As the College of Cardinals prepare to vote on a new pope this week, conservative U.S. Catholics are trying to woo them with expensive meals and donations if “the right pope” is selected.
Starting Wednesday, the 133 cardinals who are eligible to vote will sequester themselves for the conclave, the millennia-old process of picking a new pope.
The cardinals, who meet in the Sistine Chapel, will remain cut off from the rest of the world until two-thirds of the electors have agreed on the late Pope Francis’ successor. The period before the conclave is always one of intense lobbying, as it’s the last chance for anyone besides the electors to get any say in the process.
The nine-day mourning period after Francis’ death happened to coincide with an annual fundraising week called “America Week” in which wealthy American VIPs make a “pilgrimage” to Rome to raise money and pledge funds to the Vatican.
The event started with the Papal Foundation, a charitable organization whose members must donate at least $1 million to join. Following President Donald Trump‘s re-election, the week has grown to include other conservative Catholic groups hoping to expand on their recent political wins, The New York Times reported.
About 80 members of the Papal Foundation made the trek in honor of the 2025 Jubilee Year, Vatican News reported. The group’s president, Ward Fitzgerald III, has said the organization’s purpose is to “serve the Successor of Saint Peter and support the Church wherever the needs are greatest.”
Under Pope Francis, that meant a particular focus on serving the poor, Fitzgerald told Vatican News. The foundation has given more than $250 million in grants, scholarships and humanitarian aid since 1998, including $14.7 million in 2024, according to its website.
But during an event last week at the St. Regis Hotel in Rome, the foundation said it would increase its annual donations to $30 million, with the goal of raising an additional $750 million in the future, The Times of London reported.
Trump’s favorite cardinal, Timothy Dolan, is the foundation’s chairman. The archbishop of New York has insisted that Trump “takes his Christian faith seriously,” even after the president posted an AI-generated image of himself wearing papal ropes and mitre.
Dolan joked during an opening speech at the St. Regis ballroom that the venue—which has chandeliers, columns and ceiling frescoes—was nice “but not as nice as the Sistine Chapel.”
During the event, the wealthy VIPs made their preferences for the next pope clear.
“This room could raise a billion to help the church, so long as we have the right pope,” one guest a reporter from the Times.
The Napa Institute, a MAGA-friendly Catholic network based out of California, also led a “once in a lifetime” pilgrimage to Rome this year that just happened to land its members in the middle of the pre-conclave action, The New York Times reported.
Founder Tim Busch recently described the Trump administration as “the most Christian” administration he’d ever seen in his lifetime, despite the president’s admitted lack of “charity.”
Napa Institute members are staying in the Hotel de Russie, a five-star luxury hotel in the heart of the Eternal City where rooms start at 2,000 euros (more than $2,200) per night.
Since Pope Francis’ funeral on April 26, they’ve joined Cardinal James Harvey, another American who will vote for the next pope, for a private dinner, the Times reported.
Over the weekend, they also attended a dinner at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum or Collegio Angelico, where Busch served his Trinitas Cellars wines, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
The “faith collection” wines retail for $50 to $125.
About 20 percent of the Napa Institute’s members are affiliated with Opus Dei, a secretive Catholic sect with deep ties to Project 2025, according to the book Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church.
The book states that the two groups have worked together to achieve their shared vision of injecting American law, politics and culture with a deeply conservative strain of Catholicism. Busch has openly criticized Vatican leadership—including Pope Francis—and claimed that wealthy lay members are better positioned than the clergy to lead the church’s evangelizing efforts.
In 2018, he supported an effort called the “Red Hat Report” in which former FBI officers and CIA agents were tasked with digging up dirt on progressive cardinals seen as possible successors to Francis.
The initiative was originally supposed to launch at a Napa Institute conference calling for “authentic reform” in the church. But after information about the report’s backers was leaked to the press, the launch was abruptly canceled, according to Opus.
Busch nevertheless continued to platform Francis’ critics and call for wealthy conservative Catholics to try to steer the church’s direction.
“It’s the lay apostolates that are going to make a difference because they have better funding, they have smarter money, they can be made more mobile,” he told the Capital Research Center in 2023.
Many observers are skeptical the Americans’ lobbying efforts will pay off. Papal politicking has historically been far more subtle than the abrasive rhetoric and ostentatious displays of wealth that have come to define American politics.
Plus, Francis appointed about 80 percent of the electors who will vote on his successor. The political views of many of these cardinals remain a mystery, but it’s likely that a good number of Francis’ picks are sympathetic to the late pontiff’s legacy and agenda.
Nothing, however, is guaranteed when it comes to the papal conclave. As the old Vatican cliché goes, “The one who goes into the conclave a pope comes out a cardinal.”
In 1978, the electors were completely deadlocked after seven rounds of voting, Opus author Gareth Gore told the Daily Beast. They couldn’t agree on who would be the new pope, so on the eighth ballot, they picked a complete outsider.
Many viewed Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła, the archbishop of Kraków, as a compromise figure, Gore said. But Pope John Paul II ended up being more conservative—and even authoritarian at times—than they’d expected.
“For an institution that is 2,000 years old, that traces its origins back to St. Peter, which supposedly chooses its head based on the direct guidance of God, there’s an extraordinary amount of human politicking and horse trading going on,” Gore said.
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