"The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion."
Mother Teresa famously said this while standing on a dais with President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton in a National Prayer Breakfast Speech in Washington, D.C., in February 1994. It was big news at the time. A year into the reign of Pope Leo XIV, the first pope born in the United States — South Side Chicago, to be exact — it isn't news that Leo cited Mother Theresa's quote.
Speaking to young people participating in a "Political Innovation Hackathon," Leo said: "No policy can genuinely serve the people if it denies the unborn the gift of life, or if it neglects to support those in need, whether in their material circumstances or in their spiritual distress."
"Her words remain prophetic," Leo said about the fearless, mighty, tiny nun who captured the attention of the world. Her mere presence would challenge us — I remember being just yards from her while I was a student at the Catholic University of America, at a Mass at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, adjacent to the campus, where new Missionaries of Charity, the religious community she founded were making their vows.
"The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself," Mother T said bluntly in her Nobel acceptance speech. I have an unspoken rule that if you're going to talk to me about something evil like pornography, I do not want graphic details. Don't put an image in my head that might not have entered in another way. I do not have the same rule when it comes to abortion. Mother Teresa's words need to be heard by citizens and politicians alike, so that public figures will realize that a well-informed conscience is a beautiful thing to have and a terrible thing to waste.
A throwback to clarity on moral issues is not a radical departure from Pope Leo's predecessor, Pope Francis. "Leo does follow Francis when it comes to speaking out on immigration, the environment, poverty and capital punishment," according to one CNN analysis.
The media longs for a fight between Trump and the pope. They did it with Pope Francis — putting him on the cover of Rolling Stone, only to warn him not to disappoint their desires for him. But if you thought Francis was changing the Church to endorse the whims of conventional society and Western liberal ideologies — especially sexual revolutionary ones — you were mistaken. He likened abortion to hiring a hit man to kill your unborn baby and talked about gender ideology as the equivalent of a nuclear bomb destroying the nuclear family. He canonized John Paul II, calling him "the pope of the family."
Pope Leo has a joy and steadiness about his Catholicism. It seems to come naturally to him. For all the headlines, he really wants you to take away one thing: the love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)