The unique power of an American pope

Hey there, Sam Sanders here.

Before we start today's episode, I have a question for you.

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This is in conversation from Apple News.

I'm Sam Sanders in for Shemita Basu.

Today, what an American Pope means for the US.

We are approaching the first anniversary of Pope Leo XIV, becoming the first American Pope in history.

It was a moment that many people didn't see coming.

Growing up as a Catholic, you were told there was never going to be an American Pope.

The church would never want to give that level of power to an American because the country

is already front and center.

That's got Detro.

He's a host of NPRs, all things considered.

And he's currently working on a biography of Pope Leo out this fall.

And then all of a sudden, I'm broadcasting the Conclave Live for NPR.

And I'm announcing that the Pope is a guy from Chicago, and it was just like the most

shocking, surprising, exciting feeling I'd ever had on the radio as a professional.

Pope Leo's first year as Pope has been relatively calm and gone without controversy.

But in recent weeks, he's drawn the ire of President Trump for criticizing the US's war

on Iran.

That critique has given Pope Leo a lot of new attention on the political stage.

So I wanted to talk to Scott about just how much power the Pope has in America, recent

shifts within the Catholic Church, and the ways Catholicism does and does not intersect

with American politics.

Let's talk about the significance of the Pope being American and what his background is

because he is American, but he's been a ton of time in Latin America.

But let's get to this whole year-mark thing.

He has been, can we say, in office for about a year?

Yeah.

He's elected.

Yeah.

And at this year-mark, the biggest news of his first year is a bit of a tiff with Donald

Trump.

Mm-hmm.

Pope Leo and Trump are fighting.

What are they fighting about?

Well, I think Pope Leo actually made it clear recently that in his mind, he's not fighting

with Donald Trump.

Okay.

He's like, look, you're presenting this as a means of the President.

I've got other stuff to do.

This has all happened as Pope Leo has been on this really ambitious 10-day trip through

Africa, which many people see as the future of the church, the African continent, the South

American continent.

That is where people are joining the church.

That is where the church is growing.

That is where it's most vibrant.

But of course, this came up and it came up because he has been really forceful about

the Iran War.

He's been really outspoken and not just issuing statements, which I think is interesting,

because throughout his life, Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo, has been a really cautious figure

and has not engaged with the media that much.

But as Pope, once a week, he will walk in front of reporters and kind of do what we call

a gaggle.

Like you see a senator or a presidential candidate or a president do, just kind of walking up to

a bunch of microphones outside his vacation house, Castle Gandalfo, which is one of my favorite

words to say in Pope World, and he'll answer questions and people ask him, what do you

think about Trump doing this?

What do you think about Trump doing this?

And then he's been clear-cut, especially at that moment when Trump talked about, basically,

however, he put it, destroying all of Iran with attacks.

Leo said, this is not acceptable.

You cannot do that.

This is wrong.

A tax on civilian infrastructure is against international law, but that it is also a sign

of the hatred, the division, the destruction, the human being is capable of.

And Trump, as he always does when somebody criticizes him, attacked him, and made it personal,

and then wouldn't let it go.

I'm not a big fan of Pope Leo.

He's a very liberal person, and he's a man that doesn't believe in stopping crime.

And I think in a lot of ways, it really backfired on Trump in a way that we haven't actually

seen that much when he picks a fight with people, and that's been interesting to me.

Let's talk more about that, because it seems as if a lot of American Catholics in this

back and forth between Trump and the Pope, they're taking this out of the Pope.

What is the Catholic Church's response to this within America, this fight?

I think one of Trump's political superpowers is that when he engages somebody in a fight,

two things happen.

One, he kind of like crunches it down into this me versus you back and forth, like this

beef, this feud type framework, whereas if somebody took like a really nuanced position

and saying, you're wrong for all these different ways, it becomes like, I hate you, you hate

me, and like nobody listens to the original criticism.

And two, he kind of takes any figure and diminishes them to like a very political figure.

And I think that Leo has been able to rise above that, at least for now.

Why?

Leo's really popular for a few reasons.

Personally, I think Leo is a very cautious person.

He thinks through what he's going to say before he says it, and he thinks through the

Gagels.

Even in the Gagels.

He's always very deliberate.

He's not going to be pushed into saying something he doesn't want to say, and he's running

the tapes to the end of like, if I say this, that will happen, then this will happen,

then that will happen.

You know what I'm going on and on.

So he's very careful.

He's very, I think, confident in himself and his own beliefs.

And he doesn't kind of feel the temptation that a lot of Trump opponents we've seen through

the years take to try and like play on Trump's level, you know.

And I think the other thing going on is that Pope Francis was this powerful figure in

the Catholic church.

He changed the last pope.

Last pope.

He changed the church in a lot of different ways.

But he was kind of viewed as a progressive, as a liberal, and a lot of conservative Catholics

at the end didn't really appreciate what he was trying to do with his papacy.

So far, Pope Leo has really tried to be right down the middle and to bring conservatives

along and to bring liberals along.

And he succeeded at doing that.

You know, he has a lot of the same kind of policy goals as Pope Francis before Iran.

He was really outspoken on immigration and saying that the Trump administration policy

was wrong and immoral.

But at the same time, he knows in ways that like Pope Francis would just dismiss it.

A lot of conservatives, a lot of traditionalist Catholics care about the traditions, care

about the ceremonies, care about like the pomp and circumstances of the mass.

And Pope Francis was like, yeah, whatever, I don't care.

But Pope Leo does and you see him kind of wear the more formal vestments and take part

in the more kind of high mass type ceremonies and among other things he's done, conservatives

really like him as well.

He's got really high approval ratings from all aspects of the church.

I talked a lot to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is no longer the Archbishop of New York,

but he was for a long time.

He was like the most important American Cardinal for a while and he was a conservative.

He's an out of Donald Trump.

And he talked about one of the appeals that people like him had, why they like Pope Leo,

was that they were like, we want somebody who's thoughtful, who's deliberative, who's

kind of organized and taking this through in the methodical way that they felt like Francis

didn't always have.

So they like that about him.

And like, yeah, you can't underestimate the fact that at least in America, it goes

a long way when you're like, I like baseball, the Pope likes baseball.

I like to eat peeps.

The Pope eats peeps.

The Pope loves peeps.

He loves peeps.

Wow.

And people have like gotten that he loved with I hate peeps.

Peeps are nasty.

I don't really use you about that.

Yes, it's not food.

It's not good.

It's not good.

The Pope, for whatever reason, loves peeps.

I did know that also he like, doesn't he play Whartle with his brother every day?

Yeah.

Every day.

That's so sweet.

He's on Doolingo.

He's also, it's funny because my wife is not Catholic, wasn't raised Catholic, and like

talking to her, you'll see these different mindsets where I'm like, can you believe the

Pope's on WhatsApp?

And she's like, yeah, because he's a human being.

And I'm like, no, it's the Pope, but he's on WhatsApp.

It's crazy.

But I think there's a lot of relayed ability and that goes a long way.

And the fact that he's not being a partisan flamethrower, he's just kind of saying,

like, this is what I believe and I don't feel bad about it.

And this is what, it's not just what I believe.

This is what Jesus says, and this is what the Bible says.

I'm not going to back down.

You know, it would be really easy to see the back and forth between Donald Trump and

Pope Leo and just assume that the Pope is liberal because he is indirect conflict with Trump,

who has had a liberal party.

But in actuality, his politics and the Pope's politics, in general, they can't really

be defined in strictly American conservative or liberal terms.

How would you sum up if you had to, in clear language, what Pope Leo's politics actually

are?

My favorite moment that kind of crystallizes all of this, it happened actually right

around the time that you and I first met more than 10 years ago when Pope Francis came

to the United States and he gave the speech in front of Congress.

And he absolutely knew what he was doing.

And he kind of trolled everybody in the chamber because he's giving the speech and he says,

it's so important to be pro-life.

I'm pro-life.

The golden rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at the very

stage of its development.

And all the Republicans get up and clap and he says, and that's why I oppose the death

penalty.

This conviction has led me from the beginning of my ministry to advocate and defend levels

the global abolition of the death penalty.

And then all the Democrats get off and clap and I was like, oh, I see what you did there.

Interesting.

And needle was threaded.

You know?

There are core Catholic beliefs that line up with the Republican Party like abortion.

No exceptions.

Clear cut rule.

Abortion is wrong.

Yes.

And all popes have been in that boat.

Yeah.

The church's official position, which many Catholics ignore, is that all contraception

is wrong.

You know?

And that's still the official stance, still the official stance, still by and large, ignored

by many Catholics.

But also a core Christian belief is being kind to the immigrant, welcoming the stranger,

being welcoming and open and bringing somebody in, like helping somebody along.

And there has been a clear cut opposition to Trump's immigration policy going back to

the first time he's the White House continuing even more so this time in the White House.

You have seen front and center opposing these ice raids.

Catholic Cardinals, you know, like standing in the streets, marching, saying this is wrong.

That's how the churches are housed in immigrants and many Americans it is.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And I think it kind of depends what the politics of the moment are, whether it feels like

the church is on one side or another side, even though it's multifaceted.

But I know for a fact that this immigration policy is something that deeply upsets Pope

Leo.

When you see Cardinals like Blaze Supage, the Cardinal in Chicago, making statements.

Families are being torn apart.

Children are left in fear.

And communities are shaken by immigration raids and detentions.

These actions wound the soul of our city.

Let me be clear.

The church stands with migrants.

It's clear that they are clearing it with the Pope before they go and speak so forcefully

against the American President.

Like he supports all of that.

And I know that when he was a bishop in Peru, that was at the beginning of the big Venezuelan

migrant crisis that kind of made its way to the United States, but affected all of Central

and South America.

And he worked really hard to help Venezuelan migrants in his city.

He helped them financially.

He helped them medically.

But he also, he would work with people.

People would tell me that he would say we need to make sure that we're countering this

anti-immigrant bias that's flaring up.

And they would have conversations about how can we kind of document these Venezuelan

migrants doing good works, doing community service around the city so that people feel

like they're part of the community and they're not as ostracized as the other.

So this is something he cares deeply about.

It is really hard to pin down the Pope's politics in general, at least in the American

two-party context.

But one thing that's been pretty easy to pin down politically is his recent surge in

new Catholic converts.

A lot of them are conservatives.

It's interesting.

It's happening on the liberal side as well.

And there's kind of two different things going on and we could talk about it.

But it's definitely a real thing where you're seeing a lot of younger people, a lot of younger

conservatives, especially being drawn to the Catholic church and how long has that been

a thing?

Because I've been seeing articles and stories about it.

Yeah.

Is there a moment at which it started?

I feel like it's been a slow build over the last decade or so.

And I think actually Vice President Vance is part of that build, despite being a big part

of the beef with Pope Leo over the past week and saying that the Pope needs to be careful

speaking about theology, which was an interesting thing to say.

In the same way that it's important for the Vice President of the United States to

be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it's very, very important

for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.

J.D. Vance is about to publish a book about his conversion to Catholicism.

He wrote a long thoughtful, interesting article about it several years ago and he expressed

this feeling that I think a lot of conservatives feel.

And actually I think a lot of people in different ways across all political persuasions feel

right now.

Like the world is so inconsistent and shifting right now.

And there's so much uncertainty.

And I think whether it's the economy or artificial intelligence or 70,000 other things, it just

feels like a very uncertain moment.

And I feel like a lot of people seem to be drawn to this institution in this moment that's

been around for 2,000 years.

And it's been pretty steady over the course of those 2,000 years, sometimes to the great

frustration of its members.

Like when you look at a church, a physical church that you can say this church is 3 times

as old as America, right?

You know, when you look at the ceremonies and the circumstances and you can say this is

a relatively new adaptation for the Catholic church, it's only 400 years old.

You know, I think there's a lot of appeal to that solid base for a lot of people and

I think that's part of what's driving it.

It seems like a lot of people are really, really drawn to the kind of the high mass ceremonies

and traditions.

Which is interesting because in the 1960s, the Catholic church totally blew all of that

up with something called Vatican II.

It was this multi-year process where church leaders, Pope John the 23rd started this.

He said, the church needs a breath of fresh air.

It needs to be brought into the 20th century.

And they begin the process of instituting all of these changes.

The most important one was that the mass would no longer be said in Latin.

The priest would not be saying mass with his back faced to the congregation, which was

the norm.

And Pope Leo grows up in this world of a new refreshed modern church.

And that's when he becomes a priest, that's when he's going to seminary and he's going

to the seminary school in Chicago in the late 1970s, he's got this big ridiculous bushy

mustache at the period of time.

And they're throwing all the doors, they're experimenting there, you know, it's a guitar

masses are in, folk masses are in, they're saying this needs to be modern, this needs

to be to the point, it needs to be on the ground.

And you see that spirit carry for a couple of decades.

And then the pendulum seems to be swinging back where people are saying, you know what?

We liked the Latin, we liked the tradition.

We liked the connection to the mass that was said in, you know, the year 976 or whatever.

And we want to go back toward that.

So there's times where I go to church in Washington DC and I see young women in their 20s sitting

there wearing veils.

When they go up to communion, they kneel on the floor and present it for the priest to

formally give them communion, not touching their hands, practices that by and large went

out of practice decades and decades ago seem to be on the resurgence for young conservatives

right now.

Yeah.

There is a distinction in the Catholic church about how to classify these newer converts

in relation to folks who have been raised as lifelong Catholics.

I hear there's two groups informally, cradle Catholics and convert Catholics.

Yeah.

I think it's less of a church destination, but there's definitely like a cultural Catholicism

that I feel like it's a very real thing in the way that like cultural Judaism is, you

know, whether it's like, I don't know, like in the Midwest, like Friday, frisk fries are

a big thing, right?

Like a big communal gathering, a whole bunch of other different things.

I feel like that is real.

And I think like there's been a lot of commentary of like people who are recent converts don't

quite share that.

I also feel like, and I know for a fact that people who do convert to the faith as adults

do it for very specific intentional reasons.

I actually went to church with my mom last night.

I'm in New York City and I saw one of these kind of buzzy congregations filled with people

in their 20s that trend articles have been popping up about recently.

And there were like three rows filled with people who had just finished the conversion

process because it all happens around Easter.

And they were all in their 20s.

They're all excited about it.

It was like their main social hub and it seemed like there was like this big energy

that like I had not seen a lot in the church before.

And I thought it was really interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's talk about some conservative Catholics in the White House.

You know, even though Trump has been most publicly speaking out about the Pope and his

comments on the war among other things, we've seen JD Vance do so as well.

And JD Vance is a Catholic himself.

Parker Rubio, Secretary of State, also Catholic.

How Catholic is the Trump administration?

You could also add in the fact that the last time I checked, I think it's almost like two-thirds

of the Supreme Court is Catholic.

Really?

I think it's a real factor in the Trump White House and I think it kind of blends together

with the way that the evangelical kind of angling of the Trump White House has been

such a key part of the second term.

Like the way that Trump talks so much and his excessive speech in his inaugural address

and so many other parts about feeling like he personally was saved by God when he was shot

but not killed during his presidential run.

Like Trump has talked about it much more than he ever did before and he has surrounding

himself with people who are kind of unapologetically hardline in their religious beliefs and unapologetic

about putting it in front of the center of policy.

It's interesting just before this big blow up with Pope Leo happened, you saw something

that I thought was pretty shocking in that department after department, whether it was

the State Department, I think the Justice Department, the Agriculture Department.

You had secretaries saying, issuing statements and blasting on social media like not just

generic Eastern greetings but like Christ is risen.

He is risen type like really specific religious messaging coming from government accounts

and there's this whole strain of like the government should be more Judeo-Christian.

We should talk about our Christian beliefs.

They fuel our policies like that's the kind of talk you're hearing from the Trump administration

right now despite the fact that the separation of church and state is a key fundamental part

of the founding of this country.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm glad that you brought up other evangelical sex of Christianity and how they're tied

to American politics because it seems as if

at least in the White House there is a bit of overlap.

Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War who was an evangelical Christian, a very conservative

one, a lot of his political ideology when it comes to religion doesn't seem too far away

from that of JD Vance.

I think with Hegseth the way that he delivers really evangelical prayers and frames what's

going on in the Iran war in these kind of almost crusader-like terms I think is very striking

and unprecedented.

Almighty God who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the

nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell.

Behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.

Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans and break the teeth of the

ungodly.

There's this kind of unapologetic hard-line conservative view of religion that is driving a lot

of the Trump administration's policies right now.

And I think that's something you're going to see continuing in the Republican Party in the

conservative movement after Trump leaves office because it seems to be a really powerful driver

for younger conservatives specifically.

Yeah, it's a really interesting time to try to figure out what the Catholic vote

does in the midterms because as you're just outlined, some of the leading folks in Trump's

White House are Catholic, but they are all a certain kind of conservative Catholic

that in many ways stands in opposition to what the Pope is talking about right now.

I mean, yeah, absolutely, especially on the issues that Pope Leo's prioritized and President

Trump has prioritized, immigration, the war with Iran, things like that.

Like, there is a clear divide when it comes to those specific issues that are

right now.

Yeah.

So then if that divide exists, what do we think happens to Catholic voters as they go to

the ballot box this November?

If you look from election to election, I feel like the Catholic vote generally kind of breaks

down along the lines of the broader vote as a whole.

And I think especially if you look at the way that the Catholic voting population as a whole

kind of drifts similar to the way that you see like suburban voters drift from election

to election, I think that there is, if there is another shift back toward the democratic side,

fueled by kind of discomfort with the Iran War, discomfort with Trump's immigration policies,

I mean, I think that would be very bad news for Republicans in November.

You know, so much of this tension between Donald Trump and Pope Leo,

between various subsets of American Catholics, it seems to be all about who has ownership

of God, essentially, and who has ownership over interpretations of the Bible,

yeah, even the image of Jesus, as we've seen play out on Donald Trump's social media,

you're a lifelong Catholic.

How are you navigating this tension as a reporter watching all of this play out?

I think for a long period of time, to me at least, speaking from personal opinion,

I feel like public conversation about Christianity specifically almost got kind of

like the evangelical movement kind of took full ownership of it to feel like.

Like if you couldn't talk about God, you couldn't talk about Jesus unless you were talking

in this evangelical lane. And there was a period of time where I felt like

for a variety of reasons, I kept my religion and my religious views to myself,

and I want to interpose my own personal thinking on, I kind of brought a trend,

but I have felt that change over the last few years and it's become something I've been a lot

more open about. And I think I've seen a lot of other people across the country take that step

as well. And I think that's a good thing if it's not just evangelicals driving the conversation

when it comes to religion and politics, right? Like if the Catholic Church, which has tried to be

nonpartisan, if not a political, for a long period of time, is taking these forceful stands

and driving the public conversation just as much as other denominations are, I think that's a

good thing for the religious conversation. And when it comes to the question of who owns God,

who owns Jesus, like you put it, that's something that's really important to Pope Leo inside and

outside of the political realm. He is somebody who throughout his life as a priest has said, it's not

just the priests who get to say what's what. It's not just the bishops who get to say what's what.

It's everybody who comes to church. It's everybody who believes in God. And you would see in small

ways and big ways, ways that he would delegate responsibility and bring people on board and say,

like, this is a really important thing I need done. I'm not going to ask a priest. I'm going to

ask this woman who, this is a lay woman who doesn't have any official role in the church other than

the fact that I know her and Truster. And I'm going to put her in charge of this really big project

and do that again and again. And you're seeing him do it kind of on an international level now.

It is also very interesting to think about what the Pope and the Catholic Church's larger ambitions

are. And it might be bigger than America at this point. You said earlier that the new converts,

the large numbers of them are coming from places like Africa and not North America. And the Pope

has even said that he is not going to be in America for our big 250th anniversary party.

He was invited and he's not coming. He's not coming. He's made it clear that he has other countries

he wants to visit first. Remember that Pope Leo born in Chicago raised like 100 yards south of

the Chicago city line. He's a Midwesterner. He talks like a Midwesterner, right? But he is a

Peruvian citizen as well as dual citizenship with Peru. He has a deep affinity for Peru. And I

think it's not a surprise that this is the second Pope in a row with deep ties to South America

because that is where the heart of the church is right now. And that's a reason why Pope Francis

continued to elevate Leo throughout his career, naming him a bishop, pulling him to Rome to be in

charge of helping name other bishops, which is a very important role. But I think as part of that

I think Pope Leo is looking at the world as a whole. He's not obsessed with America. But the fact

that this American Pope knows American politics, I think is a new factor. Like Pope Francis

would critique President Trump, but it was clear that he wasn't deeply familiar with the way

that American politics works. Like Pope Leo has voted in presidential elections. You know, he has

written letters to governors. He's somebody who gets the system, you know? And I think that's

different. And I think the fact that he will go to a microphone on a camera and speak in English

because he's fluent in multiple languages. I think he's doing that, knowing that that's going to

register. When he wants to speak out, he knows how to say it in a way that people in America are

going to pay attention. Yeah. If you could interview the Pope, which I've tried aggressively over the past

year, yes. What would be the first question you ask him? I mean, I think it's kind of what we've

been talking about. Like you have this position and you can have it as long as you want as long

as you stay healthy, right? Like it is clear to me he is thinking in 10 year and 20 year terms.

And I want to know what those specific goals are. Like where does he want this church to be 10

years from now, 20 years from now? How much does he want it to be integrated into the politics of

the world? How much is he trying to balance the needs of the Western church versus the growing

church in African-South American places like that? I guess I've just like started to list 20

questions right now. But like what specifically do you want the outcome of your papacy to be? Because

I think he's really intentional about that. I think he has a plan, but he hasn't fully

revealed that plan to the world. And I really want to know what it is. So the question is, Pope Leo,

what's your plan? What's your plan? What are you trying to do here? Regardless of who the Pope is,

it is the central global figure that can command attention, that can deliver a message that I think

most other religions do not have. You know, like this Pope can step on a balcony in this beautiful setting

and know that like a billion plus people are listening and watching at any moment. And that's just

like a really powerful position. And he has this massive microphone and he can issue social media

posts. He can give press conferences. He can give speeches, but he can also issue church doctrine

by writing like a formal document called an encyclical, which I think in the coming months,

we're expecting him to weigh in on artificial intelligence, which I think will be really welcome

because I think you would agree that perhaps morality has not been from the center in AI

development so far. Yeah. This is a tech literate, Pope, who wants to weigh on an artificial

intelligence. That's one of the reasons why he picked the name Leo because Pope Leo the 13th

really issued key documents trying to frame the morality of the industrial revolution.

And he wants to really. Yeah. So like I think kind of to twist on what your question is,

I want to know what's in that document. How clear cut is going to be? How much is he going to

engage with like the realities of economic competition? What people are trying to do with AI versus

like broader philosophical goals? Like how is he trying to shape something that is rapidly going to

affect all of our lives that doesn't seem to have morals baked into it? And what people listen?

Yeah. I will say as a non-catholic who went to Catholic school as a kid, I have one question

for Pope Leo. Why did you change the mass from saying peace be with you and also with you?

It's so nice. And like that phrasing, now they say something else Scott, what do they say?

And with your spirit. Oh my goodness. No. Pope, we got to fix it.

Scott Detro, thank you so much for your time. Peace be with you. And also with you Sam,

it's good to talk to you again.

Scott Detro co-authored American Pope. Leo the 14th road from the south side of Chicago to Vatican

City with his NPR colleague Daniel Burke. It's available for preorder on Apple Books. We'll

include a link on our show notes page. And every weekend you can find new episodes of Apple news

in conversation in the Apple News app. Just tap on the audio tab, those little headphones at the

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