Leo XIV will pose some tricky problems for Giorgia Meloni – The Economist – 15.05.25
- Michael Julien
- May 18
- 4 min read
The newly enthroned pope has criticised the MAGA bigwigs whom the Italian leader supports.
FROM TIME to time, Charlemagne comes face to face with a pope. The first occasion was in the year 800 when Leo III placed a crown on his head and proclaimed him emperor of a reborn Roman Empire. More recently, it has become a ritual for a new pope—the latest is another Leo—to thank the scribes who have covered his election, this time including your columnist. Since 2005 the death of a pope has also been marked by a new ritual.
Barely is the poor man’s body cold than articles appear in Italian newspapers arguing that the chances have never been better of a return to normality (John Paul II had been the first non-Italian pope for 455 years) and predicting that the next pope will be an Italian. When lists are published of cardinals deemed papabile (literally, pope-able), half or more are invariably Italians.
Non-Italian commentators, who assume their Italian counterparts have an inside track, repeat these names until, by the time the cardinals are locked into the Sistine Chapel, it has become a near-certainty they will choose an Italian. It happened again this time. The odds on Pietro Parolin becoming pope had shrunk to 6 to 4 on; but it was an American who emerged onto the balcony of St Peter’s.
The choice of Robert Prevost has jolted the relationship between Italy and the papacy perhaps more than anything since the French transferred the headquarters of the Catholic church to Avignon more than 700 years ago. John Paul II, who became pope in 1978, may have been a Pole. But he was a European from a solidly Catholic country with which Italians could identify.
Benedict XVI was also a European, though from a country that is only partly Catholic. But because of that coronation in 800, Germany’s history was tangled up with Italy’s for more than eight centuries. As for Francis, plucked “almost from the end of the earth” to quote his own words, he had an Italian surname, Italian forebears and spoke Italian almost like a native.
Cardinal Prevost’s transformation into Leo XIV takes the papacy beyond not just Italy, but Europe. Yet the Catholic church remains centred in its own mini-state inside the Italian capital, creating an uncomfortable juxtaposition for the current Italian government. So far, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, has succeeded in persuading President Donald Trump that she is that rare thing: a sound MAGA-loving European.
Now she finds herself sharing Rome with a head of state who has belaboured on social media not only Mr Trump’s deputy, J.D. Vance, but indirectly Mr Trump himself. And—worse—she has to laud and court this most hallowed critic of the administration. It would be more than the career of any Italian politician is worth to gainsay a pope. And that is even truer of the leader of a party like the Brothers of Italy, many of whose followers regard themselves as faithful Catholics.
Francis, of course, posed a similar problem. But his alienation from Ms Meloni’s rightists could be taken for granted; he had no liking for them, and to them he was little better than a Marxist. One of his earliest statements was Evangelii Gaudium, which inveighed against an “economy of exclusion and inequality”. That was never likely to be a work popular with American oligarchs like Ms Meloni’s chum, Elon Musk.
Leo poses a greater difficulty, not just for Ms Meloni, but for that part—and it is a large part—of the international populist right that considers itself Christian. First, his age. At a sprightly looking 69, we can expect him to be around for another 20 years or more, in which he will have ample time, opportunity and authority to hammer home his messages.
Then there are the beliefs that underlie them. Branding him a Francis clone, as some of the more extreme MAGA types have done, won’t wash. The new pope has been described as middle-of-the-road. But, based on what we know so far, it would seem more accurate to say that, unlike many diehard Catholic liberals and traditionalists, he embraces with equal conviction the whole of Catholic teaching.
A pope for all. Leo’s papal name honours Leo XIII, the father of Catholic social doctrine. He is passionate about caring for the marginalised, protecting the environment and guaranteeing the welfare of migrants. But unlike Francis, who made his first appearance in plain white robes, Leo sported a mozzetta, a shoulder-length cape of red velvet like that worn by Benedict and scores of traditionalist popes before him.
Back in 2012, the future Leo XIV deplored the “homosexual lifestyle” and non-traditional families. And while he was the head of the Augustinian order and Francis the archbishop of Buenos Aires, the two men clashed, as Leo has disclosed. Relations between them were sufficiently poor that when the former Cardinal Bergoglio was elected pope, Leo told some fellow-Augustinians that, as a result, he would never be made a bishop.
Francis must have come to appreciate Leo’s qualities, however, because he later did make him a bishop, then gave him a key role in the Vatican and finally made him a cardinal. But Leo has rejected the ordination of women, even as deacons. And as a bishop in Peru from 2015 to 2023, he opposed the teaching of gender theory in schools. In his native Illinois he has voted more often in Republican than Democratic primaries. None of this squares with his being an out-and-out progressive. Thus, if and when he speaks out about, say, the Italian government carting asylum-seekers off to Albania, it will have far greater credibility.
But will he speak out? Might he be tempted to blunt his barbs now he is pope? If his new name is anything to go by, he will not shrink from confrontation. Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther. And Leo I, known as Leo the Great, travelled north from Rome to eyeball Attila the Hun near Mantua. After meeting the pope, Attila meekly turned around his horde and left Italy without sacking Rome. Moral? Never underestimate a Leo. ■
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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Meeting the pope”
Illustration: Ellie Foreman-Peck
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