When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was chosen as pope on Thursday, President Trump shortly provided the primary U.S.-born pontiff a hearty congratulations.
“It’s such an honor to understand that he’s the primary American Pope,” Mr. Trump mentioned in a statement. “What pleasure.”
However a few of Mr. Trump’s most fervent followers don’t look like feeling the thrill.
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 identify Leo XIV, leaders of the MAGA motion started to forged him as an enemy.
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who holds important sway with Mr. Trump, wrote Thursday on social media that Leo’s fashion can be just 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 stay up for,” she wrote. “Simply one other Marxist puppet within the Vatican.”
And on Friday, company on Steve Bannon’s standard right-wing “War Room” podcast piled on, casting Leo as a progressive determine and a continuation of Francis, an outspoken voice for migrants who was often at odds with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bannon, one of many president’s high allies, told the BBC that the choice was “form of jaw-dropping,” including that there was “undoubtedly going to be friction” between the brand new pope and Mr. Trump.
Few predicted that Cardinal Prevost can be chosen, however Mr. Bannon was maybe much less surprised than he let on. In April, he mentioned on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” that he believed the cardinal “sadly” was extra more likely to turn out to be 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 12 months’s presidential election and voting in three Republican primaries since 2012, based on data from Will County, which is exterior Chicago.
Information don’t present him voting in Democratic primaries in that time-frame. Illinois has open primaries, and voters there don’t declare a celebration after they register to vote.
However the brand new pope had apparently expressed unease with Mr. Trump’s immigration platform. A social media account beneath his identify posted an article in February that mentioned 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 told The New York Times on Thursday that he knew “for a reality” that the brand new pope was “not pleased with what’s occurring 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 known as the “gay life-style” and decried elements of contemporary tradition that stir “sympathy for beliefs and practices which can be at odds with the Gospel.”
Francis, who died two weeks ago, had a tense relationship with conservative American Catholics, who felt marginalized throughout his 12-year hold forth.
Francis spoke out strongly in opposition to Mr. Trump at instances. Throughout Mr. Trump’s first time period, Francis mentioned a policy of separating migrant children from their dad and mom on the U.S.-Mexico border was “immoral.” And he warned that those that shut borders “become prisoners of the walls that they build.”
Joan Francis Plum, a cousin of Leo’s, mentioned in an interview Thursday that the brand new pope would “be like Francis.”
“I feel that’s why Francis known as him to the Vatican — as a result of they have been comparable,” she mentioned of her cousin, who was elevated to an influential Vatican office in 2023. “He was handpicked by him. He’s very open-minded, and simply loving.”
