When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was chosen as pope on Thursday, President Trump rapidly provided the primary U.S.-born pontiff a hearty congratulations.
“It’s such an honor to comprehend that he’s the primary American Pope,” Mr. Trump stated in a assertion. “What pleasure.”
However a few of Mr. Trump’s most fervent followers don’t seem like feeling the joy.
Virtually instantly after Cardinal Prevost, a local of the Chicago space who spent a long time ministering in Peru, emerged from the conclave as the brand new pope and took the title Leo XIV, leaders of the MAGA motion started to forged him as an enemy.
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who holds vital sway with Mr. Trump, wrote Thursday on social media that Leo’s fashion could be much like that of his predecessor, Pope Francis, whom she described as “anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a complete Marxist.”
“Catholics don’t have something good to sit up for,” she wrote. “Simply one other Marxist puppet within the Vatican.”
And on Friday, visitors on Steve Bannon’s well-liked right-wing “Battle Room” podcast piled on, casting Leo as a progressive determine and a continuation of Francis, an outspoken voice for migrants who was usually at odds with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bannon, one of many president’s prime allies, informed the BBC that the choice was “type of jaw-dropping,” including that there was “positively going to be friction” between the brand new pope and Mr. Trump.
Few predicted that Cardinal Prevost could be chosen, however Mr. Bannon was maybe much less surprised than he let on. In April, he stated on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” that he believed the cardinal “sadly” was extra prone to change into pope than observers realized. He cited Leo’s ideological proximity to Francis and his connections to Latin America.
A lot of Leo’s private politics are unclear. Through the years, he has voted in Illinois a number of instances, casting an absentee poll in final yr’s presidential election and voting in three Republican primaries since 2012, based on information from Will County, which is outdoors Chicago.
Data don’t present him voting in Democratic primaries in that timeframe. Illinois has open primaries, and voters there don’t declare a celebration once they register to vote.
However the brand new pope had apparently expressed unease with Mr. Trump’s immigration platform. A social media account below his title posted an article in February that stated Vice President JD Vance had misinterpreted Christian doctrine to assist Mr. Trump’s mass deportation effort. (The New York Instances didn’t independently confirm whether or not he ran the account.)
Leo’s brother John Prevost informed The New York Instances on Thursday that he knew “for a truth” that the brand new pope was “not proud of what’s happening with immigration.”
On different points, Leo has expressed positions that extra neatly conform with these of many American social conservatives. In a 2012 tackle to bishops, he expressed concern about what he referred to as the “gay way of life” and decried features of contemporary tradition that stir “sympathy for beliefs and practices which are at odds with the Gospel.”
Francis, who died two weeks in the past, had a tense relationship with conservative American Catholics, who felt marginalized throughout his 12-year hold forth.
Francis spoke out strongly towards Mr. Trump at instances. Throughout Mr. Trump’s first time period, Francis stated a coverage of separating migrant youngsters from their dad and mom on the U.S.-Mexico border was “immoral.” And he warned that those that shut borders “change into prisoners of the partitions that they construct.”
Joan Francis Plum, a cousin of Leo’s, stated in an interview Thursday that the brand new pope would “be like Francis.”
“I feel that’s why Francis referred to as him to the Vatican — as a result of they have been related,” she stated of her cousin, who was elevated to an influential Vatican workplace in 2023. “He was handpicked by him. He’s very open-minded, and simply loving.”
