A Line in the Sand: Pope Leo XIV, Christ’s Test, and the Cruelty of Kings

When a Pope echoes the conscience of history, the test is not political—it is spiritual.

“You cannot follow both Christ and the cruelty of kings. A leader who mocks the weak, exalts himself, and preys on the innocent is not sent by God. He is sent to test you. And many are failing.”
—Pope Leo XIV

A single quote—delivered without thunder, but with the stillness of moral clarity—now ripples through the spiritual and political conscience of the world. Pope Leo XIV, in a declaration already echoing across pulpits and pixels, has drawn a line that no baptized Christian can ignore.

This is not a partisan line. It is a Christ-line.

Leo XIV’s words do not merely critique the character of modern leadership; they unveil a theological crisis. When cruelty becomes a credential and arrogance a virtue, the Church must either remember its Christ or confess its cowardice.

And in this moment, Leo XIV remembers.

In doing so, he walks directly in the footprints of Pope Leo XIII—a pontiff who stood courageously at the edge of modernity, refusing to let capitalism trample the dignity of laborers and the souls of the poor. It was Leo XIII who issued Rerum Novarum in 1891, a revolutionary document that challenged the exploitation of workers and upheld the Church’s duty to speak on economic injustice. That encyclical became the cornerstone of Catholic social teaching.

Now, over a century later, Leo XIV offers a counterpart message for our age—not focused on factories, but on hearts, pulpits, and thrones. The cruelty he names is not hidden in systems alone but incarnate in leaders who devour truth and dignity while draped in false piety.

This is the “test” the Pope refers to. It is a test not of political loyalty, but of Christian witness.

Do you still recognize Christ when he stands in the soup kitchen, in the refugee, in the prisoner, in the woman silenced, in the child dismissed, in the neighbor mocked by your leader?

Or have you made peace with a new kind of golden calf—one that tweets, towers, and taunts?

This editorial is not for Trump or any other specific ruler—though it is certainly about them. It is about us. It is about how we discern who we follow when the cruelty of kings masquerades as strength and faith is manipulated as a tool of conquest rather than compassion.

Leo XIV’s message is thus not just a warning. It is an invitation. To return to a faith that sides with the meek, the mocked, the merciful. To see that we are being tested—and to understand that the failure is not intellectual, but relational. Entangity teaches us that we are all connected. And when one mocks the weak, all are mocked.

Let us pass this test—not by applause, but by action.