Leo XIV Told Marxist Revolutionaries: “I Am With You”

Vienna praises same-sex blessings, Catholic colleges host lavender graduations, China’s underground Church is left in silence, and Leo’s Vatican keeps walking with the revolution.

Vienna Learns the Language

Archbishop Josef Grünwidl of Vienna was appointed Metropolitan Archbishop of Vienna by Leo XIV in October 2025, after serving as apostolic administrator following Cardinal Schönborn’s retirement. Vatican News presented the appointment in the usual smooth institutional language: a pastor, a man of availability, a servant of spiritual renewal.

But the more revealing material came later. EWTN reported in March 2026 that Grünwidl told Austria’s bishops that what comes from the Holy Spirit “cannot be stopped by canon law,” and that this applied also to the role of women in the Church. The same report noted his former connection to Austria’s controversial Priests’ Initiative, a group associated with a “call to disobedience” and advocacy for women and married men in the priesthood.

After his May 2026 audience with Leo XIV, CatholicCulture reported that Grünwidl described the meeting as a “very good conversation” and said they discussed ecumenical cooperation and interreligious dialogue in Vienna. EN.news adds that he also spoke of “reform topics,” praised Fiducia Supplicans, and presented synodality as something Leo intends to continue.

The point is obvious. Vienna is not being treated as a problem to be corrected, but a laboratory to be managed.

Fiducia Supplicans itself is the perfect document for this age because it performs contradiction. The declaration says the Church’s doctrine on marriage is unchanged, yet it explicitly opens the “possibility” of blessings for couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples, provided the form is not fixed ritually or confused with marriage.

That is the loophole. Just a blessing of the “couple,” in their “relationship,” while pretending the object being pastorally approached has not shifted.

Lavender Catholicism

The same logic appears in Catholic higher education.

The Cardinal Newman Society reported on May 7 that at least sixteen Catholic colleges in the United States are hosting “lavender graduations” this spring. The listed institutions include Georgetown, Gonzaga, Boston College, Fordham, Marquette, Xavier, Seattle University, Saint Louis University, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara, St. John’s, Holy Cross, Albertus Magnus, Saint Mary’s College of California, and Siena Heights.

These are household names in the Catholic academic establishment. They are the schools that produce lawyers, administrators, teachers, diocesan employees, chancery staffers, NGO Catholics, and future “pastoral ministers” who will someday explain to a confused parent that doctrine is unchanged while everything around the child has been changed.

Georgetown’s own description of its 2026 Lavender Graduation says the event celebrates LGBTQ and ally students, acknowledges their achievements and experiences, and is followed by a Lavender Gala with a DJ and dance floor. Boston College advertises a Lavender Graduation where LGBTQ+ and ally graduates are invited to celebrate their accomplishments and receive a lavender cord to wear at graduation. Boston College’s LGBTQ student support page describes Lavender Graduation as recognizing LGBTQ+ students for leadership, successes, and commitment to the LGBTQ+ community, so they may leave with “pride” in themselves and their college experiences.

That word is doing a lot of work.

A Catholic college should be able to say to every student: you are loved by God, created in His image, wounded by sin, called to chastity, redeemed by Christ, and summoned to holiness.

But lavender graduations do something else. They do not merely welcome students who struggle with same-sex attraction or confusion about identity. They celebrate the identity structure itself. The person is not invited to be conformed to Christ. Christ is invited to be chaplain to the identity.

The Newman Society noted that none of the event descriptions it identified referenced Catholic teaching on human sexuality. It also noted Seattle University’s event description mentioning “a special performance by Sativa the Drag Queen.” That detail is not an aberration. It is a sacramental sign of the new order. The Catholic college no longer forms students against the world. It provides Catholic architecture, Catholic nostalgia, and Catholic vocabulary for the world’s anthropology.

This is what happens when “pastoral accompaniment” becomes detached from conversion. The sinner is no longer accompanied out of sin. He is accompanied into institutional recognition.

And the bishops wonder why families stop trusting Catholic schools.

China Gets Silence, Activists Get Hugs

Now compare that with China.

InfoVaticana’s May 12 article argued that one year into Leo XIV’s pontificate, Rome has still not clarified the future of the Vatican-China agreement, originally signed in 2018 and renewed in 2020, 2022, and 2024. Vatican News confirmed in October 2024 that the Holy See and Beijing extended the provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops for another four years. The article said the agreement had opened a “historic chapter” in relations and had allowed all bishops to be in full hierarchical communion with the pope.

But history looks different when read from the underground Church.

Human Rights Watch reported in April 2026 that Chinese authorities are increasing pressure on underground Catholic communities to join the state-controlled official church, tightening ideological control, surveillance, and travel restrictions over China’s estimated twelve million Catholics. HRW also stated that the 2018 Holy See-China agreement has helped Beijing pressure underground Catholic communities into the official structure.

The Associated Press summarized the same HRW report, noting claims of arbitrary detention, forced disappearance, and house arrest of underground clergy, while also reporting that Leo XIV had continued with the agreement “in the short term.”

So here is the spectacle.

Toward the popular movements, Rome can speak warmly. Toward LGBT activists, Rome can listen. Toward German innovators, Rome can dialogue. Toward Catholic colleges celebrating sexual identity, Rome can generally remain institutionally calm. But toward Chinese Catholics crushed between the Communist state and Vatican diplomacy, the dominant tone is patience, prudence, process, review, continuation.

The underground Catholic in China is asked to endure ambiguity for the sake of diplomacy.

The Catholic parent in America is asked to endure scandal for the sake of inclusion.

The faithful Catholic in Vienna is asked to endure reform for the sake of synodality.

And the Marxist activist is told: “I am with you.”

The Popular Movements Were Not a Side Story

A Lepanto Institute feature article is a map of the system.

The report focuses on the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements, held in October 2025 at Spin Time Labs in Rome under Vatican auspices. The key escalation, according to the report and confirmed by the Vatican press conference material, was that delegations from popular movements were accompanied by representatives of local Churches with an official mandate. Don Mattia Ferrari described this as a sign of the synodal Church building bridges. The Holy See Press Office text itself said the delegates would be accompanied by local Church delegations “with an official mandate,” calling it a sign of the synodal Church and the missionary Church going to the peripheries.

That is the key.

Integration.

The local Church is not just being told to tolerate these movements. It is being attached to them.

Leo XIV’s own address to the Popular Movements makes the problem impossible to dismiss. In the official Vatican text, he said he was continuing the path opened by Francis. He invoked his choice of the name Leo XIV in relation to Rerum Novarum. Then he echoed Francis’s language of “land, housing and work,” calling them sacred rights and telling the movements: “I am here,” “I am with you.”

The Lepanto feature argues that the meeting’s organizers, participants, and venue were marked by Marxist, socialist, pro-abortion, and LGBT advocacy, and that the event’s structure risks spreading those ideologies through local Catholic communities. The same report describes Spin Time Labs as a squatter-occupied, Marxist, transfeminist space associated with pro-abortion and pro-trans activism, and notes that the 2025 meeting took place there with high-ranking prelates present.

One may debate details. One may ask whether Leo personally knew the full ideological profile of every group or venue. The Lepanto piece itself allows the possibility that he did not. But after the report, that ignorance cannot remain morally useful. A pope who says “I am with you” to a coalition of such movements has a duty to know who “you” are.

And this is where the irony becomes almost too heavy to lift.

Leo XIV chose the name Leo in reference to Rerum Novarum. But Leo XIII, in that very encyclical, rejected the socialist attempt to abolish private property and transfer possessions into common control, warning that such remedies would harm workers and create confusion in the community. Pius XI later taught in Quadragesimo Anno that socialism is irreconcilable with true Christianity and that no one can be both a good Catholic and a true socialist. In Divini Redemptoris, Pius XI warned that Communism is intrinsically wrong and that Catholics must not collaborate with it.

Yet now the name Leo is being used to bless a Francis-style politics of “popular movements,” as if the condemnations of the old popes can be bypassed by changing the vocabulary from socialism to solidarity, revolution to periphery, and class struggle to accompaniment.

It is the old trick: baptize the language, leave the ideology intact.

The New Magisterium of Ambiguity

There is a common thread running through Vienna, the lavender graduations, China, and the Popular Movements.

It is not simply liberalism. Liberalism is too small a word for it. Nor is it merely cowardice, though there is plenty of that. It is a new ecclesial operating system.

The first principle is that doctrine remains on paper.

The second principle is that pastoral practice moves in the opposite direction.

The third principle is that anyone who notices the contradiction is accused of being rigid, ideological, anti-synodal, unmerciful, or obsessed with sex.

The fourth principle is that Rome never quite approves the revolution in its most explicit form. It only creates the protected space in which the revolution can mature.

That is what happened with same-sex blessings. Rome said no ritual, no legitimation, no marriage confusion. Germany produced a more formalized pastoral path anyway. Rome objected, but kept dialogue alive. Now men like Grünwidl can praise Fiducia Supplicans while admiring the German directness, and everyone knows the direction of travel.

That is what happens in Catholic universities. Rome and the bishops can continue to affirm Catholic teaching in documents, while the schools create ceremonies, cords, galas, offices, centers, retreats, and drag-adjacent celebrations around identity. The doctrine remains somewhere on the shelf, available for citation if donors complain.

That is what happens with China. The Vatican can say the agreement concerns bishops and communion, while underground Catholics experience it as pressure to disappear into the state-controlled structure. The diplomatic theory remains elegant. The faithful pay the invoice.

That is what happens with the Popular Movements. Catholic social teaching remains in the library. Leo XIII remains quoted. Pius XI remains technically unrepealed. Meanwhile, the Vatican accompanies activist networks whose worldview often runs directly against Catholic moral and social doctrine.

This is government by controlled contradiction.

The Church of the Peripheries Always Knows Which Peripheries to Ignore

The new Vatican loves the periphery, provided the periphery is ideologically useful.

The migrant is a periphery. The climate activist is a periphery. The LGBT pilgrim is a periphery. The Marxist housing organizer is a periphery. The dissident theologian is a periphery. The German blessing committee is a periphery.

But the traditional Catholic family whose children are being catechized into sexual revolution at Catholic universities is not a periphery. They are a nuisance.

The underground Chinese Catholic who refuses to bend before the Patriotic Association is not treated as the privileged face of Christ crucified under Communism. He is an obstacle to an agreement.

The Catholic who says that socialism and communism remain condemned is not hailed as a defender of the poor against materialist revolution. He is treated as someone who has not read the latest pastoral memo.

The young man trying to remain chaste in a Catholic college saturated by pride language is not given a ceremony, a cord, a gala, or a drag performance. He gets silence. Or worse, he gets therapy-talk from campus ministry about belonging.

This is why the “peripheries” rhetoric is fraudulent. It is not a universal love for the suffering. It is a selection mechanism. The suffering person becomes visible when his wound can be used to advance the revolution. He becomes invisible when his fidelity condemns it.

The Real Scandal Is Not That the Revolution Exists

The revolution has always existed.

There have always been clerics who wanted to make peace with the world and trade doctrine for respectability. There have always been activists who saw the Church as a useful moral costume for political projects and who preferred a clean agreement with persecutors to a messy solidarity with the persecuted.

The scandal is that all of this now proceeds through the language of ecclesial legitimacy.

It is no longer “outside” the Church. It is accompanied by official mandates, discussed in papal audiences, framed through synodality, protected by pastoral nuance, celebrated at Catholic colleges, floated through Vatican documents and softened through diplomacy. It is excused by Catholic media professionals who have learned that the safest posture under Leo is reverent silence with occasional murmurs about complexity.

This is not a series of disconnected abuses. It is a new model of Catholic life.

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