What Pope Leo XIV means for the U.S. Catholic church and Trump

ROME - The new Chicago-raised Pope Leo XIV faces an immediate challenge in his native country: taming the brawling U.S. tribe of Catholics, riven by political divisions that have thwarted the will of his predecessors.

Because Pope Leo — earlier known as Bob Prevost from the South Side — is an American better versed than past church leaders in the culture of his home country, some church-watchers and experts say, he may be able to navigate the U.S. Church in a way the Argentine Pope Francis could not. However, they said, it will still be a struggle to pry some American church members away from the now-deeply entrenched American habit of seeing faith through a tribal, political lens.

In recent decades the U.S. Catholic Church, like many of the nation’s religious groups, has been shaped by secular allegiances. Some who have followed the faith were hopeful that having a spiritual leader from the United States who can speak about the full range of church teachings — from Catholicism’s demand to care for migrants, as well as the unborn — could bring some Catholics together.

“Pope Francis was so removed from American realities that … it caused him to really struggle to connect with many U.S. Catholics who didn’t recognize themselves, their bishops, or their country in some of the criticisms,” Charlie Camosy, a Creighton University theologian and bioethicist, wrote to the Post in an email. “Pope Leo XIV’s critiques, praise, and invitations to dialogue will come from a place of knowing the U.S. in a far more intimate way.”

“Francis was pastor who was an outsider to the Vatican and U.S. institutions who was deeply committed to a ‘poor church for the poor.’ That made a lot of people uncomfortable,” said John Carr, who for 20 years led the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development. Pope Leo “may have opportunities to build bridges.”

Yet some of the issues he is believed to care deeply about, such as helping migrants, run directly against the policies espoused by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, himself a Catholic convert. That could set up near-immediate conflict.

The question, some U.S. church-watchers said, is what issues Leo will prioritize and how outspoken he will decide to be. Francis engaged in a running battle of words with Trump and, later, Vance, during his papacy over aid to migrants and the poor.

Under Trump’s presidencies, it’s become politically acceptable for conservative Catholics — both MAGA members and those focused on protecting traditional rituals like the Latin Mass — to insult and dismiss the head of the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church.

Several U.S. cardinals who spoke to reporters Friday about Leo’s selection thought he would want to be a bridge-builder to the administration.

“Is there the same type of freedom in his heart and soul, that was in Francis? I believe yes. But that’s different from asking: Is he going to express that freedom in the same exact manner, or the same pathways Pope Francis did,” said Cardinal Robert McElroy, D.C.’s archbishop. “We’re looking for someone following the pathway of Francis, but we’re not looking for a photocopy. I believe Pope Leo will not be a photocopy of Pope Francis.”

The other complication for Leo is the makeup of the U.S. church, which contains factions holding directly conflicting views. If he were to speak more than Francis did about traditional doctrines on topics such as same-sex marriage, it could irritate and alienate Catholics who see God as prioritizing inclusion and mercy. If he takes up Francis’ emphasis on the world as a global family and extends the back-and-forth criticisms with the White House, he could anger theologically traditional Catholics who have sided with Trump politically.

Denise Murphy McGraw, co-chair of the liberal U.S. group Catholics Vote Common Good, sees Leo as a likely ally, especially given his upbringing here.

“He learned at the feet of the master,” she said of Leo, and Francis. The late pope “wanted everyone to feel they had a place in Catholicism and we have someone now who understands even better, because he understands us. Such a big part of it is he can speak to people in their own language.”

But Ashley McGuire, senior fellow at the Catholic Association, an advocacy group that focuses on promoting Catholic teaching on abortion and other traditional social issues, saw something a bit different ahead for the U.S. church.

“He takes his name from a pope who stood firmly against the negative culture of moral relativism,” she wrote in a statement. “As a canon lawyer, he is uniquely equipped to help bring about greatly needed doctrinal and moral clarity both within the Church and in a world that so desperately needs it.”

U.S. Catholics are very diverse politically, and their views can fall into different camps depending on whether the issue is theology or secular topics such as immigration and democracy. According to a 2024 poll by the firm PRRI, 39 percent said their political ideology was moderate, 35 percent said conservative and 23 percent said liberal. A Pew Research poll found that in 2024, 47 percent of Catholics sided with Vice President Kamala Harris and 52 percent with Trump. Among White Catholics, nearly two-thirds voted for Trump, while Harris won the votes of nearly two-thirds of Hispanic Catholics.

Leo’s background has made him as much an international religious figure as an American one. He has spent much of his life in Peru or traveling the world for his religious order (the Augustinians). He also served in Rome, where Francis made him head of the Vatican’s powerful bishop-picking agency.

While that may limit his knowledge of current American culture, it could also endear him to more U.S. Catholics, almost 30 percent of whom were born outside the country, Pew Research says, a much higher percentage than the population overall.

“How Leo XIV thinks about the many contested issues within Catholicism is entirely unclear. But he seems almost certain to be an internationalist pope — with a particular concern for migrants and the poor — in an increasingly nationalist age,” University of Notre Dame church historian and provost John T. McGreevy wrote the Post in an email.

Several of the cardinals who spoke to reporters Friday said that Leo’s American upbringing had little to do with his selection as pope, either as a counterweight to the Trump administration or as a way of building a bridge to the U.S. president.

Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, said he thinks Leo’s impact on U.S. Catholicism will be fueled in part by his multinational, multilinguistic background, which will make it easier for him to connect with diverse U.S. Catholic communities. Leo, he said, will hopefully inspire U.S. Catholics to study their faith’s social gospel.

“Picking the name Leo is indicative, I think, of the direction he wants to take,” Cupich said, referring to the last Pope Leo, the XIII. The previous Leo “wrote stirringly about the rights of workers, immigrants, of those who were living at the margins of society. I think it will give him a platform to reintroduce” these teachings to Americans, he said.

“And I think he will be able to put it in language that’s comprehensible and also challenging to Catholics in the United States. So that’s what I’m looking for. I think that’s the promise we saw.”

Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the retired archbishop of D.C., said cardinals who elected the new pope were focused less on nationality than on his potential to bolster Catholicism.

The cardinals looked more for “who among us can strengthen the faith and bring it to the places where it’s grown weak?” Gregory said. “To places where there seems less enthusiasm or appreciation of the common things that draw us together.”

As he introduced himself to the world Thursday, Leo presented himself as a global citizen. In his remarks to a wildly enthusiastic crowd in St. Peter’s Square, he spoke in Spanish, Latin and Italian and gave a shout-out to his longtime home, Peru. He didn’t mention the U.S. or speak a word of English.

Robert George, a Princeton University political philosopher who often speaks from a conservative Catholic perspective, said the new pope will challenge Americans by emphasizing Catholic social teaching’s call for “the state to have a role in social life that is less robust than collectivists think it should have, but more robust than libertarians think it should have.”

Francis was generally popular among U.S. Catholics, but as his papacy went on, a passionate minority of traditionalists became more strongly outspoken against him. Some opposed his limits on the traditional Latin Mass, while others despised his vague comments welcoming LGBTQ people into the church without any caveat. Some, like Vance, objected to his more liberal stance on immigration.

Some experts Thursday and Friday said the new pope has a chance for a new relationship with the administration — of a sort.

“It may offer a reset, not in substance, but in style and leadership,” Carr wrote the Post. “Leo may seek to deliver the same messages but perhaps more diplomatically. Trump and Vance ought to fear alienating Catholics by a lack of respect for a pope who is from America, speaking for a global Church.”

Camosy said it was too early to conclude much about the new pope’s approach.

“The pope’s opening remarks seemed to suggest a desire to have dialogue and unity.” he wrote. “I suspect that for some folks [especially younger ones], they are ‘gettable’ in this regard. But for those who put their secular political commitments ahead of the Gospel, well, I doubt this pope will be able to do much about it.”