Pokémon, Poorna Kumbham, and Pepperoni Pizza: 100 Days of Leo’s Papacy
The revolution deepens beneath the smiles, sports jerseys, and staged simplicity
A Pope Who Signs Pokémon Cards
The Vatican was quick to distribute the glossy photo: Leo XIV, pen in hand, inscribing his name across a Popplio Pokémon card. The pilgrim who requested it found the moment “quite the encounter.” But Catholics who still believe the papacy is meant to guard the sacred might ask: what does it mean when the Vicar of Christ is memorialized as the official autograph on a children’s trading card rooted in a pop-culture universe of elemental spirits and evolution?
This is catechesis by triviality. When the world is starving for clarity on the Eucharist, when young Catholics are hemorrhaging from the Church, the papal image broadcast globally is not of Christ enthroned in glory, but of a smiling American pope signing a cartoon sea lion. The juxtaposition preaches louder than any sermon: Rome is unserious, the sacred reduced to spectacle.
Appointing a Bishop Who Brought Hinduism to the Altar
Far from trivial, Leo’s episcopal appointments reveal the deeper continuity with Francis. Francis Serrao SJ, the new Bishop of Mysore, has been celebrated as a champion of “dialogue.” Yet Serrao is on record using the Hindu Poorna Kumbham ritual in a Catholic Eucharist.
For Hindus, the Poorna Kumbham is a ritual vessel symbolizing the womb of divine mother-goddesses, especially Lakshmi and Shakti. To introduce this symbol into the Holy Sacrifice is to drag the altar of God into the temple of idols. In any other age, such an act would have been punished with deposition. In the post-Vatican II age, it earns promotion.
So while the headlines chuckle about Pokémon cards, the hierarchy of India is absorbing syncretism like oxygen, now with Rome’s explicit approval.
“We Are Church” and the LGBT Front
Another first: Leo XIV is formally hosting an LGBT reform group at the Vatican. Not in some ambiguous back-channel, but in the open, during the Jubilee. Francis’s doctrinal chief Fernández has already assured the world that same-sex blessings are permanent. Czerny repeats that “there is no going back.”
This is the so-called “irreversible reform.” To Rome’s new regime, inclusion means not the Gospel’s “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” but an affirmation that sin itself must be blessed. That the “doors remain open” even as entire Catholic dioceses close their Latin Masses should tell us exactly whose voices Rome intends to welcome, and whose it intends to silence.
A Brother’s Boasts
Leo’s brother John gushed to NBC: Francis and Leo were “VERY close,” “VERY good friends.” He shares that the new pope likes Wordle, pepperoni pizza, and driving. He swims in Castel Gandolfo’s pool. He even jokes about answering the phone, “Yes, my child, how may I help you?”
For the world, this is charming human-interest filler. But the substance is chilling. Francis groomed Leo as his successor, named him cardinal-bishop before death, and called him first in consistory. The family itself reads it as a signal. Rome, in other words, never intended a change of course. The program of Francis, doctrinal ambiguity, liturgical desacralization, synodal egalitarianism, has found its heir.
100 Days of Performance
Catholic media marvels at the “energy” of Leo’s first hundred days: sixteen Masses, chants from the papal window, a cameo on the White Sox jumbotron, jokes with Jannik Sinner about Wimbledon dress code, jerseys and baseballs, AI speeches, and processions. His handlers know exactly how to package him: part showman, part peacemaker, part tech-savvy priest from Chicago.
Behind the choreography, the doctrinal program unfolds. Newman, whose theology paved the way for Vatican II, is declared a doctor of the Church. Same-sex blessings are confirmed. Bishops who smuggle pagan rituals into the Mass are elevated. And the “youth” are formed not by catechisms but by pop-cultural encounters and papal singalongs.
Albano: Marian Devotion Meets Caritas Theology
Even in Albano, where Leo will celebrate Mass at the ancient shrine of Santa Maria della Rotonda, the rhetoric is less about penance and more about “a Church as maternal womb” that heals the lonely. The rector speaks warmly of immigrants and interreligious respect. Marian devotion is invoked, but wrapped in a horizontal anthropology where the Church becomes a therapeutic community.
What once was a shrine against plague, famine, and war is now a stage for demonstrating how the Church can be a womb for the marginalized. The imagery is deliberately sociological, not supernatural.
The Pattern Beneath the Noise
One hundred days is not long, but the pattern is already unmistakable. Triviality in public image (Pokémon cards, baseballs, Wordle). Syncretism in appointments (Poorna Kumbham). Immorality in policy (LGBT blessings). Continuity with Francis in ideology and family boasts. And a carefully crafted PR sheen of music, sports, and Augustinian quotes to give the illusion of rootedness.
The faithful cannot afford to be distracted by the noise of jerseys and pepperoni pizza. The revolution marches on beneath the jokes and smiles. And unless Catholics resist, Leo XIV will accomplish what Francis began: the normalization of a church that trivializes the sacred, absorbs the pagan, blesses the immoral, and entertains the world while the faith itself is eclipsed.
I live and work in the SF Bay Area, near Berkeley, where there is a lot of crime, including violent crime. I work in an office building which has been broken into twice in the last 1 1/2 years, one time just recently.
What amazes me is people's attitudes. They don't want to deal with it. One person said, "I don't want to have to worry about my safety." The other one said, "I don't want to be on edge all the time."
The level of denial just astonishes me. They should worry about their safety and they should be on edge, even if they don't want to.
Their reactions remind me of most conservative and traditional Catholics. They simply don't want to have to worry about it. They don't want to see that they are at risk, spiritually. They just want to see their friends at church and go out to lunch afterwards and, when it comes to Leo, be hopeful.
Why can some people see reality and others live in such a fantasy state? I don't know, but I think has a lot to do with courage. Courage requires going against the group; it means being ostracized because you refuse to take an experimental vaccine. It means potentially losing your friends and experiencing anxiety and stress when you'd rather not do so.
Like that old Jack Nicholson movie, "You want the truth?? You can't handle the truth." Most people cannot.
The treasure of the church is her saints. That is, individuals who have demonstrated -- often through a lifetime of quiet and hidden devotion and ascetical practices -- holiness and spiritual attainment. The faithful then develop a natural and authentic devotion to such saints: it is a grass roots, bottom up phenomenon: Nothing about such saints' formal role or position has anything to do with the devotion that develops around such holy men and women. Indeed, it is often just the reverse: The most revered saints were the most unknown, the most humble, the most avoidant of the spotlight. The holiness precedes the reputation; the reputation is justified by the spiritual attainment.
The modern institution of the papacy gets this exactly backward: A lifelong bureaucrat and company man, who often does not appear to have any particular spiritual attainment or true holiness is, of a sudden, thrust into the limelight and deemed and treated -- by virtue of his office -- to be a holy man. And the mouthpieces of the church then -- post hoc -- find reasons to honor, demonstrate and promote devotion to this person during his life and in fact commencing immediately upon his investiture as pontiff. This is, to put it bluntly, bizarre and simply confounding.
Ultimately, this is what all of Chris Jackson's columns and reports impress upon me: The modern day Catholic church in its most public expressions has abandoned the quest for holiness, and is simply one more contemporary example of the cult of personality and celebrity that is endemic in our age. In a cult of celebrity, one would expect to see the most trendy _worldly_ views to be celebrated -- LGBTQ+, climate change, superficial diversity, all manner of progressive issues -- and that is in fact exactly what we see in the mainstream Catholic hierarchy.