Stephen Colbert was won over by the newly elected Pope Leo XIV in no time.
On The Late Show, Colbert cited a tweet that the American pontiff posted about Vice President JD Vance in February. Cardinal Robert Prevost, as he was then known, was responding to comments made by Vance—a Catholic convert—in which Vance cited a Christian concept to defend Trump’s “America First” agenda.
“JD Vance is wrong,” Prevost wrote. “Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” The phrase was the headline of an op-ed by a Cuban-American author, a link to which Prevost included in his tweet.
On The Late Show Thursday night, Colbert mentioned the post while discussing the new pope’s election.
“Of course, there’s lots of speculation on whether Leo will continue the progressive reforms of his friend, Pope Francis,” he said.
“No one knows for sure yet, but we do know that in February, he did tweet, ‘JD Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.’”
His reading of the tweet earned huge cheers from the audience.
“Holy Father, you had me at ‘JD Vance is wrong,’” he added, sending the audience wild a second time.
Augustinian Province of Our Moth/via REUTERS
The op-ed in Prevost’s tweet addressed comments Vance made in January during a Fox News interview. The vice president invoked what he called a “very Christian concept.”
“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” Vance said.
Vance later identified the idea as “ordo amoris” while being criticized for his apparent misunderstanding of the Gospels. The late Pope Francis himself—who briefly met with Vance the day before his death last month—had taken a shot at Vance’s understanding of the concept in a letter criticizing Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Pope Leo has already provided plenty of fodder for prime-time hosts and MAGA critics alike, with analysts poring over his social media posts for insight into his beliefs.
He recently retweeted a link to an article by the auxiliary bishop of Washington D.C., Bishop Evelio Menjivar, which compared Trump’s immigration crackdown to the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero by El Salvador’s right-wing regime in 1980.
The post also labeled the actions of the U.S. government as “injustice and infamies.”
The tweet, by Catholic commentator Rocco Palmo, accused Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele of laughing at the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man whom the Trump administration admits it erroneously deported.
Prevost also tweeted about the death of George Floyd in May 2020, saying: “We need to hear more from leaders in the Church, to reject racism and seek justice.”
In 2017, he retweeted the anti-death penalty nun Sister Helen Prejean. Her post said: “I stand with the #Dreamers and all people who are working toward an immigration system that is fair, just, and moral. #DefendDACA #DACA.”
Colbert, who is also a Catholic, invoked his faith when responding to an AI-generated image Trump posted online over the weekend depicting himself as the pope.
“As a Catholic,” Colbert said, “Let me just say, in the words of Saint Peter: Go f*** yourself.”
The post Colbert Was Sold on Pope Leo by a Single Tweet About JD Vance appeared first on The Daily Beast.
