The National Interest - Pope Leo XIV: Pontifex Americanus? May 8, 2025 By: James Himberger

 

The National Interest 

Pope Leo XIV: Pontifex Americanus?

May 8, 2025

By: James Himberger

The Catholic Church has an American pope for the first time. What does this mean for the Church’s global role?

On May 8, the white smoke rose above St. Peter’s Basilica and the Seven Hills of Rome, heralding the election of a new Pontifex Maximus. Pope Leo XIV, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, strode out onto the balcony after midday to the acclamation of the crowds below. Garbed in the traditional red papal mozzetta, the new Vicar of Christ gave his blessing to the faithful and the world and announced his hopes for the Catholic Church: “We have to look together how to be a missionary church, building bridges, dialogue, always open to receiving with open arms for everyone, like this square, open to all, to all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love.”

The relatively speedy conclave had only convened the previous day, belying the predictions that a divided Church would descend into a knock-down, drag-out deadlock.

The first pontiff to hail from the United States, Prevost was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1955. According to the Vatican’s official biography, he studied mathematics and philosophy at Villanova University before his ordination as a priest in 1982.

While the new pope’s American heritage is a first for the papacy, he is nonetheless a remarkably cosmopolitan figure. He spent much of his ecclesiastical career in Peru with the Augustinian Order and became a naturalized Peruvian citizen. Appointed by Pope Francis to the Curia only in 2023, Cardinal Prevost served as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, among other roles.

The Holy Father’s choice of regnal name is a telling signal likely to please both liberal and conservative factions in the Church. The last Pope Leo (XIII), who reigned from 1878 to 1903, was notable for his sharp traditionalism on doctrine and fervent backing for social reform. In the famous encyclical Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII advocated for the formation of Catholic trade unions, just wages, and humane working conditions to protect workers from the excesses of industrial capitalism. In other matters, he maintained a firm stance against the rising nationalism and secularism of nineteenth-century Europe. In doing so, Leo XIII raised the prominence of the papacy as an international institution even after its temporal power had diminished. Italian unification and the conquest of the Papal States—culminating in the capture of Rome in 1870—had left Leo’s predecessor, Pius IX, a “prisoner of the Vatican.” 

The world of 2025 and Pope Leo XIV, with its growing nationalism and great power competition, bears not a few similarities with the world of Leo XIII. Still, the latest Pope Leo has yet to lay out his approach to the global scene before him. Will he continue the Vatican’s controversial concordat with China, which allows a formally atheist, Marxist-Leninist state to appoint bishops? That agreement is up for renewal in 2028, so he will soon be faced with a decision. Much will depend on what he does with Pope Francis’ Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, who negotiated the agreement in 2018.

More pressingly, how will Pope Leo deal with the leaders of his home country? Those hoping for an alliance between the American president and the American pope will probably be as disappointed as anyone who hoped for amity between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperors in the Middle Ages. As cardinal, Prevost publicly admonished the Trump administration’s immigration policies—indicating some level of continuity with Pope Francis’ cultivation of the pontificate as a tribune for transnational issues like immigration, refugees, and environmentalism.

At seventy years old, Pope Leo will likely reign on the Throne of St. Peter for the foreseeable future. In that time, great power competition will continue to eclipse international and multilateral institutions. As this process unfolds, the Pope, as head of a flock numbering more than one billion souls all around the world, will be in a unique and lonely position to voice the concerns of the global commons in opposition to or coordination with more worldly authorities. 

Pope Leo’s ability to serve in this role will ultimately depend on his management of entrenched divisions—and serious financial problems—within the Church. Ensuring internal unity to face an increasingly hostile world will be his greatest challenge. It is no coincidence, then, that as Bishop of Chiclayo, Leo’s motto read, “Although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.”

About the Author: James Himberger

James Himberger is the Managing Editor of The National Interest. Follow him on X: @Beaconsfieldist.

Image: Right Perspective Images / Shutterstock.com.