The American Pope

As if America didn’t already have enough geopolitical power in the world, to say nothing about it’s immense military power, there is now an American Pope for the 1.4 billion Catholics in the world.

The new pontiff is Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost from Chicago, Illinois, and he will take the name of Pope Leo the XIV, which to me, for some reason, sounds a bit out of date, but what do I now.

His selection surprised a lot of people for a couple of reasons: first, that he is similar to Pope Francis is some ways, and second, he is from America.

It is simply shocking that in a world where the American president is looking to expand the American empire, we now also have an American pope.

For his part, Trump characterized the selection of Prevost as a great honor for America – which is pretty much what we might have expected him to say.

“Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just named Pope. It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. 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!”

Interestingly, though, Prevost did criticize JD Vance not too long ago in a post on X, in which he quoted a headline from the National Catholic Reporter. The headline read: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

In case you don’t remember, Vance had said this:

“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.”

My guess is that Trump is not aware of the post by Prevost yet, so it should be interesting to see how he responds when he finds out.

In yesterday’s video I mentioned three names that I thought were the most fascinating possibilities, and of course none of those three were selected, so my career of predicting popes seems to be over before it even started.

But in that video, I showed an image of 7 possible names to watch out for that TIME Magazine had put together, and sure enough, in the upper left hand corner is Robert Francis Prevost.

In some ways, Prevost is similar to Pietro Parolin. He is not seen as too conservative like a Raymond Burke would be, or too young like a Pierbattista Pizzaballa. He embraces some of what Francis stood for, but is more conservative in other ways.

For example, on many social issues Prevost is seen embracing marginalized groups like Francis did, such as championing causes for migrants and the poor. But Prevost also opposes ordaining women as deacons, and is thought to be conservative on church doctrine.

And I say “is thought to be” because he has not publicly stated a detailed position on homosexuality, abortion, or gender ideology. However, his leadership in the Dicastery for Bishops suggests he upholds traditional Catholic moral teachings. 

I’ve been reading a bit about Prevost over the past few hours, as well as watching a number of videos, and the one description of him that came up several times is that he is discreet. He simply hasn’t loudly proclaimed what his views are on a number of issues.

Of course, he didn’t really have a reason to do so before, necessarily, but now as pope he will be given that stage – and expected to offer specific answers to those questions. Right now, however, he is a man of mystery in a lot of ways.

The initial reaction by many people, especially in MAGA world, is that Prevost is a woke progressive, and will be very similar to Pope Francis, but I don’t think that will be the case. Or, at least it’s not a given, and here’s what I mean.

It was initially thought that Pope John Paul II would be progressive, and he turned out to be quite conservative in many ways. Likewise, many thought Pope Francis would lean conservative, and he turned out to be one of the more progressive popes in recent history.

We will probably need to wait at least a few months before we get a better idea of how Pope Leo the XIV operates – and especially look to see who he surrounds himself with in the Vatican, as well as his talking publicly about a number of issues.

My first impression is that this pope is NOT the last pope, and we could be looking at a situation where he oversees the Catholic Church for three or four years, give or take, before the final pope comes along.

But it will be fascinating to see how the American pope interacts with the America president. Does their shared country of origin eventually draw them closer together? Or is Pope Leo the XIV just the setup for the final pope? Only time will tell.

Thanks for watching and I’ll talk to you guys soon. ♦