WHITE SMOKE AND WHITE SOX
Last week’s selection of Bishop Robert Prevost (aka Father Bob) as Pope Leo XIV was the most startling of a season of surprising election outcomes. Inspired in Catholic theology by the Holy Spirit (and with a possible assist from Donald Trump) the 2025 Papal Conclave resulted in a trinity of temporal (if not spiritual) miracles:
- FIRST BLACK POPE – the new Holy Father’s maternal grandparents were both mixed-race Creoles from New Orleans; his grandfather was a Haitian immigrant. Unclear so far to what extent his fellow cardinals were aware of Prevost’s family heritage, but it’s a big plus going forward for Pope Leo’s global ministry to Africa, the Caribbean, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the South Side of Chicago, and far beyond.
- FIRST AMERICAN POPE – even after John Paul II’s elevation in 1978 as first non-Italian pope in over four centuries, odds were seriously adverse to a possible “Born in the USA” pope, because of America’s super-power status; why make the leading military, political, economic and cultural power on earth, also the supreme head of the world-wide Catholic Church?
- FIRST WHITE SOX FAN POPE – surely the most wondrous miracle of all time! Not just a fan, the future Holy Father was in the stands when the Chicago White Sox, pride of the Windy City’s South Side, won Game 1 of the 2005 World Series, going on to sweep the series and capture the Major League Baseball title. Blaspheming fans of the Sox’s North Side rival tried claiming Pope Leo as a Chicago CUBS fan, but his brother called them out, declaring, “He was never a Cubs fan” in same tone of voice he might use in denying that Leo was a Unitarian.
The final first is clearly the most incredible, far beyond the realm of rational explanation. On the other hand, the 1st first is much less miraculous, seeing as how a possible Pope of Color from Africa or Asia has been widely discussed; a BIPOC pontiff from South Side Chicago (also North Coast Peru) is a different twist, but still in the same ballpark.
Which leaves the middle miracle – the election of the American Pope.
So why did the 2025 Conclave pick a natural born US citizen as Pope of Rome? And what if anything did the advent of the 2nd Trump Administration in Our Nation’s Capital have to do with it?
Initial reactions to the new pope on ideological/partisanship grounds are mixed, or rather confused. Many Trump supporters consider Leo just another woke menace like Francis I before him; Steve Bannon called the new pope “worst for MAGA”. But the NY Post and other conservative media have reported that “Trump’s favorite Cardinal” Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and persistent critic of Francis, was the “kingmaker” who swung the votes to elect Leo XIV.
Likely few cardinals wanted to either do battle with Trump or to become his willing accomplices. But many more see the need for a leader who can deal with the reality of POTUS 47 in the world in general, and for the Catholic Church in particular. At stake is not just theology and morality, but also billions and billions of lives, dollars and (lest we forget) souls.
As always, participants at the conclave were sworn to secrecy, but published reports suggest that early ballots were divided four-ways between two pro-Francis moderates and Vatican insiders, Italian Pietro Panolin and American/Peruvian Robert Prevost; an anti-Francis conservative, Hungarian Péter Erdő; and a bunch of also-rans who manly split the votes from Asian and moderate European cardinals.
Panolin was in the lead, or close to it, with perhaps 50 votes on one ballot, but that was his limit; Erdő found his ceiling at around 30 votes. As for the also-rans, got much traction.
Prevost on the other hand the voting with solid support from fellow American, pro-Francis moderates, and also from South American cardinals familiar with him and his work as a missionary and bishop in Peru. From this base in the New Word his support expanded to Africa, then Asia and Europe, until his landslide election on the final 4th ballot.
Leo XIV was elected as the 267th pope (not counting anti-popes) of the Roman Catholic Church, at the 112th papal conclave (ditto) because in the opinion of Vatican analyst John Allen, “he ticked all the boxes” for cardinals seeking both continuation and modernization of Francis I’s message and mission. Whether his American birth was a significant plus is unknown, but certainly it was not – and is not – a minus.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Pope Leo may prove difficult for ideologues and partisans to pigeonhole. For example, records of the Illinois state election bureau show that from 2000 to 2010 he was a registered Cook County (Chicago) voter and participated in Democratic primaries; but that since 2012 he’s been registered in suburban Will County . . . and voted in several Republican primaries.
PLUS it turns out that the new Pope’s mother, originally from the North Side of Chicago, was . . . wait for it . . . a Cubs fan.