. From Pharaoh, to Herod, to Pilate, to Pope John Paul II, to Obama and Trump, to the latest pope. Leaders are chosen by God for our blessing, discipline, or punishment and judgment, and absent discernment, it’s often difficult to understand which one we are being subjected to. Biblical Israel was given wonderful leaders and evil leaders. The modern world is no different, because humans are no different, and God is no different. The pope is both a religious leader and a political one—he heads a church and a nation-state and is a major world leader, so his political views absolutely matter. In this case, he’s an American who voluntarily weighed in on controversial American political issues over more than a decade. Presumably his colleagues were aware of those views. Maybe they picked him in spite of those views, or maybe they picked him because of those views. Will his previous political statements dictate the entire of his papacy? I would hope not. But they clearly tell us something about his priorities and worldview. He tweeted or retweeted left-wing political takes on immigration, George Floyd and BLM, global warming, and gun control. He attacked Trump and Vance. And he did all those things even though they weren’t really part of his job at all. He chose to make himself a part of the political conversation. That makes his beliefs on those issues especially noteworthy. And so now he’s part of the political conversation, and with that comes political criticism. That’s not a statement about Catholic doctrine or theology. It’s not about Protestantism vs. the pope. It’s just reality. Hopefully he will understand going forward that his new duties are bigger and more important than retweeting midwit MSNBC-esque takes on American politics. But ignoring that he went out of his way to let the world know his political views is foolish. They don’t tell us everything about what he believes, but they tell us something. And that something isn’t great. With any luck, he understands that now, too.