Liberation Theology and the fight between Trump and Pope Leo UPDATED
Understanding liberation theology might explain the schism between Donald Trump and the Pope.
Andrea Widburg | April 14, 2026
When I was a student at UC Berkeley in the early 1980s, I worked with a very nice, very radical young man from Argentina who had an interesting back story: He’d been a seminarian but had to leave when a bad LSD trip left him incapable of completing his studies. LSD in a Catholic seminary? It was the first time I realized that the priesthood had changed since Going My Way.
However, it wasn’t until 2013, when Pope Francis issued his “Apostolic Exhortation Evangeli Gaudium of the Holy Father Francis, to the Bishops, Clerk, Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World,” which attacks economic inequality, that I first heard the term “Liberation Theology” from Rush Limbaugh. He pointed out (accurately, because I read the document myself) that it was Marxist economic theory cloaked in religious language.
If you understand Liberation Theology, you will understand the schism between Donald Trump, who is a free-market constitutionalist, and Pope Leo, who, like Pope Francis before him, knowingly or not, got his ideas from the KGB.
Liberation Theology began in Latin American seminaries in the 1950s and 1960s. According to Wikipedia, which gave a surprisingly honest evaluation of the movement’s values,
Liberation theology is a Christian theological approach emphasizing the liberation of the oppressed. The term originated among Latin American Catholic theologians in the 1960s, and it has increasingly been used to describe similar approaches in other parts of the globe. It often engages in socio-economic analyses, and emphasizes social concern for those marginalized due to their social class, race, ethnicity, gender, etc.
[snip]
The movement's theoretical foundations draws heavily from Marxist social analysis, particularly its critique of structural inequality and class oppression. While liberation theology does not adopt Marxism wholesale, its use of concepts like class struggle and the critique of global capitalism has led to significant controversy within the Church.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/liberation_theology_and_the_fight_between_trump_and_pope_leo.html