Until today, nearly every Vatican insider agreed on one thing: The United States would never produce a pope, at least not while the country remained a superpower. A citizen of the world’s dominant nation could not become the leader of the world’s largest religious organization without dramatically upsetting the global balance of geopolitical and cultural power. Or so the thinking went.
And yet, the conclave that concluded today in Rome has chosen the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church: Robert Francis Prevost. Making the milestone even more remarkable is that Prevost was chosen on just the second day of voting by the most geographically diverse body of papal electors in history. Perhaps most surprising of all is that the Church’s first-ever American pope was selected during Donald Trump’s presidency, as Washington assumes a more contentious stance toward the rest of the world.
Prevost, who has taken the papal name Leo XIV, was born in Chicago (with the accent to prove it) and attended an American school (Villanova University), but spent much of his adult life outside the United States. Leo led the Augustinian religious order from Rome and lived in Peru serving as a missionary bishop. During his first speech as pope from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica today, he switched easily from fluent Italian to fluent Spanish. Many in the Catholic hierarchy tend to identify American clergy as parochial; they will find that Leo goes against type. Given his association with Peru, some in the Vatican even talked about him as though he’d be the second pope from Latin America—after Francis—rather than the first from America.
Many observers are likely to cast Leo as an anti-Trump, a role that Francis was often cast in himself. In February, a profile on X apparently belonging to Leo reposted an article criticizing J. D. Vance, who had argued that Catholics should prioritize their family and neighbors over foreigners. And indeed, it seems likely that the new pope will continue policies—such as advocacy for migrants and environmental protection—that his immediate predecessor embraced and that the current U.S. administration largely opposes. But almost any of the 133 men voting in the Sistine Chapel today would have done the same had he been chosen pope. Francis was a controversial figure among many cardinals on account of his autocratic governing style and his deemphasizing of sexual ethics, but not for his beliefs on economic or social justice, which aligned with those of mainstream Church leaders. By taking the name Leo, the new pope is clearly signaling an intention to highlight modern Catholic social teaching, a tradition that began with Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903.
The new pope’s impact on the Catholic Church in America promises to be dramatic. Imagine the scenes in Chicago on his first pastoral trip to the country. Francis, who did little to hide his wariness of U.S. power and once said it was an honor to be attacked by Americans, was nonetheless broadly popular with his flock there, as with the non-Catholic population. The U.S. is bound to embrace its native son with even greater fervor, not least because his elevation clearly confirms Catholicism’s status as an American religion, for any Catholics who might still harbor doubts about fully belonging in a traditionally Protestant society.
Leo’s relationship with the U.S. Catholic hierarchy could provide an early clue to the direction of his papacy. The American bishops were at odds with Francis over his approach to moral issues, specifically abortion, which the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops repeatedly declared the “pre-eminent priority” of its public policy agenda. Francis bluntly denounced abortion but he and his allies among American prelates sought to give equal weight to social issues including poverty and the environment.
The new pope served his predecessor for the last two years of Francis’s reign as chief adviser on the selection of bishops, helping find men who shared Francis’s vision to lead the Church around the world. In that role, he was not known for public interventions in the culture wars. And yet, there is some evidence that he might more closely resemble the majority of American bishops than his proximity to Francis might suggest.
In October 2012, when he was leading the Augustinian Order, Leo gave a speech at the Vatican denouncing “the Western mass media” for promoting “practices that are at odds with the Gospel,” including euthanasia, abortion, the “homosexual lifestyle,” and gay adoption. That speech would have clashed with the tone set by Francis, whose most famous line as pope was “Who am I to judge?” We’ll see if such stark language makes a comeback under his successor.
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