Pope Francis and Taylor Swift Aren't Staying Silent
Welcome to Weekly Resistance Wednesday - We Are Not Silent
Wealth and fame afford powerful people extraordinary opportunities for self-indulgence as much as influence. When the Venn diagram of powerful people is pop stars and popes the overlap has all too often been sex, debauchery, and crime. This time it’s compassion and advocacy for vulnerable people. Whether Taylor Swift and Pope Francis are Spider-Man fans or not, they are both using their great power with great responsibility.
Taylor Swift
"After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?" Taylor Swift unequivocally and publicly criticized1 Trump’s reaction to nationwide protests when police officer Derek Chauvin murdered unarmed civilian George Floyd in 2020.
In 2024, Swift quashed misinformation implying she supported a second MAGA administration after AI-generated images of her appearing to endorse Trump started circulating. She clarified her position explicitly on Instagram, where she has almost 10 times as many followers as Trump.
“I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.”2
She signed her post, in which she and one of her cats posed for the camera, with a dig at the Republican VP’s previous attempts to disparage single women who don’t solely devote their lives to homemaking:
With love and hope,
Taylor Swift
Childless Cat Lady
“Within 24 hours of her announcement, nearly 340,000 people had visited the voter registration website, vote.gov, using a custom link created and shared by Swift.” — BBC3
She reached out to her fans and followers two months before the 2024 election. This is effective lobbying.
In 2016, Jennifer Lopez performed a free concert for “our first woman president.”4 Ex-husband Marc Anthony joined her and both gave moving speeches and high-energy performances. Beyoncé waited until three nights before the election to endorse Hillary Clinton — long after voter registration deadlines had passed in many states. She and husband Jay-Z both took to the stage to perform fan favorites but their star power could’ve been so much more effective weeks if not months before, given that voter registration requirements and voting itself vary so greatly by state.5 In 2018 Beyoncé waited until election night itself to endorse Beto O’Rourke over Ted Cruz for the Texas senate.
“Every vote counts
Every race matters
Everywhere.”6
Yes. Every vote counts and every race matters. Absolutely. But if you’re going to leverage your world-class talent and incredible celebrity influence to lobby for “your” candidate, any campaign strategist worth their clipboard will tell you to do so while your target demographic still has plenty of time to register *and* spend hours in line at one of the dwindling polling stations. A staggering number of eligible voters have to take time off work, arrange childcare, and travel great distances in order to vote in their district.
Swift’s timing was as political as her statements. As the stakes skyrocket, here’s hoping she and her most powerful peers in the upper echelons of pop superstardom will continue to advocate for the most vulnerable.
Pope Francis
On January 6th, 2025, Pope Francis effectively protested corruption without inciting a domestic terrorist insurrection. He appointed vocal mass-deportation critic Cardinal Robert McElroy to lead the large Washington D.C. archdiocese. Archbishop Elect, Cardinal McElroy wrote his dissertation on American foreign policy when getting his doctorate at Stanford. In both speeches and statements Cardinal McElroy called Catholics to support immigrants by disrupting the current administration’s immigration plans.7
Arguably the highest-profile religious figure chose a servant of the people who preached from the pulpit on behalf of migrants and refugees, “We must speak up and proclaim that this unfolding misery and suffering and, yes, war of fear and terror cannot be tolerated in our midst. … the safety ... humanity of our brothers and sisters, who are being targeted, are too precious in our eyes and in God's eyes.”8
On February 10th, Pope Francis referred to the Christian principle, ordo amoris, to defend vulnerable immigrants9 after the vice president used it to justify deporting them - and in so doing, reassuring American Christians distancing ourselves from “the least of these” that we are answering God’s call by “loving locally” first. It’s a theological gymnastics spin on America First.
But the Holy See corrected Vance’s uncompassionate attempt to rank-order our Christian calling to love one another.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. … The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”10
Vance is a politician, not a theologian. He mangled renowned theologian St. Augustine, (whom Vance chose as his patron saint when he converted to Catholicism in 2019.) Augustine didn’t contradict the scriptures in “On Christian Doctrine.” But Vance did. The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Gospels repeatedly instruct us to welcome and protect the foreigner among us.
“As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News. “That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that 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.”11
No one can prioritize everyone everywhere. Nor is that our Christian obligation. But targeting vulnerable people with transparently racist motivations cannot be cloaked by manipulating theology. Though organized religion is rife with this hypocrisy, claiming mass deportations are a justifiable byproduct of loving your family “first” simply does not align with scripture.
Love isn’t a lemonade stand. Basic human decency isn’t anything true Christians or people of goodwill run out of when the end of the line finally gets their turn. Vance’s logic is either theologically manipulated or it reflects the greed that underpins scarcity mentality. The current administration’s policies continue to indicate both.
“ … the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.
I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters. With charity and clarity we are all called to live in solidarity and fraternity, to build bridges that bring us ever closer together, to avoid walls of ignominy,” — Pope Francis.12
Habemus Papam, indeed.
A global platform is a privilege. High-profile positions and celebrities both wield massive international influence. It is an inspiration to see these two powerful people use their platforms to speak so powerfully against injustice.
Keep the faith, friends. The good guys are fighting the good fight. If you haven’t already, join them. <3
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89w4110n89o
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89w4110n89o
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/10/29/jennifer-lopez-joins-clinton-on-concert-stage-in-miami-urges-support-for-first-female-president/
https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/same-day-voter-registration/
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pope-francis-names-trump-critic-mcelroy-washingtons-new-archbishop-2025-01-06/
https://www.ncronline.org/news/cardinal-mcelroy-decries-white-house-war-fear-and-terror-migrants
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html
https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/first-love-locally-jd-vance-and-ordo-amoris/
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html