A Yank on the Throne of St. Peter

Cardinal Francis George, once the Archbishop of Chicago, said that the only way the Catholic Church will have an American pope is if the United States goes into decline as a world power. Now the Church not only has an American pope, but one from Chicago. Hmm.

Outsiders cannot know what was in the minds of the cardinals who elected Robert Prevost, Pope Leo XIV, that made them choose a Yank. Catholics are obliged to believe that the selection was guided by the Holy Spirit. That may be, but worldly considerations are also in play—even geopolitical ones.

First, though, it is likely that the cardinals wanted a steadier guide than the erratic Pope Francis, whose personalist style of governance, and his penchant for “making a mess” had exhausted the patience of even his progressive supporters in the Vatican. Leo XIV seems to be just such a calming figure. 

In that way, though little is known of his theological views, one can assume he must be broadly in line with Francis’s liberalism. Nevertheless, as past bishop in Peru, Leo reportedly managed well the tensions between theological conservatives and liberals in his Latin American diocese. After Francis’s papacy, in which he seemed to delight in insulting traditionalists, the Church could use a more irenic pontiff. 

Still, why an American? How could that be a sign that the United States is in decline?

Since the conclusion of World War II, the United States has been the world’s undisputed superpower. Though the Soviet Union was its rival during this period, Russia’s might depended entirely on its military, especially its nuclear arsenal. U.S. power, by contrast, also rested on its unparalleled economic and cultural influence. To place an American on the Petrine throne as the absolute monarch of global Catholicism would have been intolerable to the Church’s governing class. This is the basis for Cardinal George’s conclusion. 

The United States is, in fact, in decline relative to the rest of the world—especially China, its new rival. That said, America remains the world’s most powerful country in terms of cultural impact. And that could be why the cardinal-electors judged this to be a good time to elect an American capable both of understanding and speaking to Americans in this time of the country’s historical transition.

Earlier this year, as a Vatican cardinal, Leo publicly denounced U.S. vice president JD Vance’s stance on migration. Vance had defended the Trump administration’s strong restrictions on migration, citing St. Augustine’s teaching of ‘ordo amoris.’ Vance’s point was not that we have no mandate to love strangers, but that it is disordered to prefer the good of strangers to the good of our families, neighbors, and countrymen. 

Then-Cardinal Prevost disagreed, tweeting on February 3 an editorial from the liberal newspaper National Catholic Reporter, whose headline read: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

In an interview after his brother became pope, John Prevost told ABC News that because of his work in Peru, Leo, who is fluent in Spanish, will stand with the poor and downtrodden.

“I think because the way our country is going, I don’t think he necessarily will always agree [with] what’s happening,” said John Prevost. “I think a big thing for him is immigration and is it right— what’s going on? I think that will be a challenge for him, because I think he’ll say something about it, too.”

It is reasonable to read the cardinals’ pick as at least in part a response to the Trump administration’s immigration stance. True, most American Catholics respect their pope, but unlike in past eras, when the opinions of popes and bishops made a difference in the laity’s thinking, Americans today make up their own minds on politics. Still, the voice of an American pope, in American-accented English, is something no Catholic has ever heard. We are in uncharted waters.

Besides, migration is an important issue not only in the United States, but in Europe—and will only grow in significance. The rise to power of Donald Trump, in part out of voter disgust by Washington’s inaction on illegal migration, will likely be followed by similar outcomes in Britain and on the European continent. Germany’s biggest political party is now the Alternative for Germany (AfD), despised by German bishops and the German establishment, but rising in popularity chiefly because of its migration hard line. It could be that the cardinals who elected Leo did so out of hope that he would defend migrants in the world’s lingua franca, English—a language Pope Francis did not speak. 

Even if America itself is not declining, there is no doubt that the postwar global liberal order designed and implanted by the United States is breaking apart. It is easy to imagine that the cardinals chose Robert Prevost as a pontiff who could, in some sense, manage the decline of that liberal order by exercising influence over the U.S. Catholic Church, and even over the heir apparent to Donald Trump, the Catholic convert JD Vance. What’s more, one-third of President Trump’s candidate is Catholic, and conservative at that.

One big challenge the new pope faces is the decline of the Catholic Church in America—not just in terms of influence (the sex abuse scandal all but obliterated the bishops’ moral authority), but also in raw numbers. For every new convert Catholicism wins, eight Catholics depart the Church. Catholicism in America, like every other traditional form of religion, is petering out, though there have lately been pockets of revival among more conservative, traditional forms of the faiths. 

Pope Francis was viscerally hostile to Catholic traditionalists, but his celebrated progressivism did not arrest the Church’s decline, nor did it produce vocations. The overwhelming number of men who entered seminaries during the Francis years are theological conservatives. The new pope will have to manage the decline of liberalism in the ranks of the U.S. Catholic clergy, who are more conservative on balance than average American Catholics, while also treating with care the small but vigorous traditionalist communities, which are thriving.

This is not happening only in America, but also in Europe—especially in France, in which the annual June walking pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres, an event for young traditionalist Catholics, promises to be bigger than ever this year. Francis failed to extinguish Catholic traditionalism in the ailing Western nations; perhaps Leo will seek détente. 

Here’s a hopeful sign: On May 1, the leading Catholic daily newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Cardinal Prevost was seen entering the Rome apartment of Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, the American archconservative and defender of traditionalists, for what the newspaper described as a “top-secret summit.” Who knows what happened there, and what understandings may have been reached? 

Leo will almost certainly be a liberal, but perhaps his liberalism will include tolerance for a relatively small sect within the Church that wants nothing more than to be faithful and to worship according to the old mass. Though most U.S. conservative Catholics are not Latin mass-goers, if the new pontiff takes a more welcoming line to traditionalists, and holds the line on issues like abortion, euthanasia, and gender ideology, he will go far in winning over U.S. Catholic conservatives—and gaining a fairer hearing for his views on migration. 

Francis was known for his hostility to the United States, and the role of America in the world—and he showed it. His gentler successor is an American who has lived most of his life, and served as a priest and bishop, outside of America. Whatever may be coming from this Yankee pontificate, Americans can at least expect no more unwelcome splashes of Buenos Aires vinegar, and more spoonfuls of Chicago honey—which should make any hard-to-swallow Leonine medicine go down more smoothly with the Church’s richest and most influential national flock.