From Floyd to Kirk: The Selective Tears of Rome

How the Vatican preaches justice, neglects souls, and basks in applause

On June 3, 2020, Francis used his Wednesday audience to name George Floyd, denounce racism, call for national reconciliation, and entrust the United States to Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was a full, public, moral intervention delivered from the papal pulpit to the world, and Vatican channels amplified it immediately.

Now consider September 2025. Charlie Kirk, an evangelical Protestant activist, VP confidant, and perhaps the most recognizable youth organizer on the American right, is assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University. Authorities say the motive is still under investigation; reporting to date describes a suspect with left-wing online influences and confirms the killing occurred mid-event, on stage, in front of thousands. Whatever one thinks of Kirk’s politics, this was a public execution of a Christian public figure in the middle of an American campus.

What was Rome’s response? Not an Angelus appeal. Not a general-audience prayer. Instead, Leo raised the murder privately with the U.S. ambassador: a line tucked into the embassy’s readout about a “warm and constructive” meeting. In other words, a backroom mention without a front-facing word to the faithful. The contrast with 2020 could not be starker. Francis took to the balcony and the airwaves for Floyd; Leo whispered condolences in a diplomatic parlor for Kirk. The same Vatican that speaks loudly when it tracks with elite narratives suddenly prefers sotto voce when the victim is an unfashionable Protestant culture warrior.

Some will object that Kirk wasn’t Catholic. True, and irrelevant to the point. The Holy See routinely speaks publicly about non-Catholic victims when it wishes to shape the moral conversation. If anything, Kirk’s Protestant identity sharpens the inconsistency: Francis publicly mourned a non-Catholic “victim of injustice” in 2020; Leo confined his comments about a slain Protestant to private diplomatic chatter in 2025. That asymmetry isn’t pastoral prudence. It’s optics. Meanwhile, the American Church gets the message: some deaths deserve Rome’s megaphone, others merit a parenthetical.

Kirk’s own religious positioning makes the silence more telling. He rose as a standard-bearer of Christian nationalism, frequently partnering with Catholics and speaking in explicitly Christian terms, even as outlets noted his evangelical background. If Rome wanted to warn against political violence, defend free speech, or simply pray publicly for his soul and grieving family, it had every precedent and every microphone. It chose discretion. That choice speaks louder than any allocution.

The Bishops’ Silent Treatment

The USCCB never misses a chance to flex its moral megaphone when the victim fits the world’s narrative. Four days after George Floyd’s death, Archbishop José Gomez had a polished statement on racism, police brutality, and reconciliation ready to go, stamped with the full authority of the bishops’ conference. The talking points landed right in line with CNN. The institutional Church bent over backward to show it “got it.”

Fast forward to 2025. Charlie Kirk is gunned down on stage in front of thousands of college students; a political assassination of a Christian public figure. Four days pass. And from the USCCB? Nothing. Not a single collective statement, not even a boilerplate “we pray for the repose of his soul and the comfort of his family.” Silence.

Individual bishops spoke, Burbidge in Arlington, Solis in Salt Lake City, a few others with pious platitudes, but the conference as a body, the same one that can churn out press releases on climate change and immigration at the drop of a hat, suddenly found itself tongue-tied. The “prophetic voice” of the Church in America could not muster the courage to say a murdered evangelical deserved prayer.

Why? Because Kirk is the wrong kind of victim. Floyd’s death advanced a preferred narrative; Kirk’s death exposes the rot of political hatred and leftist violence. One is useful, the other inconvenient. And so the shepherds stay silent.

It’s not just cowardice, it’s catechesis by omission. The bishops are teaching Catholics that some lives deserve liturgical lament and Vatican tears, while others are better left unmentioned lest the wrong people get offended. In 2020, the Church offered Our Lady of Guadalupe to America for George Floyd. In 2025, it offered diplomatic whispers for Charlie Kirk.

Silence is not neutral. It’s a decision, and in this case, a disgraceful one.

Pope Deflector

Take the case of one of the papal fanboys on X, the account styling itself “Pope Respecter.” A better nickname would be Pope Deflector, because that’s exactly what he does: deflects every criticism, every inconsistency, every scandal.

When Francis publicly invoked George Floyd, that was supposedly noble and prophetic. When Leo XIV won’t even mention Charlie Kirk outside of a diplomatic whisper, suddenly it would be “weird” to expect the pope to act like a moral leader. The papacy, we’re told, must float above “American politics.”

But notice the sleight of hand. The papacy may thunder against Trump’s border wall, denounce fossil fuels, and canonize DEI, but if anyone asks why the murder of a conservative Christian leader doesn’t merit a single public prayer, suddenly the pope must be protected from politicization. It’s not about transcending politics. It’s about keeping the papacy aligned with the right politics.

Pope Deflector and his ilk aren’t shielding the Church from partisanship. They’re laundering papal hypocrisy. The Catholic charity and intellectual rigor of his disciples were on full display in their reactions to my condemnation of the sacrilegious rock concert/ drone show Leo put on at St. Peter’s as the world mourned Charlie Kirk:

*Lin’s profile picture was removed by me for immodesty.

“By their fruits, you shall know them.” Matthew 7:16.

DeathChurch by the Numbers

A new analysis of the Official Catholic Directory lays bare what pews already whisper. In the median U.S. diocese there is roughly one non-infant reception into the Church for every 413 Catholics; many large sees trail badly, while a handful of smaller dioceses lead with proportionally robust conversions. The splashy talk of “missionary discipleship” has yielded a cradle-to-grave service bureau: baptize the babies, bury the grandparents, and count receptions by the dozen, not the hundreds. The few outliers, Raleigh’s “miracle,” Tulsa’s culture of invitation, Wichita’s intentional stewardship, only highlight how rare adult conversion actually is across the Novus Ordo landscape. Souls aren’t storming the gates. They’re trickling in.

Ziegler’s reporting digs into how dioceses classify “infant” versus “minor,” but the definitional fog doesn’t change the horizon. The Church’s self-congratulation on evangelization rings hollow when most parishes can’t point to a single adult convert in a year, while dioceses in the Bible Belt outperform legacy Catholic strongholds by orders of magnitude. If the post-conciliar “renewal” were real, the font would be crowded. It isn’t.

Leo’s Poll Numbers: Applause as Apostolic Success

Pew now tells us 84 percent of U.S. Catholics view Leo favorably, with majorities of non-Catholics approving as well. Weekly Mass-goers? Ninety-five percent. The press headlines gush: “Americans like what they’ve seen so far.” Of course they do. Leo speaks fluent NGO, creation, migration, synodality, and keeps the edges sanded down. Popularity is not the mark of Peter; fidelity is. Christ warned us what it means when “all men speak well of you.” Yet Leo leans into applause while conversions stagnate and public witness is curated according to fashion.

A Church of the Cross or of Compromise?

This weekend the Vatican wrapped itself in the language of the Cross, martyrs, and mission. At Lampedusa, Leo praised “gestures of welcome” and called for a “culture of reconciliation.” In the Clementine Hall he urged a dialogical theology for a peaceful world. During the Angelus, he preached John 3:16 and the saving power of the Crucified; at St. Paul Outside the Walls, he honored twentieth- and twenty-first-century martyrs. All true in the abstract. Yet in practice, “reconciliation” without truth becomes a moral solvent. Martyrdom reduced to an ecumenical mood board drains blood of doctrine. If the Cross is merely a symbol of encounter, then it ceases to be the scandal by which error is judged and sinners are converted.

Why We Write

This is why Substacks like this exist. When bishops measure success by headlines, when parishes measure health by infant tallies, when popes meter compassion by cultural cachet, someone has to name the betrayal. Trad Inc. won’t. The neo-Catholic media won’t. So we will. The blood of martyrs once seeded a Church. Today, it risks becoming a press release. And that is the scandal we refuse to sanitize.