Interesting that we have an American pope now. And fascinating that he doesn’t seem to be enamored of this present administration running the country. J.D. Vance’s ears must be burning because the new Pope has openly disagreed with him on “obligation to love” order amoris, which Vance was proselytizing a while back, as part of the anti-immigrant, anti-Other philosophy of the current misadministration. The new Pope doesn’t feel that way and neither did the old one.
It feels a bit facile and tasteless to say that the first American Pope, Leo XIV, has been elected to counter the influence of Trumpism. Popes often change in the role and, since Catholicism is a religion and not an electoral party, the servants of the servants of God tend to defy political caricature.
Consider the limited evidence, however. Following an unusual social media spat between, of all people, the podcaster Rory Stewart and Vice President J.D. Vance about the Christian obligation to love (ordo amoris), in relation to the subject of immigration, the then Cardinal Robert Prevost posted an article entitled ‘J.D. Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others’. The article, by a woman called Kat Armas, attempts to dismantle Vance’s argument that Christians should ‘love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world.’
No, wrote Armas: ‘the problem with this hierarchy is that it feeds the myth that some people are more deserving of our care than others.’ The new Pontiff clearly agreed with that. More recently, too, he retweeted a progressive Catholic writer called Rocco Palmo criticising the Trump administration for its ‘illicit deportation’ of a prisoner to El Salvador. Responding to the election of Pope Leo XIV this evening, Palmo added: ‘First, Canada… Then Australia… now The Conclave. Just unreal.’ He’s referring of course to the so-called Trumplash – the rejection of the US president’s policies across the world.
In his first words as Pope, he said ‘We are all in the hands of God… Let us walk together, build bridges, and proclaim the Gospel without fear.‘ The ‘bridges not walls’ evocation is a near constant refrain of liberal bishops who oppose right-wing border policies. At Pope Francis’s funeral, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re used the line to sum up the late Pontiff’s message to the world. And then they picked an American who has done a lot of his spiritual work in Peru.
What’s intriguing is that Trump undoubtedly takes the selection of an American for Pope as being an homage to him, because Trump finds a way to spin everything that happens as an homage to him. But the message that the rest of the world sees is that Rome is no fan of Trump. And certainly Pope Francis made that clear.
This is just getting started. This is going to be an interesting journey. Right-wing media has already taken a swipe at Pope Leo, calling him a “Marxist” and doing Chicago gangster memes, so we are off to the races with this one.
Well done, rightwingding media, for bashing the new Pope immediately. Sets the tone, doesn’t it? Y’know, the tone designed to alienate (that’s a bigger word meaning ‘piss off’) all the Catholic voters in America. It will annoy plenty of non-Catholic voters, too, like actual Christians who dislike smartasses who denigrate religious leaders.
I’m wondering how SCOTUS Catholics are reacting
The new Pope was born and raised in America. However as you note he spent much of his time service the church from other nations, and Peru especially. His connection with that country grew strong enough he obtained citizenship there. As such it can be credibly claimed he’s as much south American as north American. Something to keep in mind.
Well, from the end of WW2, the Vatican had a largely unofficial rule that barred US Catholics from being elected Pope to help keep the Papacy officially neutral in the global “Cold War.” Somewhat ironically, it was a bit of a counterpoint to the feeling that many Americans had about the election of a Catholic to the Presidency (the feeling had been that such a President would put the Vatican ahead of America and would bow to Papal dictates) and the Church worried that an American Catholic would be too willing to follow the lead of whatever policies the President would direct.
Even after Kennedy was elected and he proved that being a Catholic was not automatically going to turn the US into a Papal colony, the other reason came into more focus: That the Vatican wanted to be seen as a truly neutral nation in the Cold War’s geopolitical reality. Every pope since Adrian VI in the early 16th century had been born in Italy or an Italian state (Adrian had been born the city of Utrecht in what’s now the Netherlands; as a technicality, Pope Leo XIII was born in the French Empire but his hometown lies southeast of Rome) and, even though Italy was part of NATO, the country had a very active Communist Party so the Soviet Union wasn’t too concerned. Unlike the election of John Paul II which raised some concerns in Moscow but John Paul II seemed about as willing to condemn both Soviet and American Cold War behaviors which sort of mollified Moscow’s concerns (even though the Pope’s willingness to get involved in Poland’s burgeoning anti-Communist and anti-Soviet labor and general political movements did cause some “discussions” between Moscow and the Vatican). But, the Vatican maintained its “neutral” stance in preventing an American’s being elected Pope mainly because of the “superpower” concerns. The College of Cardinals wanted to keep the Papacy free of any “superpower” involvement which leads us to today.
I’d say the biggest reason for elevating an American-born Catholic to the Papacy is that the Vatican (through the College of Cardinals) no longer sees the United States as a superpower as they have for the last 80 years. The Vatican now seems to view the US as “just another nation that happens to have nukes” (and there has been speculation for years that a Catholic from India, the UK or France would be of no concern to the Vatican although the odds of a British or French Pope has seemed far less likely since John Paul II’s election–even with Benedict XVI’s somewhat surprising selection).