HUGH HEWITT: Will Pope Leo XIV reverse the anti-American vibe from the last pope?

Many Catholics around the world must marvel at the wild diversity of reactions to the election of Pope Leo XIV within the United States. 

Something approaching half of the hot takes from American media on the day of Pope Leo’s elevation that traveled abroad from X were on baseball and deep dish pizza. Another subset of reactions are Villanova alums getting elbows into the ribs of their Notre Dame pals accompanied by some knowing and approving nods from their friends who are Boston College, Holy Cross or Georgetown alums. There’s baseball, and there is "American Catholic inside baseball."

Whatever the Catholic faithful in Africa think of Cubs-White Sox chatter, or what the new pope’s old Peruvian diocesan flock makes of the dissection in the American Catholic media of "Bishop Bob’s" choice of the name Leo and whatever "Rerum Novarum" is, it’s a good bet that most of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics are in a "wait and see" mode, relieved that it didn’t take long —perhaps a little side-eyed at the choice of an American but reassured by the obvious love for him from his Peruvian "family"— and that everyone with a red hat appears to be happy even as the tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square thundered their applause. But for the generation of boomers around his age of 69, the astonished reaction is at the very idea that one of our number is the heir to Saint Peter’s mission as the "rock" upon which Christ’s church would be built. 

POPE LEO XIV CALLS THIS A CHALLENGE TO ‘HUMAN DIGNITY’ IN FIRST ADDRESS TO CARDINALS

The new pope is half a year older than I am, and thus an "OK Boomer" American Catholic, though one with a missionary’s heart and a zeal to serve the poor. He will not, however, be able to (or perhaps want to) escape his 1960s’ and 1970s’ upbringing, will get "Laugh In" references, Farah Fawcett posters, Saturday Night Fever (especially John Travolta’s older brother who quit the priesthood and the shock that sent though the family) and Jaws. That’s all new for a pope, I think. I have no idea which, if any, American media he reads now or if he follows the MLB standings or the NFL draft. But he most certainly is, very much, a "Wonder Years" kid —a reference to the 1988 TV series about being an American kid of the ‘60s starring Fred Savage and Danica McKellar that began in 1988 and ran six years. 

Pope Leo will almost certainly have been an altar boy when the big switch from Latin to English for the Mass was made, a rug-pull which left those of us who did the work to memorize the Latin beyond "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" but didn’t get to use it for long, if at all, feeling aggrieved.

Pope Leo knows the big stuff —he’s a canon lawyer after all— but also the small stuff of American Catholicism such as that altar boys in America usually got tipped at weddings, forgotten at funerals and that Stations of the Cross on Good Fridays are a big deal.  

If Chicago parochial schools were like those in Ohio, the classes were big, often 40 or more, but the sisters and their lay colleagues kept order. (Yes, they did, and not with much difficulty.)  The stage play "Late Night Catechism" nails those days and those schools, and if that "one sister" show puts on a run near you, it’s a better read on the new pope’s upbringing than anything in the American press.

In our youth, priests came to dinner and had a few drinks before, during and after. They were good men, normal guys, but significant figures to be respected and the house cleaned before they came. "Father" usually handed out the report cards in elementary school. 

There was, in two words, "deference and respect" when in their presence, and order before and during their visits or appearances, whether on playgrounds, gyms or school PTA or parish council meetings. As a young professional in the Beltway in the early ‘80s, my friends from the old school gathered to welcome the monsignor when he came to town…because that is what you did for the priests and sisters who ran the church (and the schools and the hospitals) in the enveloping culture of American Catholicism which cocooned youth in those turbulent years. The awful scandals concerning the abuse of children certainly happened, and are crimes which have scarred so many, but the original "men in black" were then and now overwhelmingly good men and true to their sacrificial vows. 

Leo the XIV almost certainly recalls where he was when St. John Paul the Great was shot. He will remember it with a clarity that still shocks. And I guess he will revere St. John Paul the Great. Because that saint worked with Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher to help Lech Walesa bring down first the communist governments of the Warsaw Pact along with the Wall and then the entire "Evil Empire."

What Pope Leo thinks of his predecessor’s deal with the Chinese Communist Party I do not know, but I pray he conveys to General Secretary Xi Jinping that the imprisoned dissident, and devout Catholic, Jimmy Lai, should be freed and sent to the United Kingdom for treatment quickly or opposition from the "invisible divisions" of the pope will become very visible, very quickly. 

I pray as well that he corrects for Pope Francis’ inexplicable antagonism towards some of the great leaders of American Catholicism of the last quarter-century and elevates Archbishops Charles Chaput and José Horacio Gomez to the College of Cardinals as Francis ought to have done more than a decade ago. The palpable anti-American vibe of Francis was as unnecessary as it was divisive. (Chaput, a Native American now retired as Archbishop of Philadelphia, and Gomez, born in Mexico and leading the Los Angeles diocese, reflect the modern American faithful at least as much as anyone else in the College. The former pope, may he rest in peace, carried an unprovoked hostility towards them just as he did to the Latin Mass and its enthusiasts, and even towards the U.S. Church as a whole, an enmity as inexplicable as the many ambiguities that the casual off-handed remarks of the last pope created across continents, dioceses and orders. Bringing Chaput to Rome and leaning on Gomez for guidance on West Coast Catholicism as well as Archbishop Cordileone in San Francisco would be so very, very welcomed and an easy measure that proclaims "reconciliation." Of course Leo won’t exclude the "progressive" Americans in the Church leadership, but some balance, please. 

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On understanding Pope Leo: I’d wager he knows the lyrics of at least one, if not all, of the theme songs of Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres or Mister Ed. I’d love to know the titles in his album collection gathering dust somewhere in a brother’s attic unless Leo sold it —he might have— to give the proceeds to the poor. I don’t think the babies of the American Baby Boom rise in the universal Church unless they had the common touch that came from the common culture of the time. 

Most Catholics of all sorts and ages in America, but especially those taught by the parochial schools of that era, carry a knowledge of the obligation owed by the well-off to the poor. My parish —and I would not be surprised if his old one (reportedly closed now)— sponsored at least one refugee family from South Vietnam, resettled across the U.S. after their flight following the fall of Saigon in 1975. It was an early lesson on the Church’s welcome to the refugees who have had to flee tyranny. 

If the new pope learned to gamble for small stakes at the summer parish carnivals that continue to this day it would be the rule, not the exception. Is he a Villanova Wildcats basketball nut like most Villanova grads I’ve ever met? Who knows what math majors do, but he probably has filled in his share of brackets, understands batting averages and perhaps watched Saturday Night Live more than a few times. What a great (and evangelical) thing it would be to see the pope courtside at a Final Four down the road, though the pressure on the young men from Villanova would skyrocket (as might vocations in the U.S.)

The not merely "conventional" wisdom, but the actual "universally held belief" that an American could not be elected pope fell like many such convictions over the decades for many reasons we can only guess at. But perhaps the perfect candidate emerged who could please both those cardinals who wanted some, if not complete, continuity with Francis’ preference for the migrant and the desperately poor, but also one who assuaged some, if not all, the concerns of those cardinals who recognized a widening divide with American Catholicism, a divide that could become the sort of rupture that, if expanded instead of bridged, could become permanent and even schismatic. 

Who knows? Nobody. Not even Pope Leo XIV, I would guess, surrounded as he is by a world on fire and a Vatican deep in financial chaos. Every opinion will be premature until after one or two consistories —those occasions when popes add to the men in the College of Cardinals. Pope Leo could do a lot to repair breaches in the Church with some early selections there which heal divisions while also continuing the embrace begun by St. John Paul the Great and continued by Benedict and Francis of a global Church that holds up the divinity of Jesus Christ first and always and usually recalls and broadcasts that the Beatitudes are the quick hack on the whole of the Gospels. 

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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