That Léon XIV comes from Chicago, of French and Italian ancestry, was bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, sums up the essence of American Catholicism. Like his hometown, the Catholicism of Robert Francis Prevost is the result of a mixture. In the megalopolis of the Midwest where, three weeks ago, the faithful prayed to the cathedral of the Holy Name so that this child of Windy City can become the new sovereign pontiff, the Catholic religion, majority, is plural.
Chicago, the Polono-Irlandaise (it is not uncommon that, in the Warsaw of Illinois, there is a double English and Polish display), is also now a Hispanic city. And Léon XIV is a bit of this at a time. Pope of compromise in a country where Protestantism (by understanding all the churches and in particular the evangelicals which represent half of them) is still in the majority.
So here is the election of Léon XIV a new raised taboo. For a long time, America dared to hope that a Holy Father, even if it is binational, from the most powerful country in the world, it was even more weight in the United States. Donald Trump’s election in November 2024 had already formed a small revolution. High republican in presbyterian faith and defining itself as a “Non -confessional Christian”he had managed to rally more Catholics than the American right had never done before. 56 % of them (60 % among white Catholics) chose Trump … And, with 43 %, the Hispanics Catholic offered him his best score in thirty years.
Catholic vote in favor of Trump reflects the expectations of worried faithful
This reversal is not anecdotal. It cannot be explained simply by an electoral cycle or a economic effect. It reveals, in depth, a transformation of priorities, fears and hopes that today live a large part of the American Catholic community. For a long time, the living heart of the “New Deal” turned to the Democratic Party for its fights in favor of the poor, unions, civil rights. Impregnated by the social doctrine of the Church, American Catholics found in progressivism a kind of natural extension.
But the priorities have changed. And the Catholic vote in favor of Trump reflects the expectations of worried faithful. As a divisive that the president can be (and his photo of him disguised as a pope on X has still demonstrated it), the traditional family, freedom, opposition to abortion and ideological abuses, especially on gender theory, are freezing Catholic vote. America also searches in its faith a bulwark against the dizziness of a deconstructed society.
It is too early to know how the Pontificate of Leon XIV will be received. Under François, often perceived, across the Atlantic, as accusers, donations from the United States-a traditionally generous nation towards Rome, in particular through the Obole of Saint-Pierre-experienced significant erosion. They have melted in half in ten years. Fewer checks, fewer active foundations, more distrust. In the felted salons of the American Catholic aristocracy, the new tone of “This southern pope” was welcomed with suspicion, sometimes with irritation.
The faithful would probably see with a skeptical, if not hostile eye, a Pope Leo XIV in the continuity of his predecessor, especially on the migration issue. American or not, this son of the Midwest will have to reconcile his Catholic compatriots with the Vatican. And restore the essentials: confidence.
