The New Yorker:

Leo XIV’s pontificate will likely be defined by his approach to the violent conflicts rending the globe, which his predecessor, the late Pope Francis, referred to as “a Third World War in pieces.”

By Paul Elie

With the election of Robert Francis Prevost as Pope, Donald Trump is now the second most powerful American in the world. So said a seasoned Italian broadcaster to me, a few minutes after Prevost, who was born in Chicago in 1955, and who has now taken the name Leo XIV, delivered his first address from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica. “The American Pope” is an appellation long attached to Cardinal Francis Spellman, the Archbishop of New York from 1939 to 1967, who enjoyed great power in Rome and led the U.S. bishops in support of this country’s wars in Korea and Vietnam and its military actions in Cold War “spheres of influence.” Now the tag is affixed to an actual American Pope.

Overnight commentators, working from scant information, have parsed the nature of the new Pope’s Americanness. It has been pointed out that he gave his benediction (“La pace sia con tutti voi,” it began: “Peace be with all of you”) in Italian, Latin, and Spanish, but not English, his first language. The short biographical sketches of him have noted that he went to Peru as a missionary in 1985, at the age of thirty, and has scarcely lived in the U.S. since. He has been touted as a Villanova graduate (B.S., mathematics, 1977), and there was tussling online about whether he roots for the White Sox or the Cubs. (His brother John finally settled the matter, confirming that the new Pope is a Sox fan.) Reports also emerged—in the Black Catholic Messenger, on nola.com, and in the Times—of Prevost’s ancestry among Creole people of color in New Orleans, indicating that his heritage runs through the oppression, strife, and controversy over race that characterize the history of the U.S.
All of that is important, and it is likely to become more so as specifics of this little-known figure’s life and work emerge. But his personal circumstances may turn out to be less significant than the circumstances in which he has taken office. The first American Pope is also a wartime Pope, and the first phase of his pontificate will likely be defined by whether and how he brings the armature of peace to the violent conflicts currently rending the globe.

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