MAGA and the American Pope
Seven things to know about Pope Leo XIV.
Habemus papam Americanum!
When a kid from Chicago’s South Side sits on the throne of St. Peter, it’s either the greatest moment in American history or a sign that the Seventh Seal is opening. Either way, tonight we can say that Bobby Prevost truly made America great again.
What does it all mean? Let’s do this, rundown style.
1. It’s not about us.
Do not—for one second—think this is about us. The College of Cardinals does not care about U.S. politics. The Trinity does not map onto either liberalism or conservatism.
No one in the Sistine Chapel was thinking about Donald Trump when the Holy Spirit guided them to choose Cardinal Prevost.
2. Don’t tell that to MAGA.
Those monomaniacal narcissists are losing their damn minds over the guy.
I hate to break it to potato head, but the universal Catholic Church is the first globalist institution in human history. And the Church founded by the Godhead who fled to Egypt as an undocumented refugee has always been in favor of open borders.
3. But maybe Leo XIV is the #ResistancePope of my dreams?
I’m kidding. Mostly. Almost entirely.
A few things to consider:
He’s American.
To the extent that his retweets are a window into his values, he believes in traditional Catholic social justice teachings—which are in direct conflict with large swaths of the current Republican political project.
No matter how apolitical Leo XIV tries to be, MAGA will polarize around him and turn him into a fetish object in its culture war. (See above.)
Meaning that there’s a good chance that Trump eventually feels the need to set himself in opposition to the pontiff. Because he’s American.
What happens if we get the president of the United States tweeting about the Holy Father the way he does Jerome Powell?
In such a case, the pope is unlikely to engage. But that won’t stop the rest of America from taking sides.
I’m not sure that’s a fight Trump can win. I’m also not sure that he’ll be able to resist getting into it.
And what if we hit a real-deal crisis with Trump? He invades Greenland. Or he attempts another coup? Popes do sometimes bring their moral authority to bear on such issues. In such a case, American Catholics would expect their brother Robert to speak.
All of which is to say that I’m 99.99 percent certain that Leo XIV has no intention of being involved in any attempt to stop, or even criticize, the Trump regime.
But I’d put even money that Trump picks a fight with him, because he can’t help himself. To Trump, an American pope who is not openly on the side of MAGA is a provocation.
4. Three clues about Leo XIV’s mission.
(A) The most striking thing from the pope’s prayer this afternoon was that he spoke in Italian, Latin, and Spanish. No English.
This was a choice. Clearly, it was meant to signify that despite being an American, Leo XIV is the pope for all Catholics.
(B) Benedict XVI was a continuation of John Paul II’s project. You can read Benedict’s pontificate as an attempt to put the final pages together on JP’s “reform of the reform” of Vatican II.
Leo appears to be a continuation of Pope Francis’s project. The two men were close. Francis reshaped the College of Cardinals. The cardinals settled on Leo exceedingly quickly. This was not a conclave in which the red hats were thinking deeply about how to react to, or rebut, the last pope.
(C) The choice of the name Leo XIV is surely important. Pope Leo XIII is remembered as the father of the modern Catholic theory of social justice, known as the “social pope” and the “pope of the workers.”
If Francis’s pontificate can be said to have had an idea behind it, it’s that the Church should love and show special devotion to the poor and the downtrodden. It would not surprise me if Leo XIV intends to continue in that line.
5. There are concerns about Robert Prevost.
There is credible reporting that, as Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, Prevost failed to take seriously allegations of priestly abuse.
There’s more:
In 2000, Prevost allowed a Chicago archdiocesan priest who sexually abused minors to live in an Augustinian rectory around the corner from a Catholic school — in a residence Cardinal Blase Cupich later said was not appropriate for priests accused of abuse.
This is all uncomfortable, isn’t it? People are complicated. We have hopes. We want heroes. But reality is messy. We embrace that here. We live in the contradictions and we don’t whitewash truth just because we want to believe.
If this is the kind of media you want, come and join us. Right now. Today.
6. Robert Prevost is gone. There is only Pope Leo XIV.
After the final ballots are counted and certified, they are burned. The white smoke goes up. The newly elected pope steps into an antechamber just off the Sistine Chapel. It’s called the Room of Tears. And it is here that the full weight of creation hits him.
He dons papal vestments for the first time. He places the papal stole around his shoulders. He chooses a new name.
He is in this moment recreated as a new man. It’s a theme we see over and over in Catholicism: The creation of Adam. The baptism of Christ. Jesus calling a fisherman named Simon and giving him the name Peter.
Then the new pope steps out onto the balcony and looks out at a crowd of thousands. Rising from this crowd is the obelisk marking the spot where Peter was crucified because he followed where he did not want to go.
I suspect that in that moment, for most popes it brings home to them that they have entered the last mile of their race. That they will serve the Lord until there is nothing left and are called home. That they will die in harness. And that everything about how they conduct themselves during this last lap matters in ways that are literally unimaginable.
All of which is the long way of saying: If transformations are possible, surely this is a time and place where they happen. An event horizon unlike anything else in the human experience.
Which is why, even if there are concerns, hope must have the last word.
7. Maybe it is about us. A little bit.
I expected to see an African pope in my lifetime. I never expected to see an American pope.
Why?
Because the Vatican is dominated by Europeans and they are deeply suspicious of America and American Catholics. To them, we are toddlers with shotguns.
Earlier this week, Bishop Robert Barron explained to a reporter from CBS why the next pope wouldn’t be American:
Cardinal George of Chicago, of happy memory, was one of my great mentors, and he said: ‘Look, until America goes into political decline, there won’t be an American pope.’ And his point was, if America is kind of running the world politically, culturally, economically, they don’t want America running the world religiously. So, I think there’s some truth to that, that we’re such a superpower and so dominant, they don’t wanna give us, also, control over the church.
Barron is one of America’s MAGA priests, so naturally he could not imagine that anyone else in the world might view America as being in decline.
But we are and it’s obvious.
It’s obvious to the people of Canada, who just elected a prime minister exclusively on the grounds that the American century was over.
It’s obvious to the Chinese, who are planning to step into the vacuum and establish their own world order.
It’s obvious to our European allies, who are now making plans for a future in which America is toothless, lazy, and impotent.
And maybe—just maybe—this reality was obvious the College of Cardinals, too.
Maybe they looked at America and realized that it was no longer a colossus bestriding the globe. No longer exceptional. Not just in decline, but deluded about its reality.
Maybe Robert Prevost was elected pope because the Church realized they no longer needed to be concerned about America power.
Correction, May 9, 12:10am: The piece originally said that Robert Prevost was from the North Side of Chicago. He’s from the South Side.
Yes. I know. South Side. I'm sorry. You don't have to tell me again. I already got the memo about the cover sheet for my TPS report.
'I suspect that in that moment, for most popes it brings home to them that they have entered the last mile of their race. That they will serve the Lord until there is nothing left and are called home. That they will die in harness. And that everything about how they conduct themselves during this last lap matters in ways that are literally unimaginable.
All of which is the long way of saying: If transformations are possible, surely this is a time and place where they happen. An event horizon unlike anything else in the human experience."
This is beautiful, JVL. Thank you. May we all strive to sacrifice like Leo.