Thank you to everyone who joined
and me for our very impromptu Live, which we started as soon as Cardinal Dominique Mamberti walked out to the St. Peter’s balcony and announced, “Habemus papam.” (For the record, I am very proud that I actually understood the Latin as he was speaking and shrieked to Michelle over our group chat, “I think it’s Prevost!!!” Never let it be said that studying Latin was a waste of time.)The new pope is Robert Prevost, a 69-year-old native Chicagoan who has spent decades as a missionary in Peru. He has taken on the pontifical name Leo XIV, which is significant in that the preceding Leo, Pope Leo Leo XIII, was a social justice warrior who worked to modernize the church.
Here’s my analysis of the situation:
The Cardinals Rebuked Trump
Prevost is the first American pope in the church’s 2000 history. In choosing him, the cardinals have installed an American global leader who has publicly rejected the hate, division and racism of the Trump administration. On occasion, he has even taken on JD Vance, a relatively recent convert to Catholicism who has nevertheless sought to lecture others on his interpretation of church teachings. (Spoiler alert: Pope Leo has publicly rejected MAGA in all its racist and divisive forms.)
The pope has also not been shy about taking on the MAGA movement in other ways.
The Conclave Did Us a Favor
The conclave that selected Pope Leo did America a huge favor. It sought to show the world that there is another side to Americans, one that is loving of its neighbor, one that cares for the poor and the vulnerable, one that is the opposite of the face that Trump shows the world every day.
These cardinals showed us Americans — including the majority of American Catholics who voted for Trump — that there is a better way. We should be indebted to them. The next time you travel abroad and someone shouts at you about Trump, remind them that Pope Leo is also an American. May he live up to the promise of his papacy.
Another Country Sticks it to Trump
Trump has influenced elections in Canada, Australia and now the Vatican. In the hundred days since his ascension to the White House, Canadians have voted to reject Trumpism. So have Australians. And now, the Vatican’s voters — the 133 cardinal electors who elected the new pope — have chosen someone who has publicly rejected MAGA in all its noxious forms.
The World Sees America on the Decline
Robert Barron is the bishop of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester in Minnesota, whom Trump appointed a few days ago to the new White House Commission on Religious Liberty. Yet here is what he recently said to CBS News:
"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."
I agree. If we were still the United States of old, the church would not have given an American this much power. But instead, the cardinals — the vast majority of whom are not American — decided to give a limping nation a hand. As an American who is much more aligned with the new pope’s social justice views than with Trump’s, I am deeply grateful. We all should be.
For more, watch the Live above.
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