Rob weighs in on… Pope Leo XIV

I know I’m a few days late to the party on this one, but I had to say something about it.

This past Thursday, Robert Prevost, a Catholic Cardinal originally from Chicago, was elected Pope. He is the first American born Pope in the history of the Catholic Church.

I have talked a little bit about my own personal religious beliefs before on this blog. I was raised Catholic, but I don’t consider myself to be a practicing Catholic. That is to say that I don’t go to church. Like ever. But as an American, and as someone who has raised Catholic, I feel like I have to throw my two cents into this discussion.

I’m pretty blown away by how much media coverage Pope Leo has gotten in the last two days. People are posting about him all over social media. It’s pretty amazing, considering some of the stigmas that are still attached to Catholicism. I’ve had students in my classes, asking me if Catholics were even Christian. WTF? While I wasn’t there to experience it, I’ve heard stories about when JFK was elected president, many Americans panic because they thought it meant that the country was going to be ruled by the Vatican.

But whether you’re Catholic or not, there is a historical significance to seeing a Pope get elected. In many ways, it is both literally and figuratively, a changing of the guard. The last pope, Francis, was considered progressive by Catholic standards. He was a very humble man. Even as pope, his attire was kept very simple. We saw his funeral that he was sent off by a collection of homeless people, migrants, and victims of human trafficking. What we’re hearing so far from Leo the 14th is that he is, by all accounts, cut from the same proverbial cloth as Francis.

“Be awake. Be loving. Be woke”

Buzz Dixon, a writer I best remember for writing several episodes of the G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons of the 1980s, is someone I follow on social media. He had this to say immediately after the election of the new pope:

Dixon makes a great point. Leo is the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church. Per the Google machine, I see that there has been only one British pope, and that was over 900 years ago. There has been several German popes, with the most recent being Pope Benedict the 16th who retired in 2013. They’ve also been several French popes, but the most recent was back in 1377. There’s never been a Russian pope. There have been a few Chinese Cardinals, but there has never been a Chinese pope.

Dixon‘s post said “read into that what you will“. loaded comment like that certainly warrants many possible responses. But why did the Catholic Church elect an American pope? File accounts, Leo seems like a pretty good guy. It may just be that he was the best candidate for the job.

But I think we would be foolish to assume that there wasn’t something else at play here. Let’s face it: the second term of presidential Trump has thrown the US and world politics into a state of chaos. I’m not going to go through the laundry list of individual incidents. But it is safe to say that if things don’t change very soon or at least revert back to “normal“ with international economics, the world could look like a very different place here in six months. Trump has completely burned his proverbial bridge with Canada. It’s unfortunate because that relationship between these two countries will probably never be the same.

America, the country that has often been seen as “the beacon of freedom and democracy in the world” is quickly turning into an authoritarian state. And what is the Catholic churches response? They elect a pope who says “be awake. Be loving. Be woke”. Maybe this is the church’s way of saying that there are still good people in America, despite our president. Maybe this is the church‘s grand act of resisting Trumpism. If electing Leo is not the Catholic Church, throwing a middle finger in the face of Donald John Trump, then I don’t know what is.

As a recovering Catholic, I was excited about the election of Pope Francis. He was clearly a different kind of pope trying to take the Catholic Church into a new direction. As for the election of Leo the 14th, particularly in the face of a second Donald Trump administration, I feel like we’re all in uncharted waters now.

This is the most excited and proud I’ve been to be even somewhat affiliated with the Catholic Church since the election of Pope Francis. I don’t know that Leo is going to be some kind of revolutionary arbiter of change in the Catholic Church, but hope springs eternal.

Enough of the church talk from me…

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