Leo XIV vs. Trump: what will first American Pope mean for US Catholics?

For the first time in history, the one in five US adults who identify as Catholic will have a fellow American as their spiritual leader. Although Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, henceforth to be known as Pope Leo XIV, spent much of his religious career in Peru, he was born and raised in Chicago and holds citizenship of both countries.

President Donald Trump was quick to react to the announcement of the conclave's choice, posting on social media that it was "such an honour to realise that he is the first American Pope".

But many were quick to point out that the new Pope has a history of sharing posts online in support of racial justice and gun control, as well as comments critical of Trump and of his vice president, Catholic convert J.D. Vance, for their crackdown on migrants.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say?

Illinois voter registration data appears to suggest that Prevost voted in the Republican primaries in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2024, said Newsweek – although who he voted for is not public information. That a Catholic Pope would lean conservative is hardly a surprise, but "there's a twist", said Tim Stanley in The Telegraph. On "many bread-and-butter issues, he's probably a progressive".

During his two decades in Peru, Prevost worked with migrants and was "praised" for helping displaced Venezuelans. Even his choice of name is "telling": his 19th-century namesake, Leo XIII, "opposed socialism but supported trade unions", and wrote a "magnificent" text that analysed poverty and injustice. While conservative US Catholics exert "great influence in the judiciary" – six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic – they prefer to "talk about doctrine rather than social action".

Leo is "to the right of his predecessor" on same-sex marriage and transgender rights – but "do not for a minute think he wants to Make America Great Again", said Time. Indeed, he stands to be "an ideological check" on the strain of Maga Catholicism that has been "ascendant in Washington" in recent years.

The election of Prevost "clearly represents a rejection by the Vatican of the intense lobbying from rich Americans to install a pontiff sympathetic" to Trump. There is a "good chance" Trump and Pope Leo will "clash" on immigration, human rights and the environment – especially given the president's "obsession" with an agenda that would "co-opt Christianity in service of his political goals". Within hours of Leo's selection, the Maga-verse "seemed to be gunning" for him. Far-right activist and key Trump ally Laura Loomer posted: "WOKE MARXIST POPE."

To be fair, Leo's criticism of Trump "largely echoes" that of his predecessor, said The New York Times. Pope Francis also openly disagreed with Trump's deportation policies. And so far, the president "doesn't seem to be holding any grudges" against the new Pope. Vance, too, sent his "well wishes".

Leo's first appearance on the balcony of St Peter's will also "reassure more conservative traditional Catholics in the US", said The Irish Times. They will be "similarly reassured" by his views on homosexuality. In 2012 he "lamented that popular culture fostered 'sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel'", referencing the "homosexual lifestyle" as well as "alternative families comprised of same-sex partners". Indicators of "a strong social conscience" won't "warm the cockles of any 'Maga' hearts", but for traditional American Catholics, "order has been restored to their world".

"I think this will make a big difference to Catholics in America," Craig Burwell, of Connecticut, told Politico. "It'll draw them back to the church. It'll give them a stake."

What next?

For all that has been written since his appearance on the balcony of St Peter's, Pope Leo XIV is still "a complete unknown", said The New Yorker. But the world has time to get to know him: at the age of 69, "he may be Pope for the next quarter century".

The "underlying tension" between Leo and Trump will "colour global affairs and domestic politics" for years, said Time. Catholics make up roughly a quarter of the US electorate: "a higher level of civic engagement than other faiths". They are also "politically pliable": Joe Biden, only the second Catholic president, won 52% of the Catholic vote, but Trump won 59% last year.

The world is "suffering from Trump's American populism", Brandon Gallaher, lecturer in theology at the University of Exeter, told The Irish Times. Leo XIV "shows the possibility of another different American vision".