American Pope

When Donald Trump was triumphantly returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, he immediately became ex officio the most important, the most powerful, the most prominent American in the world. Then, exactly 11 months ago, on May 8, 2025, somewhat surprisingly and unexpectedly (at least to most people), Robert Cardinal Prevost, a Chicago-born, Augustinian Friar, who had been a missionary priest and bishop in Peru, was elected Pope, instantly blowing up the traditional expectation that no American could or would ever be elected Pope. In 2025, an American-born Pope immediately became ex officio the other most important, the other most powerful, the other most prominent American in the world. What this means - and the hope that Pope Leo XIV's election may bring to the Church and the world in the era of President Trump - is the focus of CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb's American Hope: What Pope Leo VIV Means for the Church and the World.

Despite the conventional wisdom that no American would be elected Pope, Lamb argues that Trump's re-election caused a recognition that the U.S. role in the world was changing. He claims that Cardinal Prevost was on his own short list of papabili. Even so, when the white smoke appeared so quickly on the second day of the conclave, he assumed the winner was Cardinal Parolin, the Secretary of State, who had been widely seen as the frontrunner. But, when Cardinal Mamberti announced Prevost's name, Lamb's "previous feelings of deflation turned to excitement."

I too had heard Prevost's name mentioned prior to the conclave, but I still assumed that his American nationality would count against him. In fact, that very morning when someone had asked me if I thought there would be a new Pope that day and who it might be, I had answered that the only thing we could predict for certain was that it would not be an American! 

Of course, having been born in the USA is not the only noteworthy aspect of Pope Leo's background and life story. Lamb rightly highlights his membership in (and his leadership of) the Order of Saint Augustine and his missionary service in Peru - both as important aspects of who Leo is and as important considerations which made an American-born pope's election even possible. "He would not be pope were it not for the years he served in Peru, a time which profoundly shaped him and which brought him to the attention of Pope Francis." He was thus the "least American" of the American cardinals. His Augustinian identity, Lamb also argues, wrote "community, contemplative prayer and unity" into his "governing style," while his two terms as the Augustinians' Prior General had given him "insights into the growing churches of Africa and Asia, and experience of leading a complex, international Catholic community."

Lamb is also extremely preoccupied with demonstrating continuity between Pope Francis and Pope Leo - even while acknowledging Leo's "balance and moderation" and his desire to be "an expert listener and community builder," qualities that somewhat differentiate him from his more polarizing predecessor.  The author's emphasis on continuity, even while recognizing the ways in which Leo is temperamentally different from his predecessor, almost seems like a case of protesting too much. Also, given that Leo in certain respects represents the Global South as much as the U.S., Lamb devotes much more space than one would therefore expect to contentious first-world issues (like women's ordination, which Francis himself in continuity with his predecessors had rejected). 

Nonetheless, Leo's Americanness is an important theme of Lamb's analysis. He does not expect Leo to seek deliberate confrontation with Trumpism. "He is measured and careful with his language, and far less provocative than his predecessor." On the other hand, while Francis was easily criticized as someone who "simply did not know enough about the United States," that "cannot be said of an American pope."

Leo's papacy offers an alternative vision to the one emanating from the White House, a vision that is built on unity and spirituality and which is allergic to divisive rhetoric and polarization. Lamb quotes Fordham University's David Gibson: "While Leo's exposition of Catholic teachings will contradict many of Trump's policies and statements, it is Leo's character that stands in contrast to Trump, both as a Christian and as an American. ... This is about two diametrically opposed ways of being in the world."

Lamb contrasts Pope Leo not only with President Trump but also with the most prominent American Catholic layman, Vice President JD Vance, who was received into the Church in 2019 and claims his conversion was influenced by Saint Augustine. "JD Vance takes his faith seriously, and the story of his conversion, which he laid out in The Lamp magazine, reveals someone who has made a sincere engagement with the Catholic faith, and who wrestles with how to apply the teachings of Christianity in his life. Yet in the vice president of the United States, Leo also faces someone whose Catholic faith is tied to a political worldview." Vance is a "post-liberal," who "believes that society is better served by stronger communitarian and social bonds rather than by the autonomy of the individual." Such ideas resonate with some traditional Catholic teaching and in their more extreme form have become increasingly prominent in a revived ideology of Catholic integralism, an alternative which inevitably challenges the post-conciliar Catholic Church's apparent accommodation with liberal democracy.

Meanwhile, in his first Urbi et Orbi Easter Message a few days ago, Pope Leo issued a challenge which it would be hard not to understand. "We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent. Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people. Indifferent to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow. Indifferent to the economic and social consequences they produce, which we all feel." One of the most damaging consequences of our current politics is precisely how it has normalized violence, hatred, division, and the economic and social consequences of inequality and bigotry. The Pope's challenge is both perennial and contemporary: "let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil." 

Lamb concludes American Hope with his worry about whether Pope Leo's "low-key style, his desire to see all sides of the argument, and his sometimes studious aversion to making news headlines, could be dangerous if it creates a perception of a papacy that has no clear narrative." He contrasts this with President Trump, whose "success is his uncanny ability to shape the narrative" and with Pope Francis, who "within hours of his election established a clear narrative for his papacy." Lamb worries Leo could cede the narrative to outside events as he believes happened with Pope Paul VI. 

There may be something to this argument. In contrast, however, I would suggest that Pope Leo's "low-key style," etc., may be among his great assets. Trump is bold. (So, in different ways, was Pope Francis.) The alternative to such Trumpian norm-shattering boldness that America and the world so desperately needs lies precisely in calm, balance, moderation, intelligent discourse, and - above all - empathy, all of which have already formed the basis for Pope Leo's counter-narrative. Lamb himself hints at this when he suggests that Leo "embodies the very qualities people hold up to be the best of America, at a moment when it's often said that the American President is undermining them."