(Image source: Franco Zacharzewski/Slate)

On Sunday, January 18, a group of anti-ICE protestors peacefully disrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the acting field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in St. Paul, David Easterwood, is also a pastor. According to protestor Nekima Levy Armstrong, the protesters were “demanding justice for Renee Good and letting them know that this will not stand.”

Commenting on the protest, the prominent Catholic Bishop Robert Barron posted on X, saying, “I don’t care what is animating or annoying you, I don’t care what your political persuasion might be, invading a church is unacceptable and is a violation of religious liberty.”

Even before the protest inside Cities Church, Barron had already publicly commented on the ongoing crisis in Minneapolis as the bishop of the Catholic diocese in Rochester, Minnesota, urging protestors to “cease interfering with the work of ICE” while also declaring that “the Trump Administration and ICE should limit themselves, at least for the time being, to rounding up undocumented people who have committed serious crimes.”

Barron, who serves on the President’s Religious Liberty Commission, is an example of a new but powerful presence in the Catholic Church—the priest-influencer—who uses his authority not only to develop a Catholic media platform but to embolden a far-right shift among American Catholics. And Barron is not alone. Other prominent rightwing Catholic influencers include Father Mike Schmitz, Fr. Joshua Johnson, Fr. David Michael Moses, and Fr. Michel Remery.

What sets these priests apart is that like other Catholic Internet personalities, they are using their authority to comment on and influence American politics. While these priest-influencers do not speak on behalf of the institutional Catholic Church (some, like Barron, have directly conflicted with official Vatican guidance), people consuming their content do not always know the difference. Their authority risks not only pushing more American Catholics to the political far right, but also fracturing an already fragile Catholic community struggling with declining membership and a mounting schism between mainline and traditionalist factions.

Catholic Priests’ Rich History of Evangelizing Via Technology

Catholic priest-influencers have a ripe audience with 20% of U.S. adults describing themselves as members of the faith. With this massive political and social presence in the United States, people creating content targeted to and for Catholics wield an incredible sway. A 2023 study conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that 98% of Catholics have a social media profile of some sort, and 23% of American Catholics say the internet and social media are their primary sources for religious content.

The priest-influencer is not a new phenomenon, but Barron is one of the first priests to gain a major online presence. Barron initially began using social media in 2007 when he posted his first YouTube video, a commentary on the movie The Departed. In 2025, his nonprofit global media organization Word on Fire Catholic Ministries even reposted that first video, claiming how “eighteen years ago, Bishop Robert Barron pioneered a new front for evangelization in the twenty-first century: social media.”

Matthew Cressler, Ph.D., a scholar who studies the rightward shift within the American Catholic Church, describes Barron as “the so-called Bishop of the Internet who has crafted a particular kind of space online.”

For Cressler, Barron is a descendant of earlier priests who used their own era’s media–radio and television, specifically—to preach to the masses and to exert significant political control.

“If there’s any analog to Barron, we might think back to Bishop Fulton Sheen, or even Father Charles Coughlin,” Cressler said. Sheen was “a widely popular proselytizer and evangelizer on the radio.” Both Sheen and Coughlin were Catholic conservatives innovating new kinds of technology that later launched Catholic media networks like Eternal Word Television Network.

Sheen himself pioneered the transition, from his popular radio show The Catholic Hour to hosting a television show called Life is Worth Living. Sheen went on to encourage other priests to use the new medium of television in their proselytizing practices, calling it “The Electronic Gospel,” and Sheen’s strategies were even shared in a 2017 article by Word on Fire, Barron’s media company.

Barron and Word on Fire celebrate social media as an evangelizing tool, even posting a video about why social media is necessary to spread Catholic teachings. As Barron says in the video, “communication is not incidental. It’s not a secondary concern. It’s the primary concern of the Church to communicate the good news.” And, Barron finds no better believer than Dutch priest Fr. Michel Remery, who published a book Tweeting with God (2015) about why social media is a key tool for evangelization. Remery himself served as a member of a Vatican committee on the use of new media to connect with young people.

Social Media’s Challenges and Opportunities, with Echo Chambers

While priests who utilized TV and radio offer a technological ancestry for the Fr. Barrons of today, Cressler points out that social media presents new challenges. “One of the things that differentiates social media is the way it can create almost a hermetically sealed kind of echo chamber that allows you to only have one sense of what it means to be Catholic,” he said.

“If your algorithm is locked in to all of these priest influencers, that could very well be the only window that you have in the digital space on what it means to be Catholic in the first place, whereas in the 1930s and 1940s, you as a Catholic would probably live in a bit of a Catholic echo chamber because the magazines and the books and the schools that you would be reading and attending would all be Catholic. But within that Catholic sphere, there would be disagreement,” Cressler continued.

Echo chambers are especially dangerous in relation to religious discourse. As one 2025 study found, social media platforms exacerbate the spread of misinformation in interreligious dialogue among young people. As a consequence, people become more deeply entrenched in their positions and less willing to compromise or accept new information. And, given that echo chambers often intensify negative emotions like anger and fear, this can contribute to hostile interactions. Echo chambers can also make it difficult to separate religious discussions from political ones—an issue at the heart of Barron’s political discourse on social media.

Another study published in 2025 that looked at rightwing Hindu radicalization found that extremist organizations use echo chambers as a propaganda tool to reinforce pre-existing beliefs by consistently providing information (even if its misinformation) that reinforces their ideology.

Signs of radicalization are already evidenced among white Christian men with content that glorifies the Medieval Crusades and looks forward to exacting the same violence today. And while far-right Catholic social media content does not only reach out to men, most priest-influencer content actively engages in discussions of masculinity.

While some priest-influencers are critical of “toxic masculinity,” others follow a pattern of one-dimensional masculinity represented by Barron’s Word on Fire episode titled “The Fall—and Rise?—of Men” and Fr. Mike Johns’ article published by Word on Fire titled “All Young Men Should Watch the Movie ‘Gladiator.’” Both priests insist that Catholic men need to be tough.

(Bishop Robert Barron speaks at the President’s National Day of Prayer event on May 1, 2025 alongside other members of the Religious Liberty Commission. Source: WIZM News Talk)

Discussions of masculinity launched several Catholic priest influencers and sparked their popularity. Conservative priest-influencer Fr. Mike Schmitz, whose talk entitled “The Marks of a True Christian Man” went viral online before he became popular. And even smaller influencers like Fr. Patrick Cahill got their start with discussions about “how to be a man.”

In fact, conversations about masculinity are primarily where priest-influencers intersect with fellow far-right lay Catholic influencers, like content creators Matt Fradd (who leads the viral Pints with Aquinas series) and John Hienen (owner of The Catholic Gentleman). For example, Barron led a “primer on Biblical masculinity” with Order of Man, a far-right, non-religious masculinity outlet, and Schmitz gave a talk called “Elevate Masculinity” with Matt Fradd (who has also published content about “authentic masculinity”).

Priest-Influencers and Masculinity

While priests committing to a life of celibacy may seem like a radically different version of masculinity than that pushed by evangelical pastors, far-right priest influencers argue that masculinity is not as much connected to sexuality as it is to obedience and mission-driven work. They cite Biblical figures like Jesus, David, and John the Baptist as evidence of holy masculinity through physical and spiritual strength.

“A lot of these men in the sort of podcast world, that’s where young people and most of us now live, they found these things that we have been talking about. They discover what appeals to men. They knew that masculinity in of itself is not toxic but it culled forth and spiritualized, and they articulated it in a way that young men find very appealing. I applaud it, and I think it has had an impact on the churches” Barron said in a Word on Fire show podcast.

“Jesus on the cross is not a weak man. Right? The fact that he could endure that [he] was a very strong man. … That’s what true masculinity, true greatness actually looks like, is that kind of laying down your life for the bride, for the Church, for the one that you love,” priest-influencer Fr. Moss says in video uploaded to social media.

In his discussion of Biblical masculinity with Order of Man podcast host Ryan Michler, Barron similarly describes how “Jesus is absolutely a fighter. Watch how he engages those who are opposed to him, but the interesting thing is that Jesus does not battle with the weapons of the world … we’re not honoring Jesus as one more earthly or worldly warrior among others but his great battle is on the cross.” Jesus, Barron argues, follows in the example of David who Barron describes as a spiritual warrior.

“David like all the great kings of Israel is a warrior, and he’s willing to defend the boundaries of what God gave him but also to expand so as to bring God’s kingdom to a wider and wider audience, so that courageous willingness to engage is a major part of masculinity in the Biblical vision,” Barron said.

While Catholic priest-influencers sometimes critique or reject far-right masculinization culture, they still use conversations about weakness as a key entry point into internet culture, which has become a primary way that conservative priests gain popularity and followers.

Priest-Influencers and the Cult of Personality

Not everyone in the Catholic Church thinks the popularity of priest-influencers is a good thing. Top Vatican officials have voiced concerns about priests evangelizing online.

Back in 2022, Jesuit Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, an expert on canon law, told Christian news outlet Crux that social media can fuel polarizing rhetoric.

“I don’t want to demonize social media, because if used well they can also be a very valid apostolic tool,” but sometimes social media “closes all dialogue. It leads to a polemical and exclusionary attitude of others who do not think like me,” Ghirlanda said.

Similarly, Grady Connolly, owner of Social Thomist, a Catholic social media agency that works with priests and faith speakers, called out the risk that these priest-influencers pose, writing on X that “Satan can’t create anything himself, so he relies on us to build companies, content, and movements of destruction. Nothing terrifies the enemy more than a creative or entrepreneur on a mission for Christ and His Church.”

As Connolly warns, these platforms threaten to cultivate a following around one specific priest as opposed to the institutional church. According to a 2023 study conducted by news outlet US Catholic, over 80% of respondents used social media to interact with priests, content creators, and parishes. And priest-influencers are making money off of their accounts.

Priest-influencers like Barron and Schmitz created global media companies Word on Fire Ministries and Ascension Press. Both have apparel lines that feature key quotes and taglines from their podcast episodes and talks. These media conglomerates make significant profits—with Word on Fire bringing in $26.9 million in revenue in 2024. According to Propublica, Barron takes home a smaller set of the profit—$59,178 in 2024 compared to the $218,658 brought home by Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute.

With their massive followings online—over 3 million followers on Facebook and over 1 million subscribers on YouTube— these priests have carved out their role as a new type of influencer and they are not alone. Lay Catholic content creators have also developed a pipeline to monetize and organize around their content with blogs, podcasts, and companies like Truthly, Pints with Aquinas, and The Catholic Gentleman. These companies not only share written articles and podcasts that promote traditionalist and far-right ideas around gender and religion, but also create products—rosaries, shirts, hats, and subscriptions—that are connected to this content.

Proselytizing Conservative Politics Online

Barron actively uses his connection to Catholic leaders to further his conservative political agenda. The best example is an X post from December 18, 2025, where he connected Pope Francis’s argument against “gender ideology” to Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy’s political attacks on gender-affirming care. In the post, Barron spoke on behalf of the Church, writing that “the Catholic Church agrees with Secretary Kennedy that these [gender-affirming] procedures result in irreparable physical harm and typically increase the psychological distress of those who undergo them.”

While Barron’s comment is rooted in Pope Francis’s document Dignitas Infinita that criticizes “gender ideology,” it differs from Francis’s pastoral approach to trans, nonbinary, and intersex people. It also presents Barron as a definitive voice for American Catholicism.

As another example, in February 2026, Barron used his platform to share that he was “impressed” by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. As he posted on X, “basic to his presentation was the conviction that Europe and America will flourish when each re-discovers its spiritual mooring.” Hand in hand with praising Rubio, he compared Representative Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez’s response to Rubio’s speech as “right out of the Marxist playbook.”

Barron’s response draws on a longstanding opposition to communism in the Catholic Church, especially from U.S. bishops during the Cold War who conflated opposition to communism with American Catholic patriotism. Back in 1937, Pope Pius XI declared that communism is “intrinsically wrong” and in 1949, Pope Pius XII issued a decree stating that Catholics who advocated for communist doctrines would be excommunicated as apostates. Barron pulls on these same fears that the spread of communism and class consciousness will lead to the downfall of Catholicism in order to garner Catholic support.

In the same way, Barron criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration speech in which Mamdani said, “we will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” In a post on X, Barron wrote that “collectivism in its various forms is responsible for the deaths of at least one hundred million people in the last century. Socialist and Communist forms of government around the world today—Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, etc.—are disastrous.”

Barron also mobilizes far-right support around “Christian persecution.” This past January, he appeared on Dr. Phil’s show to talk about religious liberty. He posted the video of his conversation with Dr. Phil the same day that he applauded Trump’s “declaration of religious liberty day.” In the post on X, Barron wrote that “more than any other president in my lifetime, Trump has recognized the central importance of our ‘first freedom.’ He understands that when religious liberty is threatened, all of our other freedoms are endangered.”

Catholic Conservative Leadership is Not New

While social media influencers are a new phenomenon, Catholic support of conservative and rightwing politics is not new. Cressler explains that, “the people who are at the heart of both the intellectual and grassroots movements that made the conservative revolution of the 1960s and 1970s are Catholic,” citing Pat Buchanan, founder of the Heritage Foundation, and William F. Buckley, speechwriter for President Nixon. Other prominent Catholic architects in the formation of the modern far right include Brent Bozel and Phyllis Schlafly.

Not all priest-influencers align themselves with far-right politics. Some, like Fr. James Martin encourage inclusion inside and outside of the Catholic Church. As a result, the progressive priest has faced online bullying and homophobia, the type of which is emboldened by Catholic content creators like Barron.

Barron uses his position to conflate far-right political discourse with liturgy in a way that blurs political and religious rituals. This is best seen when he compared Trump’s State of the Union address to a “liturgy of Democracy” and when Barron called out alleged corruption and fraud in Minnesota government in a post on X this past January, while remaining noticeably silent about the release of the Epstein files that reveal a similar “violation of human rights,” as he describes the potential fraud in Minnesota, perpetrated by and benefiting leaders like Trump.

The Priest-Influencer on the Big Screen

Far right Catholic influencers even got a call out in Rian Johnson’s third installment in the Knives Out franchise. In Wake Up Dead Man (2025), Monsignoir Wicks (Josh Brolin) is a deeply conservative, verbally aggressive priest that regularly strives to incite a walkout among his congregants. Initially, his verbal assaults were against those in his parish who had children out of wedlock, the LGBTQ community, and people who wear masks to protect themselves against the spread of COVID-19. But one of his core followers, failed politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), records his homilies and uploads them on YouTube.

Through Draven’s YouTube account, Wicks’ fringe, fundamentalist Catholic theology is magnified online, albeit with a small following—the most viewed post has 84 views. Titled “Non-Binary Non-Godly,” “There’s G-O-D in DOGE,” “Insurrection? More like free and fair elections,” and “If kids want free lunch, they have to work for it,” Johnson makes clear Wicks’ political leanings.

The thumbnail of the featured video on Draven’s YouTube account depicts Wicks wearing a stars and stripes shirt, a large gold cross necklace over his bare chest, and cocking a gun in each hand. Alongside his picture is the description: “This is the last bastion of freedom against the radical left and their backwards woke beliefs that have been plaguing our youth and country alike.” The image reinforces Wicks’ stance as a final line of spiritual defense.

Wicks’ is therefore reminiscent of this new persona within Catholic media that uses radicalizing echo chambers to push an increasingly online Church to the far right. And as a result of this push, these priest-influencers are mobilizing American Catholics to support and participate in the current administration’s violence.

Emma Cieslik (she/her) is a freelance writer and public historian based in Washington, DC. She researches the intersections of religion, politics, and identity.