(LifeSiteNews) — Today is the final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and yesterday prominent Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin published an article in America Magazine titled “What makes Stephen Colbert one of today’s best Catholic evangelists.” Father Martin, who was officially named the chaplain of “Colbert Nation,” tweeted this praise directly:
“My take on what makes Stephen Colbert one of today’s best Catholic evangelists.”
My take on what makes Stephen Colbert one of today’s best Catholic evangelists. https://t.co/TW86sw96yG
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) May 20, 2026
Yet recent clips of Colbert paint a very different picture of the comedian’s actual beliefs on life and the afterlife. In a recent segment, Colbert described what happens after death:
There is some continuance of some kind. But it’s like a dispersion of the self into some other greater being. And I don’t have any other feelings beyond that.
That is definitely NOT the Catholic faith — but it is reminiscent of the Avengers or the movie Kung Fu Panda when Master Oogway disintegrates in death. It has nothing to do with Catholic teaching on death, judgment, heaven and hell, or the eventual resurrection of the body. It is closer to pantheism or New Age spirituality.
But Fr. Martin’s “best Catholic evangelist” Stephen Colbert is also radically pro-abortion. While attacking Alabama’s near-total abortion ban in 2019, Colbert mocked the pro-life law and the lawmakers who passed it, telling his audience:
Yesterday, Alabama lawmakers passed a bill banning nearly all abortions. That is either an overreach by the Alabama GOP or some pretty intense viral marketing for the new season of Handmaid’s Tale. If a TV show has to become reality, why can’t it be Star Trek so they can beam me off of this planet.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Colbert used foul language to express his disgust and ridiculed the justices. In that same monologue he actually called the original 1973 Roe v. Wade decision — which unleashed the killing of tens of millions of unborn babies — “healing.”
READ: Vatican’s pro-LGBT Synod report used another friend of Fr. James Martin for testimony: report
And it is not only done in jest. In a 2019 interview with the New York Times, he was asked, “Well, can I ask, then, if you support a woman’s legal right to an abortion?” He replied:
I support a woman’s legal right to exert all her rights. One of her rights, presently, is to have an abortion. I am not in favor of the judges who have been appointed who might likely overturn that. I respect the women I know and their opinion on the subject. I believe that abortion is a woman’s choice.
Father Martin writes that Colbert’s witness is powerful because “people see a man speaking about his wife and children, his occasional struggles with his church and, most of all, the joy he takes in being a Catholic.” He calls him one of the “most effective evangelizers for the Catholic faith around.”
I guess for Fr. Martin — the most well-known promoter of the LGBT agenda in the Catholic Church — Colbert, who is an avid promoter of homosexual “marriage,” is an ideal Catholic. Here is Colbert’s reaction to the Obergefell ruling which forced legalization of homosexual “marriage” onto all 50 states:
Congratulations gays. You now have the right to marry in all 50 states. So if you’re a homosexual and living in North Dakota, all your problems are solved! Wow. History moves fast. It’s hard to believe that gay Americans achieved full constitutional personhood just 5 years after corporations did.
Can someone who mocks the defense of unborn life, celebrates Roe as “healing,” celebrates homosexual “marriage” and describes the afterlife as dissolving into the universe truly be held up as a model Catholic evangelist?
But this is the new version of the “Catholic” faith held up by Fr. James Martin and those like Leo XIV who encourage him. It is the “Ape of the Church” warned about by soon-to-be Blessed Fulton J. Sheen.
At LifeSite we will continue to follow this story. Please keep Stephen Colbert, Father James Martin, and all those led astray in your prayers. What a powerful witness it would be if these men reverted to the actual Catholic faith!