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Leonard Leo, the US Supreme Court, and the Catholic 'Mafia': A Q&A with Tom Carter
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Leonard Leo, the US Supreme Court, and the Catholic 'Mafia': A Q&A with Tom Carter

Heidi Siegmund Cuda interviews Tom Carter about his decade-long efforts to warn the US about religious ultra-conservative Leonard Leo

Heidi Cuda
May 14, 2024
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Leonard Leo, the US Supreme Court, and the Catholic 'Mafia': A Q&A with Tom Carter
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Leonard Leo Photo:Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press/Alamt

The Byline Supplement team will be hosting a live Q+A tomorrow at 6pm UK time about ‘Journalism and the 'View From Nowhere' with NYU Professor Jay Rosen. You can sign up to take part here.


A portrait by Russian painter Igor V Babailov of Margaret Leo hangs at the entrance of the Opus Dei Center in Washington DC.

As Jesus prays with his hands upon the young girl’s head, an inscription reads: 

“Margaret Leo of McLean, pray for us”

The artist, who has painted portraits of Vladimir Putin, Patriarch Kirill, Rudy Giuliani, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, was given a  knighthood in 2017 by the Order of St. Anne, named after the daughter of Peter the Great, and bestowed upon him by a disputed claimant of the headship to the House of Romanov.

The portrait of the smiling young girl, who suffered in her life due to spina bifida and died at 14, can also be found on cards handed out at the Opus Dei Center, encouraging guests to pray to her. A book titled The Littlest Suffering Souls encourages her canonization to sainthood.

Her father, a Washington DC lobbyist and lawyer named Leonard Leo, just may be powerful enough to make it happen. 

“They pass out these cards at the Catholic center encouraging you to pray to Margaret Leo to get Jesus to do whatever you are praying for,” veteran reporter Tom Carter told Byline Supplement. “I pray Margaret gets Jesus here and tells her dad and Clarence Thomas to stop trying to destroy democracy, but she hasn't heard my prayer.”

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