President Donald Trump is no longer just like the American with more power or influence on the planet. From now on he shares the honor with Robert Francis Prevost, born in Chicago and chosen Thursday as the new Pope, Leo XIV. The relationship between the two – a completely different view in personality and opinion – will be fundamental at a time when populism is booming and isolationist policies and against immigration grow in the world.
The White House tenant hastened to greet the appointment, which he described as an “honor.” “Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who has just been appointed Pope. It is an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What illusion, and what a great honor for our country,” he wrote on the social network of his property, Truth, immediately after Prevost appeared on the balcony before the faithful who acclaimed him in the Plaza de San Pedro del Vaticano. “I really want to meet him. It will be a very significant moment!” Trump added.
In statements after the press, the president of the United States reiterated again: “May the Pope be an American citizen represents a great honor. A great honor.” For his part, Vice President JD Vance, converted to Catholicism in 2019 and the American politician of the greatest practicing rank of this confession, wrote on social networks: “Congratulations to Leon XIV, the first American Pope, in his choice! I am sure that millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his success by directing the Church.
What will be the future relationship between the two is still an unknown. The American has developed most of his ecclesiastical career in Peru, a country of which he has nationality, and in Rome. His profile within the American Catholic Church is almost non -existent.
Aligned with Francisco
Ideologically, Prevost is aligned with the thesis of his predecessor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, who appointed him prefect of the influential dicascery of bishops in Rome. This data indicates that contacts between Washington and the Vatican can be as complicated as they were in the previous pap. Francisco had been very critical about the intransigent migratory policies of the current Republican administration.
The selection of his name as Pope already provides a clue what his priorities will be. Leo XIII was the first Pope who signed an encyclical in defense of workers’ rights, but moving away from communism. He was a pontiff concerned with the living conditions of the most humble, the peasants and workers. The choice of the name of Leo XIV seems to indicate that he wants to continue on that way.
After Francisco’s death, and before the conclave began, the US president had shown his sympathies towards the New York archbishop, the conservative Timothy Dolan.
The American president had also caused the irritation among Catholics around the world, and raised the criticism of the New York bishops, when last weekend he published in his Truth account an image of his generated by artificial intelligence in which he was dressed in the Pope’s white miter and solideo. Trump had also joked with the press about that he looked like a good candidate to occupy San Pedro’s chair.
In an X (old twitter) account under the name of Robert Prevost, created in 2011, messages were published in defense of a range of ideas that are anathema for Trump. The publications of this account, apparently managed by Prevost, express support for reform for greater control of the use of weapons in the United States. As Francisco was, the Premost that portrays that X account is an enthusiast of measures to combat climate change, and supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, in favor of equality for the African -American population in their native country. On the other hand, Trump gives absolute priority to the dismantling of equality and diversity policies in all US institutions, starting with the federal government itself.
Leo XIV seems to firmly oppose the migratory policies of the Trump administration centered on mass deportations. The last publication in the aforementioned account in X, of April 14, is the retweet of a message in which a user criticizes the meeting in the Oval Office between the US President and his counterpart from El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, in which both rejected the return to the US of Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran deported to his country of origin by mistake already despite the fact that he was prohibited from being prohibited from a court order.
Another message in the alleged Premost account stretches sharply against that policy: “There is nothing remotely Christian, American or morally defensible about a policy that snaps children from their parents and stores them in cages. That is being perpetrated in our name and shame falls on all of us.”
The new Pope also is very critical of the vice president, JD Vance, precisely the highest rank in the Republican administration. Trump number two had alluded to the order of lovea medieval statement that according to him indicates that the Catholic doctrine gives priority to ties with the closest family and friends. An assumption that Pope Francis had rushed to disassemble. On February 3, the account attributed to Prevost writes: “JD Vance is wrong. Jesus Christ does not ask us to hierarchize our love for others.”
These positions do not seem very taste of the most recalcitrant Trumpist circles. The ultra-right activist and blogger Laura Loomer, the president’s great ally, declared in X that the new Pope “is Anti-Trump, Antimaga (the movement headed by the Republican), in favor of the open borders and a total Marxist, such as Pope Francis.” And he added: “Catholics have nothing good to wait. Just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.”
