Rev. James Martin at the Cherry Lane in New York City, 2010. Photograph by Thos Robinson.

Donald Trump’s presidency has put a lot of liberals in an apocalyptic mood, and Rev. James Martin is here to help. At a time when the term “conservative Christian” feels increasingly redundant, the New York City–based Jesuit priest’s Twitter and Facebook accounts offer a refreshingly progressive, if scrupulously Catholic, perspective on the news of the day. So while he’s not about to sing the praises of Roe v. Wade, Martin is perfectly willing to slam Gitmo as “American apartheid,” the Muslim ban and the Mexican Wall as “manifestly unchristian and against the Gospel,” and Trump’s environmental policy as “the opposite of Catholic social teaching.” As for United Airlines’ decision to beat up a passenger who wouldn’t give up his seat, Martin said that highlighted “the morality of capitalism and the ills of the corporate culture.”

Little wonder, then, that he’s picked up over 100,000 followers on Twitter and half a million on Facebook. “My social-media strategy has changed not a bit,” he says. “It’s the world that’s turned. I think it makes what I’m saying seem more radical, but it’s always been the same message.”

That message aligns very closely with the one espoused by his fellow social-media-savvy Jesuit, Pope Francis, who earlier this week tapped Martin to serve as consultor to the Secretariat of Communication—Vatican-ese for “P.R. consultant.” “I am really on board with the way he’s proceeding and what he’s focusing on,” Martin says of Francis. “I think it’s fantastic.”

Martin, who serves as an editor at large for the Jesuit-run America magazine and recently authored a book advocating better Catholic-LGBT relations, spoke to Vanity Fair in the lead-up to Easter about what the Gospels can tell us about politics in Washington, Rome, and beyond.

Vanity Fair: Those of us in the media joke about “hot takes,” where you weigh in quickly on a topic that everyone’s talking about, but you do a legitimately good job of that. What’s your approach to covering the news?

Rev. James Martin, S.J.: People are hungry naturally for a moral perspective. That’s their conscience desiring some kind of moral compass. The Gospels are always relevant, and Jesus’s way of looking at something is my way of looking at something. There are some questions that cry out so much for a Christian perspective that, when you find them, they take off on social media.