The NPR Politics Podcast - How An American Pope May Influence American Politics

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

For the first time, the leader of the Catholic Church is from the United States. We discuss how Pope Leo XIV's election may play a role in U.S. politics, both for Catholics and others. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, religion correspondent Jason DeRose, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, we here, that's no faster! You've probably seen clips from the Jennifer Hudson show Spirit Tunnel on TikTok or Instagram, the ones where celebrities dance down the hallway to a clever song. These videos can reveal a lot. Do they have rhythm? And how famous are they really?

We're breaking down the inescapable internet trend. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Hi, this is Rob Sprontz from Davis, California. And I'm checking in from Houston, Texas at the 2025 FIRST Robotics World Championship with my daughter's team 1678, the Citrus Circuits. This podcast was recorded at 1 05 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, May 13th, 2025. Things may have changed when you hear this, but we're hoping we'll be celebrating our

10th consecutive year appearing at the finals. Enjoy the show and go Citrus! Go Citrus. Sounds like a smart girl. That sounds super intense. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McKammon. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And NPR's religion correspondent, Jason DeRose, is with us from Rome. Hey, Jason. Hello. Thank you for being here. Thanks for all of your reporting. You're here because we want to talk about the American pope,

what an American pope could mean for American politics. As we know, cardinals in the Catholic Church elected the former Robert Prevost as pope last week. He's now Pope Leo XIV. He's originally from Chicago, but spent several years in ministry in Peru as well. And Jason, I just want to start with what we know about the new Pope's views.

As you know, the late Pope Francis had a history of speaking out about world issues, occasionally making statements that seemed pointed at American politicians, including Donald Trump. But what do we know about where Pope Leo might stand? Well, I have read through many, many of Pope Leo's tweets. I have to say he's very Catholic in his tweeting. He retweets the Vatican quite often, retweets the Vatican website, retweeted Pope Francis's Twitter account, and also especially retweeted things that were critical of Donald

Trump, retweeted criticism of migration and immigration policies and retweeted criticism of JD Vance when he said that people should care about their families and their own country first and then others, he retweeted criticism of those remarks. Yeah, it's I think that second part we're most interested in today, you know, when we talk about American politics. So whoever the pope is, of course, he has a massive platform worldwide and he can use it to advance a political message if he chooses a religious message or otherwise. And in talking to folks in and around the church while in Rome, were Cardinal

Prevost views outside of his faith a factor in his election? What did you hear, Jason? Well, you know, I talked to, or the whole team here talked to a number of Cardinals, and they said that those played in a little bit. They were quite often trying to say, you know, we were praying, we're interested in the input of the Holy Spirit or the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But in the days leading up to the Conclave itself, they were meeting in these things called congregations where they would get together and talk about all the sorts of issues facing the Church. And so, you know, they talked about things

like migration and sex abuse and many other topics, the environment, Church finances. And so they were thinking about which of these candidates could take the church in the direction they were hoping the church would go. So, you know, I don't know that any one issue was on any one of their minds, but all of these issues were sort of the constellation in their minds as they were thinking of

who would make the best person. Which, you know, Domenico brings me to the question, how much are American Catholics thinking about these things? And how much are they taking cues from the Pope or the Catholic Church in shaping their own politics and their voting habits? Well, I'd say American Catholics obviously paid very close attention to the fact that there's an American Pope, but American Catholics tend to vote their politics, not really their religion.

And I think that's true with a lot of people. You have a lot of people who are culturally Catholic, grew up in Catholic households, but might not necessarily ascribe to all views of Catholicism. And you know, Catholic teaching doesn't exactly fit American politics very easily. I mean, it's conservative when it comes to things like abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, women in leadership, for example, but much more liberal when it comes to things like being pro-immigrant, the need for climate action, being against the death penalty.

At this point, supporting Ukraine and the desire for press freedom, as Pope Leo talked about this week as well. So it doesn't cross very easily. Trump won the Catholic vote in this past election. They generally tend to go with the winner because it tends to be how people vote on their political lines. You know, Sarah, one thing to keep in mind,

and I think this is really important, is that the Catholic people in the Pews, or people who identify as Catholic, do not align with their own church on a lot of beliefs. For instance, according to Pew Research, 60% of Catholic voters favor abortion rights in all or most cases. 70% of Catholics believe that same-sex marriage should be legal. Nobody in church hierarchy is saying that, but that is what Catholics in the pews believe.

So there's a disconnect between what the Church technically teaches or officially teaches and what actual Catholics believe about political issues. Danielle Pletka Although to Domenico's point, they may be thinking about a whole spectrum of issues, right? And those issues, you know, when you line up Catholic doctrine with political parties, you know, you're talking about two very different things and they don't line up. Dr. Michael O'Neill They don't. In fact, I'm thinking about, you know, you're talking about two very different things and they don't line up. They don't. In fact, I'm thinking about, you know, in the lead up to the election last fall, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops talked quite a bit about abortion being a

paramount issue. But in fact, Pope Francis going into that election said, actually, the plight of migrants and abortion should both be held together when thinking about voting. And he said that for American Catholics, they had to choose the lesser of two evils. Yeah, I mean, this really has to do with emphasis. And I think that's why it was so eyebrow raising when, you know, then Jorge Bergoglio as Cardinal chose the name Francis to be Pope because it represented something that was very clear to Catholics that he was going to be focused on the poor and a degree of humility. And Pope Leo now saying that he's going to be in the vein of Pope Francis for the most

part when you think about his immigration views in particular, his views on climate action and all the rest. That kind of thing is really where the emphasis and sort of how either American politicians are treated, how people within the church who follow the church play out their politics. I think about someone like John Kerry or former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or former President Biden having been denied Eucharist previously by Cardinals or bishops because of their views on abortion rights, as Jason's talking about, that having been paramount at one point. And now you have these most recent two popes saying maybe the emphasis should be on social justice a

little bit more. You know even when you think about the name that Leo chose Leo the 14th the current pope said that he was thinking about Leo the 13th who wrote this this famous encyclical called Rerum Novarum of new things which really was a social justice document that looked at things like workers' rights and the dignity of workers and economic justice issues. And in fact, given some of his early statements so far, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a new on new things coming up, perhaps focusing on things

like technology, specifically artificial intelligence. And this phrase that I kept hearing from Cardinals in the run-up to the Conclave, how to do missionary work on the digital continent in the same way that they did missionary work on other continents like the Americas or Africa or Asia. All right, it's time for a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment. And we're back. So we've said that American Catholics don't really vote as Catholics per se or their votes tend to sort of map the larger American patterns as a whole as opposed to a unified Catholic vote. But this isn't just any pope. Pope Leo is, as we've

said, an American pope, the first American pope from North America, from the US. How is that reality likely to shape American politics? Well, there's the bully pulpit and there's the holy pulpit. And Trump has the bully pulpit, the American presidency, and he has the, you know, the foremost, largest megaphone of anyone in the world, arguably, as a political leader, but as a religious leader, the Pope certainly has the highest holy pulpit of anybody on earth. And that's really interesting given that now we have two Americans in both of those positions, two Americans who believe very differently about a lot of cultural issues.

Danielle Pletka The other thing that's interesting about this, you know, as we said earlier, this new pope, Pope Leo, before he was pope, retweeted some criticism of Vice President J.D. Vance, who himself is a convert to Catholicism. I'm just curious what you both will be watching in terms of, you know, J.D. Vance's relationship to the Catholic Church at this moment? Pete I will be very interested to see if Pope Leo specifically takes him to task by name or by issue the same way that Pope Francis did. And I will be especially interested to see how JD Vance responds if he does. I watched a speech that he gave shortly after Pope Francis took him to task with that letter, although it didn't take him to task by name, but corrected his thinking about something called the

Order of Morris or the Order of Loves. And he said, well, you know, we can disagree. And I think that's a really interesting thing to hear a politician say, especially when like, actually, the Pope is right on this, would be I think a go-to move for for many Catholics, you know, instead of JD Vance trying to sort of explain away a major difference. So I'll be interested to see how Vance responds when and if he's specifically criticized by this pope. You know we've been talking a lot about American Catholic voters and and how they might be affected by all of this and of course President Trump and Vice President Vance but what is the Catholic Church saying about it? I mean Jason what are you hearing from Catholic leaders about this pope at this moment

particularly coming from the United States of America which is you know I think still the most powerful country in the world. You know, we heard from a number of US Cardinals last week who got together to sort of talk about this historic election of a US Pope. And one of the things they did was downplay the Americanism of Pope Leo. They referred to him as a citizen of the world. They focused on the fact that he spent a lot of time in Peru and a lot of time in Italy and at the Vatican and that that makes him more cosmopolitan than someone who say, you know, was born and raised and lived his whole life on the South Side of Chicago. He was born and raised there, but he did not live his whole life there. And of course, on the spiritual end, you know, the American Cardinals were not talking about him as an American citizen, but a citizen of the world and a citizen of heaven.

The thing I'm curious about, Jason, and you being there and covering this, is we heard one scholar on Morning Edition saying that he thought that it was impossible, it had been thought that an American would be chosen as pope, but that the Trump effect around the world in these first few months of the Trump presidency

Sort of made the impossible possible and I wonder what you think if that is too much politics or if there's some truth to that Well, I don't know that they went in thinking we need someone to counterbalance the president of the United States but the issues that they were thinking about were issues of migration and economic justice and things like that. And so if you are thinking about that, you might be thinking about someone who can counterbalance the president of the United States. But I don't think they were going in saying, we need an American. I think they found an American who spoke to them on the issues that they cared about. spoke to them on the issues that they cared about. But nonetheless, he is an American at a moment when the American president is,

I think it's safe to say, a controversial one. I mean, how do you see this playing out in the years to come, especially during the Trump administration? Well, I would say that Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV are not aligned on many issues, including migrants and refugees, workers' rights, the environment. And you know, a week ago, Donald Trump was the most famous and arguably the most powerful American, but now there is someone else, someone in Pope Leo XIV, who is at least as well-known and arguably as powerful as the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics and someone

who can really draw the world's attention beyond that 1.4 billion to the issues he cares about. Okay, we're going to leave it there for today. NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose, thank you for your reporting and have a good trip home. Thank you and you're welcome. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.