Habemus Papam Americanum
There is a new Pope, the first U.S. citizen and second person from the New World to ascend to the throne of St. Peter. What’s up with that?
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But first, your moment of Zen … Sunset, Marathon, Texas, May 7, 2025
Friday, May 9, 2025
Well, the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics have a new leader. Pope Leo XIV, née Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago, Illinois. He is the first pope from the United States, and only the second pope from the New World (his predecessor Pope Francis, of Buenos Aires, Argentina, being the first.) He is 69 years old, which is about the average age of the electors in the College of Cardinals.
He is a member of the Augustinian religious order. Although every religious order has a distinct charism and corporate culture, priests from religious orders are culturally different from diocesan priests. Popes from religious orders are a rarity – only 34 out of the 266 Popes have come from religious orders, and Leo’s predecessor Pope Francis, a Jesuit, was the first such Pope in 167 years.
He spent a significant part of his ministry as a missionary in Peru, where he served in the mid-1980s and again for most of the 1990s. In fact, he has dual citizenship with that country.
He was regional superior and then general superior of his order before returning to Peru to become bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo. Pope Francis brought him into the Vatican bureaucracy and named him a Cardinal. He was considered a tenebris equus (“dark horse”) before the Conclave began, but powered out of the gates and was never far from the front of the field.
(Ed. Note: That last sentence was inadvertently taken from a description of the 151stKentucky Derby race last Saturday. The editors have apologized to Derby winner Sovereignty, and those responsible have been sacked.)
But you already knew all these things about the new Pope. But here are the kinds of questions that have popped up from friends who know me and my history in religion and politics.
Why did you turn down the job?
I got a call last week from my buddy Joe “Sigueme Joey” Vasquez, who had been bishop of Austin before being named Archbishop of Galveston-Houston earlier this year. He wanted to know if I was interested in moving to Rome and becoming the new Pope.
“No way, Archbishop José,” I told him. But he kept pressing me, to the point where I had to post a definitive statement on my Facebook page, in the spirit of that other great Texas religious leader, President Lyndon Johnson:
“I shall not seek, and I will not accept,
the nomination of your Conclave to be your next Pope.”
But why, you ask? Why deprive the Church of your leadership at this crucial moment? The answer is simple: I am retired now, and did not want to go back into harness, even if it meant I could wear the cool tiara.
Besides, there was that incident with the barback at Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth in 1986, about which the less said, the better.
Did Donald Trump engineer Pope Leo’s ascension to the Papacy?
To the extent hw could even understand it, Trump despised Pope Francis for all his twaddle about serving the poor, treating migrants with dignity and bringing peace to the world. Immediately after Francis’s death, Trump convened his crack team of spiritual advisors, led by Paula White, who interrupted their grifting long enough to consider Trump’s question: could he – should he – be Pope and President? He tried to get their creative juices flowing with this AI-generated image of himself:
However, the spiritual advisors were not thrilled with the idea, since Catholics have proven most immune to their grifting. Plus, the entire College of Cardinals threw up in their mouths at the mention of the idea.
Once Trump knew it could not be him, he pretty much lost interest in picking the new Pope. At this point, Trump’s aides turned on “Escape from Alcatraz” in the locked room at Mar-a-Lago and he completely forgot about the idea of being Pope.
Did the Conclave choose Pope Leo as a repudiation of Trump and Trumpism?
Last week, the Canadians elected a new government to be led by Mark Carney of the Liberal Party which, only months age, seemed destined to lose seats and power in the Parliament. But then Donald Trump began his campaign to make Canada the 51st state, including a trade war to sabotage the trade deal he himself made in his first term. The Liberals swept to victory.
Such a dynamic was probably not at work in the Conclave. First, the Catholic Church is a 2,000-year-old institution that has survived the Huns, the Huguenots, and bad deals with Hitler. It has accumulated more power and wealth in its time than even Donald Trump could imagine. Trump is a piece of rat dung on the bottom of its papal slippers.
Secondly, the Catholic Church is, well, catholic in the sense of worldwide and universal. The Cardinals, who come from all over the world, had more weighty matters on their mind than domestic U.S. politics.
Third, as intriguing as it is to believe that Cardinals play the same cynical, feckless political games as, say, the United States Senate, that idea misunderestimates the personal holiness of many, if not the majority, of the Cardinals – an observation I am unable to make about anyone in the U.S. Senate.
How will President Trump get along with his fellow American, the new Pope?
Trump understands that the Papacy operates at a different level from American, or even world, politics. Following the admonition of his favorite Bible book, Two Corinthians, he will render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.
Haha, just kidding. Trump, of course, has never read a Bible verse in his life, and certainly wouldn’t understand that one if he had.
Trump and the Trumpists could conveniently ignore Pope Leo. The problem is, Leo is an American. Trump treated Francis and that whole “preferential option for the poo” teaching of the Church with benign neglect, because they were foreign. But Trump sees himself as the Americano Numero Uno in the world, and he will feel challenged by this Chicago kid (and Trump will see everything he does as a challenge, because “Quien es mas macho?”). Trump will have to provoke a fight, just to keep the demons of loneliness and self-loathing at bay.
And it doesn’t help that the MAGA faithful have lost their collective minds about Pope Leo. The intellectual leader of the MAGA movement, who posts under the nom de guerre Catturd, opined:
Another member of the MAGA intelligentsia let us know how upset he was:
(On behalf of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, sorry to see you go, Matt. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.)
Trump will feel the need to support the MAGA nonsense, if only to prove he is worthy to be their leader. He will also anticipate that Pope Leo will probably not fight back, at least not the kind of mudslinging that thrills him.
So, how silly will it get? Will Trump demand that Italy surrender the Vatican State to the U.S.? Will he place tariffs on Papal tchotchkes exported from the Eternal City? Will he direct ICE to round up any suspicious priests studying at American universities and seminaries? Who knows? The pettiness of the man knows no depths.
Do you detect signs of hope in the white smoke wafting out of the Sistine Chapel chimney?
Yes, two:
1) The papal electors knew that Cardinal Prevost was close to Pope Francis. And the speed with which they elected hm signals that they were not looking for the Church to change direction significantly. If you liked Francis and his vibe, that’s a good sign.
2) By the time anyone has been selected, they have given a great deal of thought to the name they wish to take. At that moment, they cease being Karol (John Paul II) or Jorge (Francis) or Robert (Leo XIV) and take on their new identity for the ages.
Cardinal Prevost selected a name that followed in the footsteps of Pope Leo XIII, remembered as the father of the modern Catholic theory of social justice, known as the “social pope” and the “pope of the workers.” In a polarized world of unimaginable wealth and unconscionable poverty, that is bound to cause some trouble — “good trouble,” as John Lewis would call it.
Pope Leo is now Everyman — people see him through the lenses of their own experiences and values. Their expectations of his papacy are all over the map. In a while, the course he sets for the Church and its adherents will become clear And life will go on.
Since you quoted a favored Texas president (based on the small pond full), I offer an additional LBJ quote. I think it describes what His Vileness in the White House feels about the new American Pope: "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." I realize that Pope Leo is much more refined than the quote suggests, but, metaphorically speaking, I wouldn't mind it if a couple of shakes dribbled on trump's elevator shoes.
Your retirement gives you the time to write your reflections and I am happy for this. Although i might pay money to see you carried through a crowd sporting the papal tiara ( which by the way was permanently retired by Paul VI.)
My invitation to Mr Trump and Mr. Vance and the MAGA faithful, who somehow think they are in line with Christian values, is READ THE GOSPEL. Jesus never was on the side of power…he sought out the poor, the outcast, the despised. He operated in the model of abundance not the model of scarcity. Every cure, every teaching, every miracle points to that abundance like the needle of the compass. God bless Pope Leo.