Feet of Clay?

Chris Damian writes:

Bishop Barron is in Catholic public discourse again because of President Donald Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV. Following Leo’s recent anti-war comments, Trump lambasted the Pope in a Truth Social post, accusing the Leo of being “weak on foreign policy” and insisting he only became pope because of the President. Trump early the following morning also posted an image of himself depicted as Jesus.

In response, Barron called for an apology from the President, while at the same time praising the President as the greatest in his lifetime in “defending our first liberty.” President Trump, upon hearing of Barron’s post, said he would not apologize. He also that he thought the image, in which he is wearing a white robe and has glowing hands, was depicting him as a doctor. Catholic Vice President JD Vance in response to all this said that Pope Leo should “stick to matters of morality” and “let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy” (I personally find the word choice of “dictating” to be quite telling.)

Catholics across the political spectrum have raised concerns and given commentary about the President’s posts and Barron’s response. But this isn’t the only recent controversy involving Barron.

In December 2025, I was made aware that Bishop Robert Barron’s personal Facebook account was following a number of provocative pages, including one for “Brazilian male feet.” After validating that these were real pages and that the account did indeed belong to Barron, I shared these findings on Twitter. Surprisingly, the Word on Fire account, rather than Barron himself, provided a response.

Shortly before Christmas, a Catholic writer contacted me about an odd discovery. He had found that Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester had a personal Facebook account which followed pages for an account dedicated to “Brazilian Male Feet” and a couple of young muscular men who regularly posted provocative pictures and videos…

Word on Fire accused those raising concerns of seeking to “manufacture controversy where none exists.” The ministry stated that Barron’s account had recently been hacked and targeted for “digital fraud.” Of course, these two claims contradict one another, given that a controversy does exist about these follows and the alleged hack. (Insisting to those concerned that there are no concerns is a tactic one can easily trace back to the clergy abuse crisis.) Word on Fire did not provide any evidence of its claims, even though one can easily find a history of account logins, including suspicious access, via the Meta platform.

It is certainly possible that Barron’s account had been the subject of a hack. However, after Word on Fire provided its public defense of Barron and accusations of malice towards me and others, I was made aware of prior similar activity. An individual that I personally know shared screenshots of similar accounts followed by Barron as far back as January of 2024. This, along with the lack of evidence shared, raises significant doubt concerning Word on Fire’s claims. (And one again wonders why the ministry is tasked with the public defense of Barron’s personal accounts.)

According to this individual, Barron followed a number of accounts for young men who posted provocative images and videos, including “Sunshyne Smile,” “Niki Clip,” “Bright Bright,” “Tayo Ricci,” and “The young Jamaican trainer.” He captured screenshots of these follows at various points between January 2024 and May 2025 and shared them with a small group of other Catholics in his circles, trying to make sense of them.

(Some of these accounts seem to have either been deleted or changed since. Bishop Barron also appears to have deleted his personal Facebook page following the December controversy.)

Partly because of a fear of retaliation, not only for himself, but for others involved, the individual who shared all this with me asked to remain anonymous. He was willing to share the following:

“I took these screencaps in two sets, on January 6, 2024, and in May of 2025. The January screen caps were occasioned on the second of two occurrences, when I saw this account, purporting to be Bishop Barron, acting abrasively towards other Catholic figures I respect. The first one involved his making an aggressive and irresponsible statement towards a cleric I admire for his attempt to speak with candor, and this had happened some months prior. The second was his making a blithely dismissive comment towards someone I consider an important Catholic public voice.

Both instances had been accompanied with his not giving any opportunity, for those he impugned, to respond. It was, frankly, bullying behavior, and a weird behavior to see from a bishop aware of social media and the impact thereof.

This behavior was already offensive enough to see the first time, especially given that he was a bishop and the other cleric was not. So when I saw it happen the second time, I began to wonder whether it was even the Bishop, or instead some kind of overly aggressive social media rep.

This led me to look at the profile, where, with experience with Facebook, I found the likes and follows, which were normally not searched. It was on this occasion that I - accidentally, and with more than a little surprise - discovered a number of disturbing accounts in the likes and follows. I found accounts with the names ‘Niki Clip’, ‘Sunshyne Smile’, and ‘The young Jamaican trainer’, among others. At that time, I was concerned that this was not the Bishop's social media account, but a very bizarre scam account.

I made my concerns known to the person whom he had dismissed on the second occasion, on January 6th of 2024, only to learn that this was, in fact, the Bishop's account.

Obviously, this was a surprise and a scandal, but I am not the sort of person to want to air that sort of thing publicly and I am not a journalist, so, with that, I let it be.

However, after some time had passed, and with more instances of concern in the news about the Bishop and Word on Fire, and as as Bishop Barron’s public criticism of various ideological targets became more and more difficult to ignore in anyone’s Catholic news feed, I began to be concerned that I needed to keep more of a record of what I had found in case it was still there, and in case it ever came out, since I had, in fairness, shared it with one other person, and these things can take on a life of their own. Because of this, in May of 2025, I went back to look and see if the profile was still there and still following these things.

On that occasion, I found all the aforementioned pages, and while these might have been present before, I would also find other likes and follows that had, at the very least, come to be since that time. Most notably, I have the screen cap of at least one instance of an account called ‘Bright Bright’, and that picture taken at that time, included a connected picture with that account that was anything but subtly homoerotic.

I did not share that, at that time, in any kind of public venue or to anyone other than the person with whom I had discovered the first instance, because I wanted to make sure I was correctly accounting for everything with a reputable witness of good character. I then did not share it with anyone else until the present.

Recognizing that I held on for these pictures at least since May of 2025, but also, in many cases, since January of 2024, and it is now February of 2026, I want to make it clear that the only reason I now provide these is because I do not wish to see Catholic voices speaking genuinity and truth impugned, by an organization professing to represent the Church and one of its shepherds, a successor of the Apostles, through a malicious lie about being “hacked”, or through the disparagement of those raising journalistic attention to the scandal, especially when Bishop Baron and Word on Fire cannot be anything but culpably aware that they are lying.

It is a sin to bear false witness. It is against one of the Ten Commandments. It is a sin and a recognized cause of injury in the Church to violate the good reputation of another, especially by disparagement in the public eye.

It is an absolute scandal to see both of these things occur out of the mouth of an organization representing a Bishop and having him, a public figure, as its chief officer. His Excellency has any number of strong things to say about others and his conviction about the truth and his missionary ethos, and perhaps some of them might be deserved, but none of them can be justified on the back of a lie, and Catholics cannot permit the witness of his office to be traded for a soup of lies.”

In my personal opinion, this entire debacle is just sad. A bishop I had so admired, and a ministry with so much promise, engaging in such ridiculous defenses of behavior that, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t that bad… In my own opinion, the cult-like defenses and refusal to learn from past failures are much worse than following a few provocative pages on Facebook. I believe Barron could offer much to the Church if he could learn a posture of humility and seek personal accountability for failures, whether administrative or otherwise. But his failure to do either makes someone I once admired come off as—if I’m being completely frank—pathetic. 

There is something connecting the odd cultures of masculinity cultivated by Barron, the interest in these sorts of social media accounts, the marginalization of the vulnerable (especially women working in certain Catholic institutions), a refusal to take accounting of personal and institutional histories and one’s responsibility within them, and the Bishop’s partisan preoccupations. A reflection on these and how to find integration could offer much to the Church. I would love for these reflections to one day come for Barron himself. I believe everyone is capable of change and growth. And so I’ll hope for that… one day.