By now, everyone (but especially Harry Styles?) has seen the news: The papal conclave is over and there’s a new pope in town. With the election of Leo XIV — formerly known as 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost — the Catholic Church has made history. Not only is he the first American to wear the white cassock, but his rise signals a quiet, calculated shift, both within the Vatican and far beyond it. The last Pope Leo — Leo XIII — earned the nickname the “Social Pope” for his bold stance on workers’ rights and economic justice in Rerum Novarum. A century later, Leo XIV arrives with echoes of that same moral gravity. But it’s who Leo is, and what he represents, that makes this moment feel like a hinge in the door of history.
This pope is a product of America, yes — he hails originally from Chicago and is also a Villanova University alum, which naturally Spike Lee takes as a good sign for his Knicks — but also a quiet critic of the direction it’s been heading. And whether the College of Cardinals will ever say it out loud, the choice feels strategic. His elevation feels like a subtle Vatican counterweight to America’s creeping authoritarianism. In a time when many religious voices in the U.S. have aligned themselves with nationalism, this pope may be asking Catholics to turn toward conscience rather than ideology.
Scroll through his old X/Twitter feed and you’ll find a through-line. In one recent post, he retweeted a story about the Trump administration mistakenly deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT in El Salvador, asking whether the president’s conscience was disturbed. In another, he linked to a National Catholic Reporter critique of J.D. Vance’s America First interpretation of Christian love. And in yet another, he shared an America magazine piece questioning that same ranking of love: family, neighbor, nation, then the world. Three of his five recent posts addressed American immigration policy — not with partisan barbs but with Gospel urgency.
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He’s not afraid to more pointedly call out injustice, too. He reposted outrage after George Floyd’s murder and shared Senator Chris Murphy’s grief and frustration after the Las Vegas mass shooting. He also boosted support for vaccine access during the height of the pandemic, showing concern for the global community.
Still, Leo XIV isn’t exactly a progressive icon. He has held traditional Catholic views on abortion and is cautiously moderate on LGBTQ+ issues, supporting blessings, not marriages. While popes don’t endorse candidates, they do shape atmospheres. And Leo XIV seems to be charting one that pushes back subtly but firmly against American right-wing Catholic nationalism — for the most part, at least. In doing so, he disrupts a growing coalition of Vance-curious American bishops, media outlets like EWTN, and trads cozying up to MAGA ideology under the guise of Christian morality.
In that sense, the papacy is a plot twist in Trump’s presidency I didn’t see coming.
Now the questions swirling in progressive Catholic corners are: Could this pope actually matter? In a country where religion has so often been weaponized to justify cruelty, can a quiet, thoughtful American pontiff shift the energy? Not just politically but spiritually?
Maybe. The Church rarely opposes American power directly, but this moment feels different. Leo XIV offers a vision of moral clarity that doesn’t rely on theological rigidity or political cruelty.
And if Trump is watching — and he always is; about Leo XIV, Trump posted on Truth Social that his election was “a Great Honor for our Country” — you have to wonder: What happens when the only American he can’t bulldoze walks onto the global stage and starts talking about a different kind of strength?
