They were intensely lobbied by MAGA with $100 bottles of wine and promises of massive donations.
But after just two days of voting, the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals spurned pressure to install a Trump-friendly pope. Instead they voted for one in the mold of Pope Francis—and an American at that, who has already been a public critic of Donald Trump.
As Cardinal Francis Robert Prevost emerged on the Vatican balcony as Pope Leo XIV, a massive right-wing lobbying operation to bend the Catholic Church towards MAGA looked to be a bust.
A native of Chicago, Prevost is the first American to hold the papacy, but like his predecessor he has deep ties to Latin America. He’s a dual citizen of Peru, where he lived for many years before Francis summoned him to Rome to eventually head the powerful Dicastery for Bishops.
Making his first speech from the Vatican balcony, Leo told an ecstatic crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square, “We must seek together to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges, dialogue. And that is always open, like this piazza, to receive with open arms everyone—everyone—who needs our charity, our presence, our dialogue, and love.”
He asked the people gathered below to help build those bridges, with dialogue and meetings, to unite as a single people always in peace. As the crowd cheered, he also thanked Pope Francis.
The speech was deeply reminiscent of Francis’ famous insistence that society needs to “build bridges, not walls,” both literally and figuratively. When President Donald Trump announced his plans for a southern border wall during his first term, Francis said that anyone who thought of only building walls and not bridges “is not Christian.”
About 80 percent of the cardinals who were eligible to vote in the conclave were appointed by Pope Francis. But given the high stakes and deep divisions that have rocked the church, it was an open question whether the cardinals would elect someone who would continue Francis’ legacy or try to keep a lower profile.
The nine-day mourning period after Francis’ death happened to coincide with an annual fundraising week called “America Week” in which wealthy American Catholics make a “pilgrimage” to Rome to raise money and pledge funds to the Vatican.
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. But this year MAGA sent that lobbying into overdrive as conservative American Catholics sought to replicate their recent electoral successes in the U.S.
Groups like the conservative Papal Foundation—which is chaired by President Donald Trump’s favorite cardinal, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New ork—hosted VIP events where donors said they could raise $1 billion for the church if the “right pope” were to be chosen.
The Napa Institute, a MAGA-friendly Catholic network based in California, also wooed cardinals at private dinners and events where $100 bottles of wine were on hand.
In 2018, the group’s founder Tim Busch 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—particularly allegations of mishandling abuse cases.
The project’s launch was canceled after its backers were leaked to the press, and it’s not clear whether those dossiers ended up circulating in Rome.
The overall strategy, however, seems to have played out, as some cardinals worried this week that criticism about handling abuse cases was being weaponized against moderate and progressive candidates, including Prevost, the influential Catholic site The Pillar reported.
Those cardinals argued that any prelate who had served as a diocesan bishop was susceptible to such criticisms, and yet conservatives media outlets downplayed allegations against their ideological allies.
Trump’s ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, was also widely suspected of launching a smear campaign last week against Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Francis’ right-hand man and a favorite to succeed him.
His CatholicVote super PAC, which according to the Chicago Sun Times raised $1.7 million in support of Trump’s 2024 campaign, published a false story saying Parolin had fainted from high blood pressure.
Burch has also helped launch a new group called the Louis IX Foundation—which held the first-ever America Week Ball last week—dedicated working with conservative European politicians and donors to shape the church’s future, The New York Times reported.
All that lobbying and campaigning appears to have backfired, though, as the cardinals quickly rallied around someone whom the late Francis himself would have likely chosen to replace him, according to the AP.
As cardinal, Pope Leo presided over one of Francis’ most revolutionary reforms, the addition of three women to the voting bloc that decides which bishop nominations to advance to the pope for the consideration.
He has been a vocal supporter of Francis’ emphasis on making the church more inclusive, according to the College of Cardinals Report. The new pope has previously called on church leaders to “reject racism and seek justice.”
Perhaps most significant is his name: Pope Leo XIII wrote a papal encyclical—a communication to the whole church— in 1891 that supported union rights and spoke out against the excesses of capitalism. Leo XIII is identified as the founder of Catholic social teaching and social justice movements within the church.
And like his predecessor Francis, the new Pope Leo XIV has sparred with members of Trump’s administration. In February he shared an op-ed from the National Catholic Reporter titled, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
During a Fox News interview on Jan. 29, Vance had said, “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”
The piece that Leo shared, by author and columnist Kat Armas, argued Vance had wrongly created a hierarchy that “feeds the myth that some people are more deserving of our care than others.”
JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others https://t.co/hDKPKuMXmu via @NCRonline
— Robert Prevost (@drprevost) February 3, 2025
In 2015, he shared a Washington Post editorial by Dolan arguing that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was “problematic.” Dolan has since warmed to Trump and insisted that, despite the president posting an AI-generated image of himself wearing papal ropes and mitre after Francis’ died, Trump “takes his Christian faith seriously.” Three-times married Trump did not attend any church at Easter.
Despite then-Cardinal Prevost’s criticism, Trump was quick to cozy up to the new pope.
“It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope,” he wrote in a Truth Social post “What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
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