Nobody covers the Vatican like veteran journalist Diane Montagna, and while it would appear to me that she’s Catholic, it would be difficult to assume this if all you have to go by is her work. She is not afraid to report on the Catholic Church, warts and all, in a straightforward, observational style.
No drama, no opinion masked as “analysis,” no press agentry on behalf of her subject. At the same time, she almost covers the church with a loving respect for what it represents and perhaps what it could be.
This all came to mind when I read her most recent Substack that features Sabatina James, described as “an Austrian‑Pakistani humanitarian and author of the new memoir The Price of Love: The Fate of a Woman and a Warning to the West.”
The message of Montagna’s piece, through the story of James, is that the Church’s current “approach to Islam is putting Christians worldwide at risk due to intensified persecution of them.” And she lays the responsibility for this, in no small part, on Pope Leo XIV.
James’ story says as much about Islam as her words do. She was a typical Pakistani girl until she was 10 years old in her native country. She and her family then moved to Austria, and she assimilated into Austrian culture.
Before long, her parents decided this would not do, and so they sent her back to Pakistan to marry her cousin. She went to a Madrasa, and she consented to the marriage plans if that meant she could return to Austria.
Back in Austria, she refused to marry her cousin, and that’s when her parents disowned her. Later, when they learned James had converted to Christianity, they threatened to kill her. That’s when she went into hiding and assumed a new identity. In 2015, she fled the European country because of continued death threats over her renunciation of Islam and her outspokenness on the issue of forced marriage.
(JUST IN) Persecuted Convert Warns: Vatican Silence on Islam Driving Europe Toward “Self-Annihilation”
— Diane Montagna (@dianemontagna) December 26, 2025
“If the Vicar of Christ does not speak out against the persecution of Christians, who on earth still can?”
In this in-depth interview, Sabatina James also discusses… pic.twitter.com/9TyJ3GQppl
In an in-depth interview, James told Montagna that “European leaders are steering the continent toward ‘self-annihilation’ and argues that the Catholic Church has abetted this trajectory by emphasizing ‘mercy’ toward refugees, failing to confront the realities of Islam, and neglecting to preach and uphold the faith that shaped European culture.”
She added that the U.S. could face the same problems if it does not heed her warnings.
James believes the West, and specifically the Vatican, underestimate just how violent Islam is, and that if the Church does not come to terms with this, its leaders are “complicit in Islamist violence:"
Recalling Benedict XVI’s apology to the Muslim world following backlash to his 2006 Regensburg address, she contends that Pope Francis ‘sacrificed the persecuted on the altar of interreligious dialogue’ and that Pope Leo XIV has, in the first months of his pontificate, effectively implied that the Christian world ought to ‘accept or ignore abuses’ being perpetrated by Islamists across Europe,” reported Montagna.
James added, “If the Vicar of Christ does not speak out against the persecution of Christians, then who on earth still can?”
James told Montagna that German Cardinal Gerhard Müller recently said, “in 20 to 30 years, Islam could become the dominant religion” in Germany, and the country’s “political leaders have sealed the continent’s fate through unchecked mass migration, deliberately choosing to replace the coming generations with Muslims. The church has aided them in this endeavor with talk of ‘mercy’ towards refugees, while justice for Europeans has been sidelined. And perhaps the bell would not have tolled with such finality, had Europe held fast to its ancient faith. Yet in religion’s stead, each person determines his own morality and subjective truth. Christianity is viewed as superfluous to true ethics and human rights.” She went on:
One might even argue that the European elite—in politics, media, and beyond—are relentlessly pressing and manipulating the population toward surrender, even self-erasure, thereby igniting the fierce counterfire of a surging populism they themselves provoked. They must explain the reason for such folly. A German economist once remarked on former Chancellor Merkel’s inexplicably destructive migration policies: "Either she has lost her mind, or she pursues some hidden agenda unknown to us." This is compounded by the tendency of the so-called elite to converse chiefly among their own kind, insulated from the concerns and reflections of ordinary citizens—a detachment that serves to bolster their one-sided dominance.
James told Montagna that this practice was correctly condemned by Vice President JD Vance in his recent remarks in Europe. And, she says, this was the very point of President Donald Trump’s recent comments: “Look at Germany, see what they have done there, and know what awaits us should we fail to alter course — irrespective of whether one agrees with every step he has taken.”
Montagna said that during an in-flight press conference as he was returning from a trip to Turkey and Lebanon, “Pope Leo XIV was asked by a French journalist if Catholics in Europe who believe that Islam is a threat to the West’s Christian identity are right, and what he would say to them. The Pope responded that while fears about immigration exist in Europe, they are often fueled by those opposed to immigration who seek to exclude people from different countries, religions, or races. He said his experience showed that dialogue, respect, and peaceful coexistence—especially between Muslims and Christians—are not only possible but already taking place.”
She then asked James for her opinion on this. James replied, “It is understandable that the Holy Father does not wish to criticize Islam while visiting the Muslim world. After all, the Church long ago laid down her arms before Islam. Members of the Church hierarchy are acutely aware that even mild criticism of Islam can provoke a storm—a lesson painfully underscored after Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 Regensburg address, in which he quoted a fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor who criticized Islam, saying, ‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’”
Those words, James said, caused upheaval in the Islamic world, where “riots erupted; crosses were burned, churches smoldered, and blood was spilled in places where the Pope’s words had never even been heard. An elderly nun was murdered in Somalia. What followed was revealing: instead of defending his remarks, Benedict, as you note, expressed that he was ‘deeply sorry’ for offending the sensitivity of Muslims, and within months, he was praying inside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The message, even from that holy Pope, was unmistakable: the Church lacked the courage to confront Islam.”
James pointed out how Pope Francis never spoke out against the death penalty for those who have left Islam to become Christians in Iran. “But none of this alters the underlying reality of Christian persecution,” she said. “It is undeniable that Christians are actively being persecuted in the name of Islamic Sharia — though, presumably, not all Muslims support this. But disagreeing with it does not erase the reality, nor does it give anyone the right to deny the persecution or recast it as something virtuous."
When conversion from Islam to Christianity is punished with prison, flogging, or execution, we are confronted with a grave and utterly unacceptable assault on the human right to religious self-determination. It is also a direct attack on the peaceful coexistence of religions—an attack that Muslims themselves would scarcely tolerate if the tables were turned and converts to Islam in the West were being imprisoned, whipped, or killed.
Related: While You Were Sleeping, Christians Around the World Made a Statement
The moral to this story is that we live in a time when we need real leadership, and we have none when it comes to Europe and the Vatican. Islam is running roughshod over those countries, destroying cultural norms, and rapidly conquering the countries themselves. Cowardice among the defenders of the culture and of the faith is real, and according to James, that has to change quickly, or the ending will not be pretty.
