An American pope? It’s true and the Vatican Thursday was awash in hope and so was I

VATICAN CITY – I always loved St. Peter’s Square at night. I lived in Rome from 2001-2003 around the corner from it and loved stopping in the middle of the piazza on the way home. It’s empty. St. Peter’s beautiful domed basilica is back lit. All you can hear is the rushing sound of Bernini’s Renaissance fountains that flank the church. 

Since retiring to Rome in 2014, I’ve passed through too many times to count, and I never get tired of it.

But Thursday night, St. Peter’s Square had an extra light. It was a statue I’ve passed for 11 years and never paid it much mind. I couldn’t help it Thursday. One lone spotlight shined on the 18-foot statue of St. Peter’s himself, holding the key that Jesus gave him to lead the Catholic Church in the first century A.D.

A couple hours earlier, that key was handed to an American for the first time in the church’s 2,000 years.

The election of Robert Francis Prevost, 69, as pope shocked the Catholic world, not to mention my home country. The United States was always on the fringes of the papacy. It gained entrance to the Sistine Chapel and has had influential cardinals but was more an observer than a hopeful.

Around the Vatican, it was always believed they would never elect a pope from a global superpower which already influences so much of the world. Thus, in light of Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, Prevost winning is the equivalent of a 30-1 long shot hitting the tape first. 

But as I walked through St. Peter’s Square talking to people who still remained from the 100,000 who watched the white smoke fly, I got a sense of optimism and support. Considering this is the year of the Rome Jubilee, christened “The Year of Hope,” there was also a lot of that.

Hope.

American pope is popular

“I think it’s amazing,” said Tom Forness of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in Rome for the Jubilee. “Unexpected. I feel blessed. I don’t know a lot about the new pope but the fact that we have the first American in this time and in this environment, bodes well for the Catholic Church.”

Forness heard Thursday afternoon while his group drove back from Assisi. He was glued to the NBC feed on his phone; the Italians were glued to Italy’s Rai network. 

I had just stepped in my door after a long-scheduled 10-year anniversary trip to Porto Venere, on the Ligurian coast 6 ½ hours by train from Rome. I had no intention of writing about Pope Francis’ successor after he died April 21. There was a Frenchman. A Spaniard. The one American I put on my way-too-early list, courtesy of Reuters, was Cardinal Joseph Tobin out of Newark, N.J., whose most interesting trait was that he lifted weights.

I was all set to watch soccer in my local birrificio.

Then I saw the news. An American? He’d only been named cardinal two years ago? And he ripped the White House?

So much for watching that Europa League grudge match between those two bitter rivals, Tottenham Hotspur and Bodo/Glimt.

When I reached the Vatican, the first thing I saw and heard was a group from Tonga, sitting on the cobblestones in a semicircle, waving red and white Tonga flags – featuring, ironically, a cross – and singing hymns. 

The crowd had dissipated. Security was nowhere. Some people lined one barricade staring at St. Peter’s famous facade and the beautifully lit statue. Yellow and white Vatican flags flew in the pleasant 60-degree night. Two young Italian women oddly danced and sang to “Y-M-C-A.”

I met two Swiss high school students, both devout Catholics, who came down from Zurich just for the conclave. Considering the Swiss have made up the pope’s Swiss Guards since 1506, I figured they would have an interesting take.

“He preached about peace and at this time, peace is, like, very important,” said Fadri Schnoz, 17. “He’s a pope who has peace in his priority. I don’t know him but we all have to pray a lot for the pope, for the church, that he’s doing the right thing and is guided by God.”

I asked why he thought it took until now to pick an American pope.

“Times changed,” he said. “We have a church that’s bigger now. It’s not centrally Europe. We had the pope (Francis) from South America. In America we don’t know what happens there. I think it’s a sign that our church got universal, that our church got spread all around the world and also why it’s possible that an American can be pope.”

His friend, Gian Bodenmann, added, “Christianity and Catholicism as well has been declining in the West in recent decades. In the U.S., compared to Europe, its decline has been less rapid. He was also a compromise pope to be elected – that’s only speculation – because he wasn’t one of the papabili, the ones most likely to be elected.”

My view

Yes, the pope’s first words to the throng Thursday were, “Peace be with you!” OK, peace is important. But every pope says that while bombs go off and mothers cry and blood is shed in distant lands.

I’m more interested in Leo XIV when he was Father Prevost and standing up to Pres. Trump. In 2015 he criticized Trump for his anti-immigration stance, calling it “problematic.” In 2018, he and fellow Chicago cardinal Blase J. Cupich shared a tweet that there was “nothing remotely Christian, American or morally defensible” about Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents.

In 2020 Prevost was one of seven American bishops who were “broken-hearted, sickened and outraged” by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, emotions that Trump never expressed.

Just a few months ago in The National Catholic Reporter, Prevost criticized Vice President J.D. Vance’s interpretation of Catholicism as a way to defend Trump’s anti-immigration policies. 

As an American, I’m hoping Trump will listen more to an American pope than one from, say, Ghana. If he doesn’t listen to the Catholic Church’s supreme moral authority, Trump’s rural pep rallies may be a little less peppy, considering 20 percent of the U.S. population calls themselves Catholic.

The religious weigh in

Sister Magdalene stood with her fellow nuns in black habits in the middle of the square. She hails from India and came up from Puglia, the heel of Italy’s boot, for the conclave. She hoped for Matteo Maria Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna, but was satisfied with Provost.

“We hope he does better than Pope Francis,” she said. “Sure. We will pray. This is the year of the Jubilee. We are all praying for hope. We are the people of hope. So the hope will help us and help the new pope do everything. We need that.”

Posing with the Vatican flag was a group of Carmelite priests in their caramel-colored robes. Francesco Mendola comes from Chiusa Sclafani, Sicily, near Palermo.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “It’s a beautiful experience for all the church and the entire world. Today he already had a beautiful message of peace and a message of reunion. This I believe is the pope’s mission to the world.”

I asked if he was surprised it was an American. After all, the church hasn’t had an Italian pope in 47 years.

“It was a surprise for the whole world,” he said. 

A Francis ally

I like the pick not just because he’s an American. He sounds like he’ll continue Pope Francis’ trend of bringing the church forward to the modern world. Always a Francis ally, he was named cardinal only two years ago and he’s been in lockstep with the pope ever since, talking frequently about their commitment to immigrants and the poor. He even believes in the threat of climate change.

He will have to take a strong stand against sexual scandal that has particularly plagued the American church. Pope Francis’ arguably biggest misstep was being slow on the draw in disciplining the church in Chile for a sex scandal in 2018.

But overriding all the policies and controversies and direction is Pope Leo XIV’s passport. An American. The first time in history, someone from the U.S. will be the moral compass for 1.4 billion Catholics.

“The history of the church is so long and the history of the United States is so short in comparison,” Forness said, “for an American to hold the post of being the pope ushers us into the same level as the rest of the Catholic faith and hopefully continues Pope Francis’ direction of the church.”

I asked him if it could have an effect on a divided United States.

“You’d like to hope so,” he said. “I don’t think so, honestly. I would pray that it would, given how divided we are and the era we’ve been living through. Maybe there is some hope there.”