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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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Unnamed ‘sources’ aren’t uncommon or inherently unreliable in Vatican inside baseball politics. But letters from Leo is run by a former Democrat congressional candidate with the explicit goal of pushing the Catholic Church into alignment with the DNC, including dropping opposition to abortion, and more fact-oriented sources- or indeed, more high quality op Ed sources- are consistently unable to confirm the parts of this story that make it a big deal.

Of special note is the Pillar, which is easily a top five news source on internal Vatican goings-on and probably the top source written in English. They would likely be the first ones to confirm the story and so far, their stance is ‘thé meeting happened but nothing of note took place- no threats of Avignon’.

A Democratic media organ presenting a highly inflammatory allegation with salacious details without source and treating it as credible despite no one else seemingly able to verify?

Say it ain't so.

They’re not even a real media organ. It’s an advocacy blog that doesn’t normally do straightforward ‘news’.

They would likely be the first ones to confirm the story and so far, their stance is ‘thé meeting happened but nothing of note took place- no threats of Avignon’.

Without this, there essentially is no story - so the article OP posted appears to be a fabrication, which is unsurprising.

Yes, liberal Catholic journalism of record(which letters from Leo is not, it’s a rather poor attempt to tie secular political liberalism to the current pope) is treating this as a page five story.