Pope Leo holds ‘multi-faith prayer’ with far-left Chicago mayor who celebrated ‘Abortion Provider Day’
Pope Leo met with radically pro-abortion, pro-LGBT Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson and reportedly discussed Trump’s immigration policy, slavery reparations, and the Iran war.
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Fri May 29, 2026 - 3:11 pm EDT
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VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV on Thursday met in a private audience with radical Chicago Democratic mayor Brandon Johnson, during which they reportedly discussed ICE raids in the city, slavery reparations, and the Iran war, but not key moral issues such as abortion and LGBT ideology, both of which Johnson supports.
While the Vatican has not disclosed what was discussed during the May 28 meeting, Johnson, a far-left Protestant, claimed during a press conference following the audience that the pair discussed President Donald Trump’s immigration policy and other concerns associated with the left. The mayor of Pope Leo’s native city offered no indication that the pontiff had discussed abortion or the LGBT agenda.
During the meeting, Johnson’s delegation joined Leo in a “multi-faith” prayer and invited the pope to visit his native city and celebrate Mass at Grant Park.
The mayor told reporters that Leo’s “position around Trump was more about disagreement with his approach.”
“The Pope wanted to know how ICE impacted our city and whether there were still examples of ICE raids happening in our city,” Johnson said. “I talked about how our rapid response community team came together to support families…. I talked about my executive orders, for which he was very gracious and encouraging, especially those I signed to protect the people of Chicago.”
Johnson’s executive orders also include one about so-called “violence against transgender women,” i.e., gender-confused men.
The mayor has a radically pro-abortion and pro-LGBT record, previously pledging to offer free abortion pills and to prosecute pro-life sidewalk counselors.
He additionally commemorated “National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day” in 2024.
“We commend the bravery and resilience of abortion providers and look forward to continuing to support their efforts to ensure that reproductive rights are upheld and respected,” Johnson said at the time. “Together, we can resist attempts to roll back the progress we have made, ensuring Chicago remains a sanctuary for choice.”
Moreover, the mayor’s team vowed to decrease the use of law enforcement against those who identify as “LGBT,” pledging “[n]o disparity in arrests between [so-called] LGBTQ+ and cisgender heterosexual populations, decreasing interactions with police,” and ending alleged “police harassment and neglect” toward gender-confused and homosexual people.
In the first year of his pontificate, Pope Leo, following his predecessor Pope Francis, has repeatedly denounced the Trump administration’s attempts to curb mass immigration. The 267th pontiff has said that the faithful will be judged for how they “receive the foreigner” and even falsely suggested that supporting the purported “inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States” under Trump is the same as supporting abortion.
The pope, along with the vast majority of Catholic prelates, while correctly stating that countries have an obligation to treat all migrants with human dignity, has largely failed to mention the issue of the heinous crimes committed by MS-13 gang members and others entering the United States illegally and how they are violating the human dignity of its citizens and other migrants. The Vatican has also ignored the lives saved by the administration’s policies.
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Johnson also said that he had discussed the pontiff’s apology for the Church’s purported role in slavery in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, and the prospect of offering reparations for the practice. He noted, though, that Leo did not take a position on reparations.
“We talked about the conditions that the long legacy of slavery and disinvestment has had on Black Americans and Black people around the world,” the mayor of Chicago said. “I engaged in a conversation with him around reparations and why it is important to work to repair the harm caused by the brutal legacy of slavery.”
Critics of Leo’s encyclical have stressed that the Catholic Church played a key role in ending the institution of slavery. Indeed, Saint Patrick, a former slave himself, is widely considered by historians to be the first person to publicly condemn slavery. In 1537, Pope Paul III, in his encyclical Sublimis Deus, forbade the enslavement of the New World’s indigenous population under penalty of excommunication. Pope Gregory XVI’s 1839 encyclical In Supremo Apostolatus denounced the transatlantic slave trade almost 30 years before it was abolished in the United States.
Johnson, who supports the virtually unrestricted murder of unborn children, also said that he discussed the ongoing war in Iran with the pontiff, telling reporters that “illegal wars” not only lead to a “trail of tears and trauma” but also “harms and brutalize our humanity.” The American pontiff has been very critical of the war, leading to pushback from Trump.
“In the midst of a brutal, horrific, and ignorant tyrant that is currently occupying the White House, it is imperative that we really walk in the true essence of our faith,” Johnson told reporters after the audience. “The impact of his failures on our global economy is quite severe. It is a disgrace to the sensibility of our humanity.”
Interestingly, while Pope Leo takes the time to meet with the non-Catholic, leftist mayor of Chicago, he has not granted an audience to the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which plans to consecrate four new bishops on July 1.
Father Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the SSPX, shared in April that Leo has still not responded to their request to meet before the planned consecration date of July 1.
“Before possibly declaring schismatic a society which counts more than a thousand members, and which serves as a point of reference for hundreds of thousands of faithful throughout the world, it might be desirable to know personally those who are to be judged,” he said.
Instead, it has been reported that Leo’s Vatican plans to excommunicate the SSPX following the consecrations.
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- Abortion
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- Chicago
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- Homosexuality
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