Pope Leo XIV may help Vatican explore the ‘great uncertainty’ that is Trump’s America

The election of Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV to lead the Roman Catholic Church raised an immediate question:

What does this signal to the U.S. and President Trump?

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.

Like his predecessor, Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost, has advocated for helping the poor and migrants. He has stressed the importance of protecting the environment. He’s called for racial justice and recently criticized the views of Vice President Vance, a Catholic, on the church.

Leo’s election is “not a political statement” by the College of Cardinals, “but it contains a political message,” Massimo Faggioli, a papal expert and professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, told Morning Edition.

The church’s concerns about the rise of nationalism

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. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has shaken the world order, alienating long-time allies and seemingly cozying up to autocratic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

Though the election of a U.S. pope seemed impossible to close watchers of the church, the “Trump effect” on America and the international global order, Faggioli said, is one of the things that “made the impossible possible.”

“The United States is a great uncertainty for the Vatican as well,” Faggioli said. “And electing a pope from the United States is one way for the Vatican to explore what this new America means for the world and for the church.”

The new pope’s relationship with Trump and the U.S.

Reverend William Lego, who leads the Saint Turibius Parish in Chicago and has known the new pope most of his life, said that as with any political leader, Leo and Trump will have an “interesting relationship.”

Lego has known Leo since the two were in sixth grade. They attended high school, seminary and Villanova together. He said that Leo was always “centered on helping people. He was always doing stuff, always very serviceable, as they say, very willing to do things.”

Leo’s opportunity “to live with and work with the poor … honed for him his calling,” Lego said.

As far as what the church’s message to the U.S and the world is with Leo’s election, Lego said he isn’t sure.

“If the church is open to the spirit, the spirit will look for at the time probably the best or candidate to lead the church. And our role as Catholics throughout the world is once that expression of the spirit becomes public … our next journey is we begin to work together and continue to discover how the spirit is alive in the world,” Lego said.

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.”

This digital article was based on radio stories edited by Ashley Westermann and produced by Nia Dumas.