An American Pope

On a man with opinions on both A.J. Pierzynski and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Pope Leo is American.

The news sent shockwaves through not just the Roman Catholic world when it was announced, but the world as a whole. There had been a long-standing unofficial policy that, given the vast power and influence of the United States, as well as its historical status as a nation primarily Protestant in culture and demographic, a pope from the United States was to be avoided. Yet, upon the passing of Pope Francis, it took very little time at all for Cardinal Robert Prevost, a native of Chicago and the son of American citizens, to be selected as the new Bishop of Rome. The announcement was met with delight, bewilderment, and concern in equal measure in the country of his birth. For American Catholics, the announcement seemed to indicate that, at last, they were truly part of the fabric of American identity. This achievement had required centuries of immigration, suspicion, discrimination, social and political struggle, and cultural contribution, but it had come at last. For the political cognoscenti, the announcement seemed to imply that the church had considered the immediate future of the United States and found it lacking, enough so that the injunction against a pope from there could finally be lifted. They could hardly be blamed for making such an assessment. For many Americans, the dream of the 1990s- of peace, of prosperity, of power- has become a distant memory. It was, it seemed, ripped from our grasp, stolen and shattered and buried on by first an unimaginable act of sudden violence, and then by what seemed to be many long, agonizing years of fear, war, economic swings, and vicious culture wars. A country once known for its generosity and welcoming spirit became consumed by a fervent desire to, above all else, shut itself off from the world; to retreat into the fantasy that it could be both the center of the world and completely ignored. This sentiment was only exacerbated when a global pandemic, the likes of which the world as a whole had not seen for generations exploded under mysterious circumstances from mainland China, a country at the center of many of America’s real and perceived vexations. A fervent isolationist was elected, and then re-elected, largely on the strength of his willingness to engage with Americans’ fear and resentment of the world outside our borders, and our seeming inability to prevent it from finding its way within them. It has been said that the political axis of the 21st century will be not right vs left economically, but open vs closed societies- and for the first two and a half decades of the twenty-first century, the Indispensable Nation has chosen again and again to desperately try to close itself off. Our institutions seem incapable of handling the challenges of the 21st century, our citizenry divided and trapped in social and political echo chambers, our industrial power rotted, our military power squandered, our cultural power rejected and refused. Surely, the hour of American decline is come at last, if not some yet rougher beast slouching toward Washington to be born.

Pope Leo is American.

When the news broke, media in the English-speaking world and beyond reported breathlessly on the selection of the first American pope. To be sure, he was the first from North America, and the first from the United States of America. But he was not the first pope from the Americas. When his selection was announced, many in Latin America and its orbit were quick to point out that that honor instead had gone to his immediate predecessor, the erstwhile Francis. Francis had been a native of Argentina, a fact which had itself brought surprise and jubilation upon his selection. Yet despite the vast physical distance between Argentina and Illinois, the two had had much in common. Italian immigrant families, religious orders long estranged from the halls of Vatican power, extensive careers in South America, and a certain air of genteel humility made the two natural partners as Francis assumed leadership in 2013, as Francis worked to not only tackle challenges within the church but more universal issues such as human rights and environmental issues. It also made him Francis’ natural successor. In fact, Father Bob spent so much time in Peru that he not only became a legal citizen of the country, he was considered something of a native son by the Peruvians. When he was selected to succeed Francis, papers in Peru led not with his childhood home in Chicago, but his Peruvian home of Chiclayo. He has already delivered remarks in Latin, English, and Spanish, clearly as comfortable with one as any of the others. He’s already gone so far as to update his Peruvian citizenship with his new address in Vatican City, clearly intending to retain both Peruvian and United States citizenship for as long as possible.

Pope Leo is American.

Even if you were following the news as closely as possible after the announcement was made, it would have been impossible to catch everything. The single most spiritually powerful person on earth has already lived a long, full life of hard work, noble service, and at least a few controversies. Many of his contemporaries in age are nearing retirement, if they haven’t already. There is much to be written about the man, and much to discuss. So one would be forgiven for missing one of the most surprising-and, in my mind, important- revelations about him. When the selection was made, a Louisiana genealogist by the name of Jari Honora took an interest in his French-sounding maiden name of Prevost, and decided to see if there was anything interesting in his family records. As it turned out, there was-not so much on his father’s side, but on his mother’s. His maternal line came from New Orleans, and was within living memory considered “mulatto.” Though his immediate family does not think of themselves as black, it nonetheless makes him the first Pope with notable heritage from sub-Saharan Africa. More to the point, it makes him representative of a unique feature of the Americas- namely, the constant and varied mixing of heritages which has both created and required a unique way of approaching political identities. Robert Prevost is a baseball-playing Chicagoan, a saltido-eating Chiclayo priest, a Pennsylvania college grad, a Frenchman, an Italian, a Creole, a US citizen, a Peruvian citizen-

Pope Leo is American.

Identities have long been uniquely malleable and mixable in the Americas. In Europe and Asia, national identities are almost exclusively tied to cultural identities. This has been the source of centuries of strife and horror, as time and again both peacetime politics and the conduct of war has devolved into savage internecine violence, endless orgies of Hebrews and Ephraimites taking each other to the sword again and again. Even today, Europe struggles to integrate those descended from former colonial subjects who had been part of life in the metropole for generations. To be sure, the Americas are now and have always been wracked with racial and even religious violence and inequality. Yet it still remains that national identities in the Americas are fundamentally, necessarily malleable and adaptable in ways that old world identities struggle to be. Black, white, native, east Asian, south Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic- knowing any of these about someone from anywhere in the hemisphere will not necessarily bring one any closer to knowing where on the continent they might be from, or how they identify. Generations of immigration, assimilation, and intermarriage from Juneau to Tierra del Fuego have produced a massive stretch of land and people who have much more in common than might be expected- even by the Americans themselves.

There was a time when those living on the continent had some sense of this. The Monroe doctrine and Cinco de Mayo are nearly all that remain these days, but once upon a time, the Americas understood their destinies to be woven firmly together, and their governance and rhetoric showed it. This was hardly a harmonious relationship much of the time, but the principle remained: those in the Americas thought of themselves as Americans, united in a certain common spirit and destiny. Over the years, especially over the 20th Century, this sentiment seems to have largely disappeared, especially in the United States and Canada. This has been a terrible mistake. There’s simply no other word for it. While the focus on European and Asian security and relationships which defined foreign policy in both countries since 1914 is perfectly understandable, it nonetheless means that this sense of common identity and destiny has eroded, with both North and South America worse off for it. But all is far from lost. As the 21st century picks up pace, political, social, and economic changes mean that now is more ripe a time to rediscover the concept of pan-Americanism than ever. Issues such as environmental protection, democratic backsliding, and international crime hardly can be stopped by lines on a map, and it makes little sense to approach them piecemeal. But more than that, as Latin America struggles to keep its progress on major issues and the United States and Canada search for 21st century identities and purposes, it’s worth reconsidering what it means to be countries which are part of the story of the Americas, past and future. There will always be a place for leadership on the continents from the two countries, but even more than that, there will be a place for the people.

After all, Pope Leo is American-and we are, too.