The Lepanto Institute is a legitimate nonprofit organization dedicated to monitoring and defending Catholic teachings by researching and reporting on the activities of Catholic organizations. They have researched the infiltration into the Catholic Church hierarchy. The organization says there is infiltration into the Vatican. Pope Leo is surrounded by Marxists, according to their research.
Michael Hirchborn, founder of LePanto on People Leo XIV
The LePanto group reported Pope Leo met with a radical communist group, the World Meeting of Popular Movements. The meetings have taken place under the auspices of the Vatican since 2014. Pope Francis oversaw four of them, and Pope Leo led the fifth in 2025.
The World Meeting of Popular Movements is a gathering of hardcore communist organizations. They push for revolution and seek a socialist society.
“They call themselves popular movements, but really they are Karl Marx-praising communists, and they get together; they start talking about, well, how can we collaborate with the church? How can we work with local governments to try and expand our design or desires for the way civilization ought to be?
“Pope Leo, in his private audience with this group, which was held in the Vatican, the meetings were held off-site, but in his meetings with it, or in his private audience with this group, he called them ‘social poets.’ He called them ‘champions of virtue,’ ‘champions of justice,’ and ‘champions of humanity.’
“And they are none of these things. These are actual communists, and they’re promoting abortion. They’re promoting LGBT stuff. So that’s, that’s in a nutshell what we discovered.”
“Just shortly before the world meeting of popular movements, he published his very first apostolic letter. It’s called an ‘apostolic exhortation,’ and the title of it was ‘Delexite.’ It’s supposed to be on love and service to the poor and that kind of stuff, but he dedicated two paragraphs of this document to popular movements, and he even acknowledged that there were certain problems with these groups. He said there have been and still are various popular movements made up of lay people and led by popular leaders who have been viewed with suspicion and even persecuted.
“Okay, I’ve got to put this in context, because they’ve been viewed with suspicion, because they are actual communists.” …Listen to the clip.
COMMUNIST GROUPS AND THE VATICAN?
“We’re seeing consistently that there is a Marxist infiltration at deep levels within the Vatican…“ @MichaelHichborn says scrutiny is falling on Pope Leo’s comments after he called members of left-wing activist groups “champions of humanity.”… pic.twitter.com/HizO864Bcy
— Real America’s Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) June 5, 2026