Pope Leo (aka Pope Bob) is somewhat photogenic, but he often looks like he’s about to say “Jesus Christ, you guys, can you stop being so crazy?” To be fair, he probably IS saying that about half the time. This week, we learned that the Vatican’s ambassador to the US was pulled into a meeting at the Pentagon. Whisky Pete Hegseth’s psychotic deputies apparently threatened the ambassador and heavily suggested that the US would be open to using military force against the Holy See. Something to note is that basically all reporting about this Pentagon meeting has come from Vatican sources, not Pentagon sources. Pope Bob was aghast, and he wanted this story out there so people understand how f–king unhinged the Trump people are. Well, Pope Bob wanted people to know something else this week: he had a private meeting with David Axelrod on Thursday, and they spoke at great length. To the point where Bob was late to his next meeting. Axelrod is a Democratic political consultant and strategist, best known for managing Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.
Pope Leo XIV on Thursday met with David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic strategist and former senior advisor to former President Barack Obama. The meeting has many wondering if the pope might soon have a formal meeting with Obama himself.
Leo was born in Chicago and raised in south suburban Dolton. While Axelrod was born in New York, like Obama, he attended the University of Chicago, and after working as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune in the 1980s, he later helped Obama get elected president in 2008.
While the Vatican did not provide any details on Axelrod’s meeting with Leo on Thursday, six weeks ago, Obama made it clear he’d like to meet his hometown pope.
“Being president, or even being an ex-president, I can kind of meet everybody. So, I’ve met a lot of folks. The person who I have not yet met, and that I’m looking forward to meeting – and I hope I get an opportunity sometime in the future – is the new pope, who’s from Chicago, and a White Sox fan,” Obama said on Bryan Tyler Cohen’s podcast in February.
Axelrod hasn’t shared details of his meeting with the pope, but his former boss is two months out from opening the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago.
Meantime, the pope has been as vocal as any predecessor about American wars. In his Easter Sunday message, he said he was “asking people of goodwill to search always for peace and not violence, to reject war, especially a war which many people have said is an unjust war, which is continuing to escalate and is not resolving anything.”
In recent months, the Vatican has said the pope is unlikely to come to the U.S. in 2026, because it’s an election year. So, what’s really going on? Christopher Hale, who is writing a book on the pope and American politics, said all signs point to the meeting Obama wanted.
“It’s a surprise. Obviously, [Axelrod is] not someone you’d expect to meet with Pope Leo XIV,” Hale said. “We’re not 100% sure that this is connected to that, but the timing is auspicious.”
In November, Gov. JB Pritzker traveled to the Vatican to meet with the pope. A number of Illinois mayors also have met with Leo since he became pontiff.
“Pope Leo XIV is an American. He consumes American media vociferiously. He’s an iPhone user. He’s not disconnected from reality,” Hale said.
I would imagine the Chicago Pope would love to meet President Obama, but even more than that, I bet Bob would love to meet born-and-raised Chicago girl Michelle Obama. Do we think that Bob’s meeting with Axelrod was some kind of effort to facilitate an Obama meeting? Eh. Perhaps that was part of it, but I think it’s far more likely that Pope Bob wanted to hear from Axelrod in general about the state of American politics, and perhaps there was a larger conversation about how the Holy See could handle these MAGA psychos. Bob seems like a studious, careful man who seeks advice and tries to be extremely thoughtful before proceeding. It was smart to leak the details about the Pentagon meeting too, and I wonder if we’ll get more of that from the Vatican.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
