15.05.2025
Much like the old one
Just because he is an American do not expect him to put the interests of America first. Leo XIV heads a multinational institution that has its own unique interests, writes Eddie Ford
Even before his name was announced, with the white smoke billowing from the Sistine Chapel, the crowds below were chanting “Viva il papa!” After the fourth ballot of the papal conclave on May 8, the man to replace Jorge Mario Bergoglio, known as ‘Francis’, was announced - Robert Francis Prevost a Peruvian bishop originally from Chicago.
At a ‘young’ 69, he had become the 267th occupant of the throne and the first ever American to fill the position. Even more important was the traditional Habemus papam Latin proclamation made by the cardinal protodeacon from the central loggia of St Peter’s Basilica, declaring Pope Leo XIV to the public for the first time - some claiming it was a heavenly inspired choice.
His official papal name is significant, of course. Leo XIII was head of the church from February 1878 until his death in July 1903 and developed Catholic social teaching in his 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum.1 Here he outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions, while at the same time affirming the rights to private property and free enterprise - rejecting socialism as a sin. With this famous encyclical, he became falsely known as the ‘pope of the workers’ - a transparent lie, as shown easily by the fact that the fascist dictatorship in Portugal in the 1930s incorporated many key ideas from the encyclical into Portuguese law - the ‘Estado Novo’ (‘New State’) promulgated the idea of corporatism as an economic model, especially in labour relations.
Social Catholicism
This form of Catholic social teaching resonated with an older political culture, which emphasised natural law tradition, patrimonialism, centralised direction and control, and the ‘natural’ hierarchies of society - and the Rerum novarum created the foundations for modern thinking in the social doctrines of the Catholic church, influencing Leo XIII’s successors like Jorge Mario Bergoglio. A world where, to borrow the words from an Anglican hymn, everyone knows their place: “the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, god made them, high or lowly, and ordered their estate”.2
According to a cardinal from Chile, Leo told him that the choice of name is based on his concern about the “world’s cultural shifts”; therefore we need “a type of Copernican revolution” involving artificial intelligence and robotics - which has a certain irony, given the original profoundly hostile reception to Copernicus’s teachings from the Catholic church. His De revolutionibus orbium coelestium remained banned till 1835. However, as an institution the Catholic church is nothing but adaptable - perhaps the key to its success and Prevost is clearly inspired by Leo XIII.
As it happens, Prevost’s name had been circulating as a possible compromise candidate to succeed Francis, and some had speculated about him being a possible papabile, an Italian word loosely translated as ‘pope-able’ - meaning that certain cardinals are considered more likely to become pope than others. In practice though, conclaves have not always chosen one of the papabili: eg, the Polish Karol Józef Wojtyła, who was not in the running prior to the conclave that elected him in October 1978.
Laughably, at the time, there were ‘official communists’ who idiotically thought that John Paul II gave proof of the growing power of the ‘socialist bloc’. They imagined JP II lending his moral authority to push forward the programme of peace and socialism. Actually, his election was a gift for the Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan roll-back doctrine. The papacy channelled $50 million of CIA funding into Poland and the coffers of Solidarność (cheered on at the time by the likes of today’s Anticapitalist Resistance, SWP and Counterfire). Under John Paul, the Catholic church played the same sort of counterrevolutionary role in Africa and Latin America. Liberation theology was crushed and death squads were blessed.
Some Vaticanologists have suggested that attempts to predict the conclave’s outcome are pointless. They are ... not least because they are usually completely wrong. Anyway, betting on papal conclaves has a long history and several gambling companies had put the Chicago man’s odds at less than 1%.
There was even a ‘fantasy pope league’ (like fantasy football) constructed specifically for the 2025 conclave, Fantapana, where the sole payout was “eternal glory”. But most observers seemed to think that either a non-European pope was likely due to the increased numbers of African and Asian cardinals, or conversely a European to act as a counterweight to America’s status as superpower - whose image in the world, in the words of one theologian professor, “simply is too powerful”. Others wanted a man who was more ideologically aligned with his predecessor, not further away, and could speak truth to American power papal-style - hence Robert Francis Prevost was deemed the man for the job in dealing with the new order ushered in by Donald Trump.
There are those who, like the ‘official communists’ of 1978 and John Paul II, think that because Leo is American by birth he will act in cahoots with Donald Trump and his new world order. This shows an elemental failure to understand the Catholic church and Prevost himself.
In some ways he is as much a cardinal from Latin America because of the many years he spent in Peru. Yes, Prevost rapidly moved up the ranks of the local church, whose hierarchy was, by all accounts, split between ‘progressives’ influenced by liberation theology and the arch-conservatives who look back to the imagined certainties of 13th century doctrine.
Prevost himself does not seem to have been ‘tainted’ by liberation theology, though he does not appear to have an ideological affinity to the arch conservative wing - so you could call him with reservations a ‘centrist’. You could also describe him as the pope from two Americas and some within Peru like to claim his as one of their own. He has three passports: US, Peruvian … and Vatican.
Unsurprisingly, Prevost caught the eye of Francis, who appointed him as a bishop in 2015 and quickly promoted him. He summoned Prevost to Rome in 2023 and appointed him prefect of the powerful Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, making him a cardinal the same year. Being head of the dicastery for bishop appointments allowed him to build networks across the global Catholic leadership.
Troublesome?
What you can say with confidence is that he is in charge of an institution that is truly multinational, not the CEO of a transnational corporation - let alone some national organisation. The concerns of the Catholic church are certainly not those of the birth-nationality of this or that pope: so not Polish, not German, not Argentinian and certainly not American. So Leo is unlikely to bless a greater America and turning Canada into the 51st state, incorporating Greenland, retaking the Panama canal or conflict with China.
The website, Crux, that “offers the very best in smart, wired and independent coverage” of the Vatican and the Catholic church, has ventured the view that the new pope would have to walk a tightrope between defending Catholic social teaching and keeping Washington and its influential “Maga” Catholics onside.3 Crux argues this means that Pope Leo XIV will have to “navigate between clearly defending” his values, however defined, and establishing a working relationship with the Trump administration.
There is, however, little doubt that Leo can pass the ‘Vatican test’ of being a progressive. Damn it, he would even past muster with the SWP’s six ‘socialist’ principles it envisages for election candidates! That will not go down well with Trump … nor the Catholics who sit around his cabinet table (JD Vance, Sean Duffy and Marco Rubio, indeed over a third of them are conservative Catholics).
A lot like Francis, the new pope supports “real action” on climate change, Palestinian rights and human rights in general, and is opposed to austerity - so far, so Socialist Worker. OK, he does not support the right to abortion - no wing of the church does - and has no plans to officiate at gay weddings or introduce female bishops. LGBTQ+ Catholics have expressed concern about hostile remarks made a decade ago by Prevost, in which he condemned what he called the “homosexual lifestyle” and “the redefinition of marriage” as “at odds with the Gospel”.4 But we can assume that Leo will preach tolerance and be ecumenical about gays attending services, ceremonies and other such gatherings of the faithful.
Will Trump want to rid himself of this “troublesome priest”? Henry II of England allegedly said this in 1170 about Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury ... just before four of his knights cut him down and made a martyr of him.5 Unlikely, but you never know. The CIA is more than capable of arranging a ‘natural death’ … or an assassination by a conveniently Islamic fanatic. Already we have seen JD Vance, a Catholic convert, clashing with the papacy over Augustinian teachings about caring for others. The vice president says care for friends and family first and in effect to hell with black and brown foreigners. There are many other potential areas for conflict between the new pope and the Trump administration.
Shrinking
Pope Leo XIV will have many things in his in-tray, amongst them the shrinking size of the Catholic community in America. This year an article by Eric Sammons appeared in Crisis Magazine, a neo-conservative Catholic publication, entitled ‘Catholics are rapidly losing ground’, which quoted passages from a recent definitive Pew Research Center report.6 Sammons wrote that “for every 100 people who join the Catholic church, 840 leave”. So, when you rejoice seeing folks become Catholic at Easter, you should “remember that more than eight people have left by the back door for each one who’s come in the front”.7
He goes on to say that no other religion has “nearly as bad” a join/leave ratio. For instance, he cites how, for every 100 people who become Protestant, 180 leave - from which he concludes that “the status quo that has reigned over the past 60 years must become a thing of the past”. Of course, out of tune with the new pope, Sammons suggests junking the reforms of the 1960s by promoting homeschooling among Catholics, halting all interreligious activities, shutting down parish sports leagues that play on Sundays, making the traditional Latin mass much more widely celebrated, etc, etc.
But nonetheless it is an amazing statistic, as you would have thought that millions of Latinos coming from the south would greatly boost numbers. Though it would require a longer article to go into the details, a separate study four years ago reported that two-thirds of US Hispanics/Latinos identified as Catholic, but that has seen a significant drop, as a more recent survey revealed that only 55% think of themselves as Catholic.
Nevertheless, it would be absurd to write off the influence of Catholicism in America. After all JD Vance is just a heartbeat away from being president.