Pope Leo XIV conclave elected on May 8th a Roman Catholic Marian day of prayer in honor of Our Lady of Pompeii

An American pope, for a time of American crisis.

Echo editorial published in the Boston Globe newspaper:

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV waved to faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square shortly after his election on May 8, Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV’s first prayer was the Hail Mary in honor of Our Lady of Pompeii. #PopeLeoXIV #HailMary #Pompeii

Nobody should be expecting the pope to lead the resistance to Trump. But hopefully, Leo XIV, as an American, understands the gravity of the moment in his home country.

No sooner had the first American pope been selected Thursday than a modern tradition unfolded: the scrubbing of Robert Francis Prevost’s X feed.

Previously a little-known cardinal from the Chicago area, Prevost was selected by his brother cardinals after several rounds of voting to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. He took the name of Leo XIV (thus forgoing the chance to be history’s first Pope Bob).

His selection in the pomp of a Vatican conclave was a surprise not only because it was unprecedented. 

It had also been widely assumed that due to the global unpopularity of President Trump and the United States in general, no American would be elevated to the papacy to succeed the Argentinian Pope Francis, who died last month.

Leo’s election is an incredible milestone for American Catholics, whose history in this country began as an oppressed minority. And the Catholic Church, which thinks globally and across centuries, probably did not factor the politics of his home country into his appointment.

Still, when the news broke, Americans scrambled for clues as to where this US citizen stood on Trump — and, by implication, how he might use the world’s ultimate bully pulpit to influence his home country and its leadership.

Nobody should be expecting the pope to lead the resistance to Trump. For that matter, we wouldn’t want a religious leader, of any stripe, playing that role in a diverse country like the United States.

Still, it will matter what Leo says. It will matter how and when an American pope talks about America‘s politics, policies, and inevitably important role in the world. It will matter where, when, and how forcefully he deploys the church’s moral authority.

And it will matter how he responds to the Trump administration’s courtship of Catholic voters and attempts to co-opt Catholic doctrine to justify its immigration policies.

When the president harasses or scapegoats immigrants, Leo XIV can push back, as Francis did. 

And there is nobody with more authority to object when JD Vance attempts to use Catholic teachings as a justification for anti-immigrant posturing.

An early sampling of his X posts suggests he would do just that.

Just a few weeks ago, then Archbishop Prevost called Vance “wrong” in an X post after the vice president suggest that a theological concept called “ordo amoris” (suggests that love should not be given indiscriminately) justified the mass deportation campaign threatened by the Trump administration.

He also made or circulated posts in favor of immigration reform, gun control, and COVID-19 vaccines, and called on the church “to reject racism” after the 2020, murder of George Floyd.

Those digital breadcrumbs might seem to place him on the American left, but that would almost certainly be wrong. Leo is very unlikely to be a progressive, in the modern American political sense of the word. He can be expected to maintain the church’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage, for instance. In a 2012 speech, he decried the “homosexual lifestyle.”

But hopefully, as an American, he understands the gravity of the moment in his home country and won’t allow areas where the church agrees with Trump to become excuses to ignore the rest. And simply by sticking to its own principles — the ones conservatives hate, and the ones liberals hate — the pope can demonstrate to other Americans how to remain independent at a time when so much of politics has descended into tribalism.

Sistine Chapel The Last Judgement by Michalangelo

Although we’ll never know what happened inside the Sistine Chapel before the white smoke billowed out of the chimney, perhaps the cardinals chose Leo because he was an American, not despite it.

Maybe the logic behind his selection was that no one was better poised to handle the church’s response to an off-the-rails American administration than a fellow American.

If so, it’s another reason to wish (and to fervently pray for) for Pope Leo’s success.