Conspirituality

In April 2026, Pope Leo XIV, deep in a public feud with President Trump over the Iran war, made his first trip to Africa. He chose Algeria: the birthplace of Augustine, the spiritual founder of his order. Algeria is demanding reparations from France for 132 years of colonial rule and 1.5 million dead. It’s parliament declared French colonization a "state crime" just four months before Leo landed.

Before visiting with any Catholics, Leo laid a wreath at an anticolonial martyrs' monument, removed his shoes in one of the world's largest mosques, condemned "neocolonial tendencies" to the diplomatic corps, and honored 19 Catholic martyrs who stayed to serve Algerian Muslims through a civil war that killed 200,000. 

The right-wing press logged every stop as an outrage. The Arab press read it as vindication. And the old-school Algerian left noted that papal forgiveness might be easier for France to accept than a reparations bill.

Matthew reads the visit through Augustine, historical materialism, liberation theology, and the testament of Christian de Chergé, prior of Tibhirine, who in 1994 wrote about his immanent martyrdom as the insurgents drew near.

In his final testament, de Chergé wrote:

I well know the contempt with which the Algerians taken as a whole have come to be dismissed. I also know the caricature of Islam that a certain kind of Islamism encourages.

It is too easy to put one’s conscience at rest by identifying this religion with the forms of fundamentalism of its extremists.

Show Notes

New Advent — Church Fathers: Confessions, St. Augustine

NPR — Transcript of Cardinal Robert Prevost's first speech as Pope Leo XIV

Vatican.va — Greeting to Journalists during the Rome–Algiers flight

Vatican.va — Meeting with the Authorities, Civil Society and the Diplomatic Corps, Djamaa el Djazair Conference Cnter

Vatican.va — Visit to the Great Mosque of Algiers

Vatican.va — Meeting with the Algerian Catholic Community, Basilica of Our Lady of Africa

Al Jazeera — Algeria declares France's colonial rule a crime in new law

France 24 — French presidential hopeful Macron cealls colonisation a 'crime against humanity'

OCSO — Testament of Christian de Chergé

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Derek reads two chapters from his recently published memoir, Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry. In Chapters 3 & 4, he discusses his work as a patient monitor looking after suicidal patients in an emergency room, then ending up in an emergency room himself after having a full-blown panic attack.

Show Notes

Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry
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Ronan Farrow is at it again. The reporter has a new feature in The New Yorker, written alongside staff writer Andrew Marantz, about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In many ways, the 16,000-word investigation is a meditation on the existential risks of AI being placed in the hands of a few powerful men, and in this case a possible sociopath.

Today we discuss the article and then zoom out on broader questions in AI: who is it for, how is it being used, and can it be reined in?

Show Notes

Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?

John Henry for the AI Era: Raging with the Machine

Alex Bores rolls out “AI dividend” plan to share AI wealth
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Derek looks into behavioral economics to better understand the fluidity of the "self," finding that recent research aligns with a very old Buddhist concept.

Show Notes

What Does Extreme Wealth Do To the Brain?
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Donald Trump's shitpost attack on Pope Leo XIV, followed within the hour by an AI slop icon of himself as Jesus, has cracked open the evangelical-Catholic coalition that has anchored American conservatism for fifty years. 

Matthew walks through Leo's escalating confrontation with Trump, from his November 2025 immigration remarks to his Palm Sunday Isaiah citation ("your hands are full of blood"), his Holy Thursday liberation theology thread on "imperialist occupation," and the Good Friday Stations of the Cross — in which Father Francesco Patton's meditations called out the passion of deportation, surveillance, and war atrocities. 

The backlash from MAGA Christians, including Marjorie Taylor Greene calling the AI image "an Antichrist spirit" and pastor Joel Webbon asking whether Trump is "demon possessed", reveals three deepening fissures: the Vatican-Trump feud over Iran and immigration, a theological split over Christian Zionism, and grassroots disillusionment over ICE enforcement near churches and schools, and blasphememes.

Show Notes

Pope Leo XIV's Palm Sunday homily, full text — Vatican.va

Pope Leo XIV's Holy Thursday homily, full text — OSV News

Good Friday Liturgy of the Lord's Passion, Vatican — EWTN News

Hegseth prays for "overwhelming violence" at Pentagon service — PBS NewsHour

Trump's Iran war is tearing apart his Catholic-evangelical coalition — Mother Jones

MAGA recoils at Trump cosplaying as Christ — The Daily Beast

List of conservatives rebuking Trump's Jesus image — Newsweek

AI Jesus might be the thing that finally breaks MAGA's faith — Gizmodo

Pope Leo responds to Trump: "I have no fear" — The New Republic

Military archbishop says Iran war hard to see as "sponsored by the Lord" — CBS News

Pentagon threatened Pope Leo's ambassador with Avignon Papacy — Letters from Leo

"When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," Isaac Watts (1707) — Hymnary.org

Trump faces "Leo Fever" backlash over Pope feud — The Daily Beast

Karoline Leavitt responds to Pope Leo's war prayer remarks — Newsweek
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