An American In Rome

Why Cardinals Ended A Centuries-Long Custom And Made Bob From Chicago Pope

In 2016, HBO aired a miniseries called The Young Pope. It starred Jude Law as a young American cardinal, the Archbishop of New York, who, after being unexpectedly elected pope, decided to take the church in a radically conservative direction, causing conflict and intrigue. Despite being critically acclaimed, the series faded into obscurity after its initial season and the follow-up sequel series, The New Pope.

One of the regular criticisms I heard of the program when it aired was how unrealistic it felt. People who watched told me that the main reason it felt unrealistic was the idea of an American pope. Indeed, the idea of an American ever becoming pope was always a radical impossibility among Catholics.¹ I remember musing about it during the 2005 and 2013 conclaves with all the seriousness of pigs taking flight. As recently as Wednesday, I was joking about the far-fetched possibility with my aunt, a former Catholic nun, and a friend.

Then, on Thursday afternoon, white smoke poured from the chimney at the Sistine Chapel. When the news broke that Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, had been elected pope, I thought it was a prank. Wikipedia quickly changed his page to that of Pope Leo XIV, and I thought I was witnessing an elaborate hoax that everyone would laugh about after the real choice was announced.

Then I saw the announcement replayed on the news. It was real. The new pope and Bishop of Rome was an American – something unthinkable two days ago.

The United States is not a Catholic country. Even though the American Catholic population, at over 70 million people, is larger than all but three other countries, fewer than 1 in 4 Americans identify as Roman Catholic. Formerly part of the British Empire, Protestantism has always been the prominent sect of Christianity in America. The Catholic Church has never – and to my knowledge, rarely even considered – handing the papacy to someone from a country where the majority of denizens aren’t Catholic.

Further, the United States is a global superpower, and since the end of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church has avoided handing the papacy to a man from a global power. That comes from centuries of the papacy being used as a weapon for one powerful nation against another.

From the Dark Ages through the Renaissance, the popes struggled with Europe’s powerful monarchs, first the Holy Roman Emperor and then the kings of France and Spain. For a time, they had veto power over the election of a pope.

For most of the 14th Century, the papacy wasn’t even based in Rome. The seat of the papacy moved to Avignon in present-day France under the thumb of the French king, who was locked in a conflict with the Holy Roman Emperor, whose realm Avignon was a part of. During Avignon’s time as the capital of the Catholic Church, all the popes were French. The papacy returned to Rome in 1378; most popes were Italian thereafter. The only exception was when Spain, then a rising Catholic power that had recently driven the Muslims off the Iberian Peninsula and was building a global empire, evangelizing faraway lands, would elect one of their own. One of those times was 1492 when Rodrigo Borgia, then the Spanish Bishop of Valencia, became Pope Alexander VI². The Borgias were so brutal and corrupt that the family became Mario Puzo’s inspiration for the Corleone family in The Godfather. Eventually, noble Italian families wrestled the papacy from the Spanish.

Italy was not a united country from the 15th through the mid-19th centuries. Instead, the Italian Peninsula comprised a patchwork of city-states, kingdoms, and duchies. Because of their smaller size, France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire often invaded and pushed around the Italian states and installed natives of their countries as dukes and monarchs. Italy was also constantly threatened by invasion from the Islamic Ottoman Empire and relied on other European powers to defend the peninsula.

In 1533, Pope Adrian VI, a Dutchman, died. Pope Clement VII³, a member of the Medici family of Florence, replaced him and spent much of his reign under siege from Charles V, the King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, then the most powerful man in Europe. In 1527, Charles’ army, made up of Spanish and German soldiers, sacked Rome, murdering tens of thousands of Roman citizens. The Italian people had had enough of being pushed around by larger powers.

For the next four centuries, the church reserved the papacy for Italians to give the weaker Italian states a larger voice on the international scene. Italians also did not want a foreigner to rule over Rome and Central Italy, which then constituted a nation called the Papal States. The Pope ruled the Papal States as an absolute monarch. From Clement VII’s election in 1533 until the election of John Paul II in 1978, every pope was Italian. This was during an era when Catholic nations like France, Spain, and Austria-Hungary became global powers. Despite this, no one from those countries was elected Pope. In fact, for nearly every conclave in that period, most cardinal electors came from Italy.

As a result, a tradition was born—do not give the papacy to a world power and submit the Vatican to that nation’s control. Other multinational organizations that wish to provide a voice to less powerful and influential countries share this tradition. This is why conventional wisdom says no American can ever be picked as Secretary General of the United Nations.

The custom of keeping the papacy out of the hands of a powerful nation, plus the fact that most Americans aren’t Catholic, locked the United States out of any chance of the papacy – until Thursday.

So why an American now?

Well, there might be a few reasons. One is that the United States is no longer the world’s only superpower. With China now a superpower, and countries like India rising, the United States exists as the only Christian-majority, even if not Catholic-majority, superpower. Picking an American may be a nod to the United States being the most powerful Christian-majority nation.

Also, since the end of the Italian dominance, the location of the popes has sometimes been a subtle message about who and what the Catholic Church is seeking to focus on. John Paul II, who was Polish, was elected from the largest Catholic country behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War. His choice was seen as a nod toward opposing the atheistic nature of Communism and urging Catholics in Poland and elsewhere to resist the ideology. Pope Francis was elected in 2013 as the first from Latin America, a sign that the Catholic Church recognized Latin America's growing influence and power in the institution.

The choice of an American pope at a time when decades of American leadership may end would make sense. Pope Leo XIV has been openly critical of Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, himself a Catholic, over their policies and rhetoric toward migrants and the poor. Leo may be American, but he did most of his pastoral work in Peru, focusing on the poor and underprivileged. He is also a human melting pot, an American who can trace his lineage to Europe, Africa, and Native people. He serves as a reminder that most Americans are descendants of immigrants, many of whom were as unwelcome as migrants are today.

Money may also be a factor. The Catholic Church’s finances are a mess, and the wealthiest Catholics in the world live in the United States, something that has been true for over a century.⁴ Pope Leo XIV's election may be a request for them to open their hearts and wallets and help the church’s financial situation.

The final possibility is that times may have changed, and the nationality of the pope no longer matters. This conclave was the first in history where the majority of electors did not come from Europe, thanks to new cardinals created by Pope Francis, the new pope among them. As Cardinal Prevost, Pope Leo XIV was a respected member of the Vatican establishment. After Pope Francis made him a cardinal in 2023, he was in charge of the Dicastery for Bishops, which names bishops worldwide. He has been praised for his management and financial knowledge. The electors may have put aside any political or geographical concerns at the forefront of the conclave for centuries and just chose who they thought was right, regardless of where he came from. That man happened to be an American.

Whatever the reason, the election of an American pope means that much of the long-time conventional wisdom about the church has faded away. Perhaps that is Pope Francis’ most significant and enduring legacy.

1. I was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools through the 12th grade. My paternal grandparents were extremely devout.

2. Pop Quiz! What else happened involving Spain in 1492?

3. Clement was the Pope who refused to grant King Henry VIII his divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon—Charles V’s aunt—leading to the Reformation in England and the establishment of the Anglican Church, for most of its history, the dominant church in the United States.

4. In 1922, Pope Benedict XV died, leaving the Vatican practically broke. Donations from Catholics in the United States largely funded the conclave to replace him.