LifeSiteNews: An Autopsy

By Eamonn Clark, STL ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 02, 2026

I remember when LifeSiteNews (LSN) was on my list of sources to check almost every day to stay up-to-date on what was going on in the Catholic world. It was always a bit edgy and obviously pushing a specific kind of interpretation of current events, but it typically kept within the bounds of what a reasonable person could see as being merely slanted and myopic.

Those days are gone.

The precise moment of the downfall of LSN could perhaps be pegged to what seemed like its crowning achievement at the time: being (with three other sources) one of the first outlets to publish a major testimony by disgraced former nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Viganò.

Readers will remember Viganò’s scathing report on Pope Francis’s treatment of the McCarrick scandal. This was just over eight years ago, followed by another letter in late September of 2018. From this point onward, LSN and Viganò seemed to be in lockstep.

Over the past seven years, His Excellency has declined into relative marginalization and open schism, with serious questions around an apparent and perplexing friendliness with Russia. Much the same can be said of LSN. What started as a small-time Canadian pro-life publication has become a ragebait operation passing out tinfoil hats.

LSN’s coverage of the COVID-19 years was aggressive and somehow fixated. While it provided a psychological release-valve for those of us who were vaccine-averse and didn’t believe in near-religious fanaticism around masks, social distancing, and contact tracing, I can’t help but look slightly askance in retrospect. Thinking back, the aggregate impression is that this was not balanced reporting overall, despite calling attention to important ideas and events. LSN’s goal during COVID was not to report the news and let readers decide for themselves, but to get people to believe and behave a certain way with regard to a prudential matter, with a handful of select clerical “heroes” who were to become the authoritative voice for “faithful Catholics.” It was perhaps during this time that LSN sealed its fate as a hub for a very particular kind of activism rather than as a source of news.

2024 marked a further downward turn for LSN. It was at this time that LSN became particularly interested in local goings-on in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, especially a fascination with allegedly supernatural messages being promoted by the now-laicized priest Fr. John Mary Foster. Later in the same year, LSN was seriously questioning the validity of the pontificate of Pope Francis, publishing numerous articles floating theories about the invalidity of Benedict XVI’s resignation and Francis’s alleged loss of office due to unorthodox teaching.

After their banner year, in 2025 LSN decided that John-Henry Westen, its President, CEO, editor-in-chief, and cofounder, was no longer fit to continue in his role. So the board fired him—only to rehire him a week and a half later for the same role, without any official public explanation.

The level of institutional dysfunction that would lead to such choices is hard to fathom. The pandemonium over dropping donations can lead teams to make bizarre decisions, but a fire-rehire of the cofounder and obvious leader of the cult of personality which anchors the entire institution is rather extreme.

The past year has seen LSN go from fringe clickbait rage-slop to becoming an outright punchline. As one commentator put it, speaking of the ultra-liberal outlet National Catholic Reporter and a recent article it ran on “transgender saints,” it is LifeSiteNews “for liberals.”

In February this year, John-Henry Westen further concretized his own stance on sedevacantism—and, frankly, invited questions about his psychological health—when he petitioned the College of Cardinals to “consider the possibility that Francis and Leo are anti-popes.” Unsurprisingly, the Sacred College did not see fit to respond, let alone in the positive.

During the research for this article, I noticed a current petition is being promoted on LSN to attempt to force Australia to allow deranged conspiracy peddler Candace Owens to enter the country for a speaking tour. Maybe they will have more luck with Australian immigration services than with the cardinals.

LSN’s support for the SSPX schism this past July was sad, but quite predictable. To be a “faithful Catholic” in LSN’s terms is to align oneself with the Lefebvrists and their agenda, if not in act then at least in sentiment. Obedience could never mean reckoning with one’s own understanding of the good, after all, since our own practical judgment is infallible. And who will save us from the popes (or maybe anti-popes?) except our favorite messianic figures, including John-Henry Westen himself?

But one of the most shocking of LSN’s choices is their ongoing open affiliation with Fr. James Altman, a Wisconsin priest who has been removed from ministry. It was this man’s utterance during an interview which, to me, marked the true symbolic end of LSN as anything other than a sad, demonic exercise in journalistic autoeroticism. When discussing recent words of Pope Leo XIV—without direct quotation, it should be noted—Fr. James Altman implied that Leo does not believe that Christ truly multiplied loaves, stating, “That’s abject heresy. He should be thrown out and and [sic] stoned outside the Vatican walls for that heresy. You know, at the very least tarred and feathered. That is leading lambs astray.” All the while, John-Henry nods along, as if this were at all reasonable.

LSN’s formula for a Catholic “news” hit piece goes something like this: Find a cleric or public figure with a bad opinion or questionable track record on some issue of relevance. Then make everything else about that, to make ecclesiastical authority look as bad as possible, with only LSN and their favorite ideologues and friends left to guide the Church.

Take a headline from just last week: “Pope Leo Welcomes New Pro-LGBT Ambassador to the Vatican.” The ambassador in question is from Belgium, and of course it was Belgium, not Pope Leo or his Secretary of State, who made this appointment. While in theory the Holy See could refuse an appointment, this is uncommon and usually pre-empted through informal talks. The headline alternatively could have been, “Extremely liberal country in Europe appoints comparatively conservative ambassador to the Holy See.” But that would not get any clicks, because it doesn’t make Pope Leo look bad.

Notably, LSN failed to do a quick Google search on the topic of the Holy See turning down ambassadors, which would have revealed that in 2015 Pope Francis allegedly rejected an open homosexual man as the French appointee; that makes for a deeper, truer, and much more complicated story, but such details and nuance would not be helpful to stirring up the donor base. The readers might even begin to think that more is going on at the Vatican than LSN has told them in the past.

So, who needs the subtleties of closed-doors diplomatic arrangements and the complexities of the goals of the Holy See, the nation with the best human intelligence and perhaps greatest moral authority in the world? No, painting a complicated picture like that would be too much work and is not interesting enough for the tribe. LSN has taken up the Catholic version of the old journalistic mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.” And for them, if there is no blood, maybe they will just throw some red stuff on it.

Who knows what the future holds for LSN. Could they turn around? Sure. Could they functionally become the Catholic version of Weekly World News? Yes. Could they continue to lose donors and simply cease operations? Of course. One thing is for certain: things are not going well.

We should pray for the folks at LSN. They certainly have good intentions. But that is not enough.