Vatican may help explore the great uncertainty of America because of Pope Leo XIV
Leo XIV may help Vatican explore the ‘great uncertainty’ that is Trump’s America: A pastoral warning against deportations, violence and climate change
On Truth Social, the president called Leo’s election a “Great Honor for our country.” But there are obvious signs Trump and the new pope — who in his first statement urged peace and unity — are immediately at odds.
Robert Francis Prevost advocated for helping the poor and migrants. The importance of protecting the environment has been stressed by him. He criticized the views of the Vice President on the church and called for racial justice.
According to Faggioli, the College of Cardinal’s election is “not a political statement” but it contains a political message.
In a Feb. 10 letter to U.S. bishops, the late Pope Francis sharply criticized the beginning of the Trump administration’s promised mass deportations. Francis wrote that “worrying about personal, community or national identity … easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.”
Throughout his time in politics, Trump has characterized the arrival of migrants at the U.S. border as an “invasion” – even as many have been displaced by economic uncertainty, violence and climate change. In less than a year, Trump has undermined the world order by alienating long-time allies and cozying up to leaders such as Putin and Orban.
A Conversation with Lego with Leo Faggioli: “It’s Always a Wonderful Idea to See What Happens When You’re Here”
“The United States is a great uncertainty for the Vatican as well,” Faggioli said. The Vatican is interested in finding out what this new America means for the world and for the church.
Lego has known the boy since he was in sixth grade. They attended high school, seminary and Villanova together. He said that Leo was always “centered on helping people. He was always willing to do things and he was always doing stuff.
The spirit will look for a good candidate to lead the church, if the church is open to the spirit. The role of Catholics as a group is once that expression of the spirit becomes public.
He continued, saying “now with an American pope maybe that position, from his point of view of power, could be used for a benefit of all. There’s always two sides to a coin.”
I followed someone and saw that they had posted a message from an X account with a handle that said “three retweets, over the past three months, articles harshly criticized Donald Trump’s immigration policy.” True, they weren’t words directly from then-Cardinal Prevost himself, but they were signs of life and intent nonetheless: a brief, unguarded moment, a marker that he was active and engaged, that spoke volumes about the new pope’s innermost thoughts. I guess he didn’t have time to wipe his socials, I thought first, knowing that a giant MAGA political backlash was on the horizon. The pope has an hour before he is chosen to reveal himself. Definitely not enough time to make sure his timelines are clean.
The moment the white smoke appeared above the Sistine Chapel, I immediately turned on my television, because I wanted to see who the new pope would be, and then hopped on social media, because I knew that the internet could tell me more about the new pope faster than television could. The meme would be very good.
I don’t believe in Catholic teachings, and did not grow up with one. The best description of my religious affiliation is probably “lapsed Buddhist.” I have always been fascinated by the Catholic Church as a large and influential institution with strong internal politics and external diplomacy. I sometimes joke that I treat and exoticize Catholicism the same way that white men exoticize Japan, but my fascination itself is sincere: I am astonished that somehow, the Vatican has maintained its mysticism in the modern era — an earthly waypoint between the physical and the divine.
I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how much I knew about the pope through his digital footprint, despite the fact that he was inaugurated less than two hours ago.
I have learned that he supported gun control legislation, opposed the repeal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and called on President Trump to support climate change legislation from his retweets. I found out that he wrote a book on religious statistics. I learned from one post that he’d been a registered Republican, only to learn moments later that Illinois doesn’t have partisan voter registration. (The Washington Free Beacon reports that Leo XIV has previously voted in Republican primaries.) I would have thought someone would post a picture of the pope using his Venmo account.
I didn’t even have to go digging for it. A friend of mine who’d attended an Augustinian high school sent it to me, because it was apparently going viral among people who’d attended Augustinian educational institutions, because everyone who ever went to an Augustinian school in the United States somehow knows someone who knows him. Robert Prevost’s account is currently set to private — wild, because 68-year-olds rarely set their Facebook accounts to private by default — but there is one public photo available: the future Pope Leo XIV, wearing aviators and a black windbreaker, atop a pony. That is a meme, thought my horrible, secular mind.
Why would you want to share a social footprint? The problem of public figures, politicians, and journalists whose digital footprints can be exposed
I don’t think I would have paused to send that social media profile if it had belonged to anybody else: a politician, a celebrity, a coworker whom I didn’t know well, a blind date who needed vetting. And there’s a strong argument to be made that mining any public figure’s digital activity is fair game, particularly if they’re political leaders held to some degree of accountability. Venmo requests are enough to tank congressmen’s careers. Someone can be in hot water if they use an old TWITTER. A huge national security crisis can be shown by the phone number of a former Fox News anchor.
The logic stops once you apply it to the pope, but it is completely incomprehensible that one can even get a glimpse of the socials of the church leader. In fact, it’s baffling to think that a religious figure could be subjected to scrutiny of their internet history, or that they possess something as anodyne as a digital footprint — particularly someone inheriting a role that supposedly dates back to the time of Jesus and was established by Saint Peter the Apostle, whose predecessors are ancient saints and medieval rulers, and who claims the title of God’s representative on Earth, according to the 1.4 billion members of the church he leads.
