Signs suggest that Pope Leo XIV may replace Denver’s ultra-conservative archbishop with a socially liberal Catholic leader, weakening the political power of right-wing politicians and activists in Colorado who benefit from the church’s loyal political and lobbying support.
Under Archbishop Samuel Aquila, who is required under Canon law to submit his resignation next month on his 75th birthday, Colorado’s Catholic Church has earned a national reputation for right-wing orthodoxy and has wielded considerable conservative influence in Colorado politics and beyond, lobbying for anti-abortion measures, prioritizing conversion therapy and other attacks on LGBTQ+ people, and even backing right-wing political candidates.
But Pope Leo may go in a different direction than Aquila, said Ashley Hildebrand, a senior advisor for Catholics for Choice.
“Something I really appreciate about Pope Leo is that he sees the church as a place for plurality of thought and the importance of disagreement within the church hierarchy,” Hildebrand said. “[Aquila] really does not have that view, he takes the approach of, ‘You need to listen to what I have to say on matters of moral authority,’ which we saw with him spearheading efforts to deny state legislators who supported abortion rights communion.”
While emphasizing that there is no way of knowing whether the Pope will accept Aquila’s resignation, Hildebrand pointed out that Pope Leo’s few appointments to date have been more socially progressive, including a bishop in Baker, Oregon.
Leo Already Appointed a Liberal Bishop
Fr. Thomas Hennen, a priest from Iowa and an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church, was appointed in June to fill the Diocese of Baker, replacing a bishop who appeared to be ideologically aligned with Aquila.
However, Hildebrand emphasized that while she is hopeful for change within Denver’s Catholic leadership, historically the Catholic Church tends to appoint socially conservative clergy to more socially liberal areas, citing the archbishop of San Francisco as an example.
“It really depends on a variety of factors,” Hildebrand said when asked what the likelihood is of the Pope accepting Aquila’s resignation. “We really have no way of knowing. What I think is most interesting in this case was that Pope Leo, before he was elected to the papacy, led the Dicastery of Bishops that advises Rome on the appointment and resignation of bishops and cardinals. We are going to be seeing someone who has intimate experience in these matters ultimately making this decision.”
A study from Pew Research Center in April found that a majority of U.S. Catholics want the church to be “more inclusive” on a variety of metrics. Eighty-four percent of respondents thought the church should allow Catholics to use birth control, 68% believed that it should allow women to serve as deacons, and 60% thought priests should be allowed to bless same-sex couples.
In preparation for a possible transition, Catholics in Denver are being urged to pray for Aquila’s health and peace of heart as his 75th birthday approaches.
“This time of transition offers us a powerful opportunity to lean into prayer, deepen our faith, and renew our love for the Church,” Denver Catholic Magazine wrote. “Whether at Sunday Mass, in quiet moments of intercession or through fasting and sacrifice, let us commit to covering this change in prayer, confident, that the Lord, who began a good work in us, will bring it to completion.”
The Colorado Times Recorder reached out to a spokesperson from the Denver Archdiocese for comment, but has not received a response.
Aquila, who took over the Archdiocese in 2012 from equally conservative Bishop Chaput, has been a polarizing figure in the Denver community and has been outspoken on a variety of culturally conservative issues throughout his tenure.
Most recently, Colorado’s Catholic leadership has thrown its political weight behind an anti-abortion ballot initiative, taking an active role in an unsuccessful 2020 campaign that would have banned abortion at 22 weeks.
Aquila himself has made inflammatory comments regarding abortion. In 2024, Aquila claimed that the “pro-abortion lobby abused” mothers and families while lobbying against Amendment 79 that enshrined a right to abortion into Colorado’s constitution.
In 2022, Aquila put out a statement praising a California bishop who refused to give then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) communion due to her support of abortion rights and pushed to keep Joe Biden and other pro-choice Catholic politicians from receiving communion.
Aquila has been a vocal opponent of LGBTQ+ rights. He made headlines for an op-ed he wrote in 2022, in the wake of Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, complaining that media outlets unfairly blamed the church for its role in elevating homophobic and transphobic rhetoric.
“Our critics charge that the Catholic Church is discriminating against those who identify as gay or transgender, but it isn’t discriminatory to tell someone you think his beliefs don’t conform to nature — it’s an act of charity,” Aquila wrote.
Aquila has promoted conversion therapy, advocated against LGBTQ-related discussion in sex education classes, and urged Catholic schools not to enroll transgender or non-binary students. In 2023, Aquila blamed critical race theory and the transgender community for the dwindling number of churchgoers during a Sunday Mass.
In an unusual move, the Archbishop urged Catholics to form groups in their churches to heal LGBTQ+ people. These programs, referred to as “conversion therapy”, have been widely opposed by medical professionals like the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association.
According to Dr. Antony Alumkal, a professor of sociology and religion at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, the Roman Catholic Church does not explicitly endorse the practice of conversion therapy.
“The Roman Catholic Church’s position is that same-sex relations are a sin. I believe the language is that same-sex attraction is a ‘disorder, ’” Alumkal said. “But Catholics have generally not been in favor of conversion therapy; that’s mostly been an evangelical phenomenon. The Catholic position has been: ‘Okay, if you can’t be in a heterosexual marriage, then be celibate.’ The Catholic Church has a long history of valuing celibacy; the clergy are celibate, the nuns are celibate, the monks are celibate.”
“Protestantism does not have a long history of valuing celibacy,” Alumkal continued. “And evangelical protestantism in particular is so pro-heterosexual family that lifelong celibacy is seen as an aberration. They won’t say that explicitly, but implicitly, everybody’s supposed to get married and have children. So what do they do with same-sex attraction? Their solution is ‘Okay, don’t worry, we’ll cure you.’ The Catholic hierarchy has generally not endorsed that. You’ll find bishops here and there who will endorse it, theologians here and there. But as a whole, the Roman Catholic Church has never been on board with conversion therapy and, to some extent, it represents evangelicalism having an influence on American conservative Catholics.”
According to Alumkal, conservative Catholics have been a part of the Christian right movement for decades now and the coalition between evangelicals and Catholics has pushed both groups further to the right on social issues.
“The modern Christian Right, which took shape in the late 70s, was an alliance mostly between evangelical protestants … and conservative catholics,” Alumkal said. “You get a little bit of participation from politically conservative Jews, you get some Mormons or Latter-Day Saints involved, which is a little more controversial, but they were a part of the mix. But the two main groups were evangelicals and conservative Catholics, so when you get those groups working together, it’s just natural that the conservative Catholics are going to start picking up evangelical ideas and vice versa.
“For example, if you go back a couple decades, evangelical leaders had a much more moderate stance on abortion. They were looking for an issue that could mobilize the grassroots, and they basically borrowed abortion from the Catholic Church and hoped that it would galvanize their base, and it did. That was not driven by theology, that was driven by pure political calculation.”
American Catholic leadership has been more conservative than Catholics generally. A 2023 survey by The Catholic Project found that U.S. Catholic priests have increasingly been identifying as politically conservative, while American Catholics on the whole have become more politically liberal.
“The Catholic hierarchy throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s has been becoming more conservative,” Alumkal says. “So Pope Francis’s elevation caught a lot of people off guard because they had seen the church continually moving rightward, and then to have it suddenly shift like that. That happened at the very top of the Catholic Church.”
“But among American bishops and archbishops, it has still remained very conservative. There wasn’t a big shift. There have probably been some small shifts because of appointments being made under Francis, but the American Catholic hierarchy is still seen as mostly conservative.”
Aquila is a leader among the conservative block of American bishops, and the contrast between Aquila and the new pope is stark. Aquila, who was ordained in Denver and served as a pastor in 11 different parishes in the 1980s, has, since the beginning of his career, been committed to right-wing religious and political causes, whereas Leo XIV has been an advocate for social reform within the church.
Pope Leo XIV is widely anticipated to continue his predecessor Francis’ legacy of social reform among Catholics.
For example, Pope Leo XIV has signaled that he agrees with his predecessor’s reforms on LGBTQ+ issues. A Vatican official announced in July that the church would continue to allow blessings for same-sex couples. Although in the past the new pontiff has espoused more socially conservative views of gender and sexuality; however, these views are very much the norm within Catholic clergy.
Even if Aquila is replaced by a more liberal archbishop, the Denver Archdiocese is unlikely to change its core stances on issues like abortion.
But its priorities could shift away for LGBTQ and reproductive-rights issues and toward issues like immigration, climate change, and poverty concerns.
On climate change, Leo has been outspoken about the need to confront the issue.
On immigration, Leo XIV has been an avid defender of the rights of migrants, openly criticizing the Trump administration over their partnership with El Salvador to ship detained migrants. In a social media post, the then-cardinal wrote this regarding the strategy: “Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?”
