Within the days main as much as the conclave that may identify the 267th pope, Catholic muckety-mucks from the U.S. descended on Rome for every week of networking, schmoozing, and fundraising. “America Week,” because it’s referred to as, had been deliberate lengthy earlier than the demise of Pope Francis, however the timing couldn’t have been higher. For the previous 12 years, the archconservative wing of the Roman Catholic Church had discovered itself out of energy, annoyed by a pontiff who had restricted use of the Latin Mass and allowed monks to bless same-sex {couples}. Now, the wealthiest amongst them can be available to socialize and gossip and, simply perhaps, in the event that they prayed their rosaries proper, tilt the Faculty of Cardinals towards their alternative as the following chief of the world’s 1.4 billion members of the religion.
When, on the second day of voting, the previous Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost emerged on the loggia of Saint Peter’s as Pope Leo XIV, it turned fairly clear the conservative Institution had misplaced once more. The traditionalists, for all their political and monetary muscle, discovered their affect slipping nonetheless. The one query was, What subsequent? The visiting MAGA delegation had a couple of concepts. In a borrowed Airbnb removed from historic Roman palazzi, they had been stirring a well-known brew of conspiratorial dissent. Inside days, Stephen Ok. Bannon claimed to Corriere Della Sera that the conclave had been “rigged.”
“The one smoke that labored out of their favor was the cigar smoke that they had at their receptions,” mentioned Christopher White, the Vatican correspondent for Nationwide Catholic Reporter, a liberal outlet, who’s writing a e-book on Leo ordered by Loyola Press.
America Week is like Comedian Con for Catholic supernerds, and this yr being a Jubilee, which takes place each 25 years, there have been particular perks for the pilgrims, together with the choice to earn indulgences to knock day without work purgatory. “We toured the 4 main basilicas, the 4 holy doorways,” mentioned Edward Fitzgerald III, president of the board on the Papal Basis, the place benefactors who donate $1million are known as “Stewards of Saint Peter. “It was exceptionally thrilling to see the cardinals out and about.” The group’s chairman, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, gave remarks at an occasion within the St. Regis Rome. At one other operate, Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis — “Princess TNT” in her ’80s occasion days and now an ultraright-wing salonnière and good friend of Justice Samuel Alito — broke bread with Brian Burch, the president of conservative advocacy group CatholicVote and President Trump’s ambassadorial nominee to the Holy See.
Fringe members of the American Catholic diaspora had been additionally bumming round, although in far-less-opulent quarters. Jack Posobiec, a MAGA influencer linked to the “Pizzagate” conspiracy principle, had rolled into city and bought Vatican press credentials. He’d been touring with a producer of his podcast Human Occasions Each day, Russ Spacy, who works with Turning Level USA, Charlie Kirk’s conservative-youth nonprofit.
Earlier than the conclave, right-wing media printed a “Faculty of Cardinals Report”: detailed dossiers meant to solid their favourite candidates in a greater mild — amongst them Cardinal Raymond Burke, Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea, and Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo, who was seen as having Viktor Orbán’s assist.
Francis loved excessive approval scores amongst American Catholics — round 80 p.c expressed a positive opinion in surveys by the Pew Analysis Heart — however the traditionalists despised him, even when they present in him a helpful enemy. Like Martin Luther earlier than them, the trads defied the orthodoxy that instructed them to obey the pontiff and claimed to be higher keepers of the religion than the pope himself. “Francis liberated MAGA Catholics,” mentioned David Gibson, the director of the Heart on Faith and Tradition at Fordham College. “They don’t agree with the pope, in order that they accuse the pope of heresy.”
Over a late lunch in a vacationer café close to the Vatican, I requested Benjamin Harnwell, Bannon’s man in Rome and the worldwide editor of the Struggle Room podcast, to stroll me by the grievances with Francis. He referred to as him the “faux pope” and expressed dismay over the 2018 association with the Folks’s Republic of China that enables the pope the facility to nominate or veto Catholic bishops chosen by the Chinese language authorities. If China can decide bishops, why not the laity? Harnwell mentioned. His endgame, he informed me, was to make use of the Struggle Room “to provide working towards Catholics again their sense of company.” He made it seem to be Brexit for Catholics.
Harnwell is 50, and his hair is shaved behind the ears, longer on prime. He transformed to Catholicism in his 20s in London and labored for a Conservative member of the European Parliament earlier than turning to the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, a undertaking Steve Bannon later joined, to start out an “Academy for the Judeo-Christian West” in a Carthusian monastery outdoors Rome. A choice by an Italian court docket blocked entry to the positioning, nevertheless it was reversed final yr. “We’ll get it again,” Harnwell informed me. Von Thurn und Taxis has volunteered her fortress in Germany as a campus.
When white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel chimney, I stood on Through Della Conciliazione. Nobody round me might imagine an American had been elected. However it was clear to longtime observers the trads by no means had the numbers and had been more likely to splinter the vote. Francis had named nearly all of voting cardinals, in any case. By Friday, Posobiec was on his solution to Bucharest to interview Romanian presidential candidate George Simion, a right-wing nationalist who’s pledged to “Make Romania Nice Once more.” Spacy was behind the digital camera on the brink of movie an episode of the Struggle Room with Harnwell, who sat on a white couch working towards the Latin formulation that was used to announce the pope. “I might try this job, proper?” Harnwell mentioned. The taping started. “This man has been massively embraced by the liberals and by the progressives, these teams within the church which we’re consistently preventing in opposition to,” Harnwell mentioned. There was a protracted plug for Patriot Cellular, “America’s Christian Conservative Wi-fi Supplier,” and Bannon’s voice appeared in a spot for “the Rio reset,” providing an information package on the way to purchase gold. Then Prevost’s political affiliation got here up. “That is the primary time that the Catholic Church has had somebody on the prime of the apex, the successor to Saint Peter himself, who’s a registered Republican,” Harnwell mentioned. Although it doesn’t essentially make Leo MAGA. “That implies that we’ll be seeing extra of a Mitt Romney factor.”
Afterward, I walked with Harnwell down the hill to the Vatican. “Leo could also be much more harmful than Bergoglio” — the late pope’s given identify — “he has each indication to be similar to Francis on the agenda however is way extra delicate,” he mentioned. I requested if he thought Leo was an “anti-pope” the best way he described Francis. “We don’t know but. It is dependent upon whether or not he does un-Catholic issues,” he mentioned. Like what? I requested. “We’ll understand it after we see it.”
We parted methods. Harnwell went towards Rome, and I walked by the colonnade into St. Peter’s Sq. now that the crowds had subsided. The MAGA saber-rattling will proceed. Leo runs an establishment that’s about 2,000 years previous. In his first viewers with the media Could 12, he mentioned, “The best way we talk is of basic significance. We should say ‘no’ to the disagreement and pictures.”
Bannon and the “America First” crowd could need to delegitimize the beginner pontifex maximus, however many devoted appear to love him already, particularly after Leo appeared on the loggia in a purple mozzetta cape over his white cassock with a sublime white stole embroidered in gold, not a easy white cassock as Francis wore. On the primary Sunday of the brand new papacy, I chatted with parishioners as they left Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, a traditionalist outpost in central Rome the place they rejoice the Latin Mass. I requested a Roman named Attilio Grieco what he product of Leo: “He seems to be like a pope.”
