Holy Forking Shirtballs, We Got Ourselves a Pope Guy

There's a ton of stuff going on that I need to catch up on, from previous posts that need updates currently happening in the news.

The easiest thing to report on is that the Cardinals elected a new Pope on the second day of conclave, some considered it unusually fast but the results were just as fast for the last three elections or so, nothing shocking about that. What was shocking is that the smoke didn't come out purple (Prince, why hast thou abandoned us), and that the new Pope is a guy from Chicago (!):

And he's from the South Side of Chicago, home of the beleaguered White Sox, the Daley political dynasty and, until they decamped for Washington and eventually the White House, Michelle and Barack Obama.

The new pope, who has spent much of his career ministering in Peru and leading the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops, was born Robert Francis Prevost on Sept. 14, 1955, at what was then called Mercy Hospital, at the corner of South Prairie Avenue and 34th Street.

But while Prevost made his debut in Chicago, his parents and two older brothers were already living just south of the sprawling city in a working-class suburb called Dolton...

Prevost's father, Louis Prevost, served in the Navy during World War II and worked as a superintendent of schools in the south suburbs of Chicago.

The future pope's mother, Mildred Martinez Prevost, was a librarian with a master's degree in education and two sisters who were nuns.

His mom was a librarian?! (respectful grumbling noises)

The rest of the bio at the NBC News article details Prevost's education, heading to Villanova to get a degree in math before joining a Catholic Order - for St. Augustine - getting another degree in theology and then a doctorate for Canon Law in Rome itself. His career in the church was balanced between work in Peru - to where he got naturalized as a citizen there - and overseeing the Augustinian order as an admin.

The bad news? Prevost got involved in the cover-ups of various sex abuse scandals both the American Midwest and in Peru. While he himself hasn't been accused of the acts, he failed to report the matters or failed to remove the culprits from their positions. It can be argued that the church's bureaucracy was corrupt enough that Prevost couldn't do any other, but it remains shameful that he didn't do more to protect the victims and work to prevent any future ones.

The good news? Prevost's taking the name Leo (the XIV, that's 14 in Latin) as symbolic of what role he wants to perform as pontiff: Reformer. In particular, carrying on his predecessor Leo XIII who stood for workers' rights, better wages, and social justice for the poor on a global level. Leo's already attacking the Artificial Intelligence movement, how it threatens human dignity and labor rights.

There is also the huge implications of the Catholic Church promoting an American-born to the Papacy and how it's a huge rebuke to trump's regime (via Francis (no relation) X. Rocca at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

...the conclave that concluded today in Rome has chosen the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church: Robert Francis Prevost. Making the milestone even more remarkable is that Prevost was chosen on just the second day of voting by the most geographically diverse body of papal electors in history. Perhaps most surprising of all is that the Church’s first-ever American pope was selected during Donald Trump’s presidency, as Washington assumes a more contentious stance toward the rest of the world...

Many observers are likely to cast Leo as anti-Trump, a role that Francis was often cast in himself. In February, a profile on X apparently belonging to Leo reposted an article criticizing J. D. Vance, who had argued that Catholics should prioritize their family and neighbors over foreigners. And indeed, it seems likely that the new pope will continue policies—such as advocacy for migrants and environmental protection—that his immediate predecessor embraced and that the current U.S. administration largely opposes. But almost any of the 133 men voting in the Sistine Chapel today would have done the same had he been chosen pope... By taking the name Leo, the new pope is clearly signaling an intention to highlight modern Catholic social teaching, a tradition that began with Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903.

That the new Pope is going to come out swinging for workers' rights is happening just as trump and his oligarch billionaire buddies like Elon Musk are gutting federal workplaces and causing havoc with our trade / tourism industries to where large-scale unemployment is unavoidable.

Leo's position on immigration - similar to Pope Francis' - already puts him in conflict with trump and the sadists in trump's administration (via Ali Bianco and Gregory Svirnovskiy at Politico):

A social media account under the pope’s name repeatedly criticized the Trump administration — and especially Vice President JD Vance — in the months and years before assuming the papacy.

A series of posts under an account for Robert Prevost — now the Bishop of Rome and newly anointed as Pope Leo XIV — shows the Chicago-born Cardinal reposting an op-ed criticizing Vance on his interpretation of his faith, and the strict immigration policies that Vance along with President Donald Trump have touted.

The account in mid-April reposted someone else’s rebuke to Trump’s meeting in the Oval Office with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and pointed to an op-ed by auxiliary Catholic Bishop Evelio Menjivar of Washington, D.C., highlighting the suffering of migrants summarily deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador.

“Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?” the op-ed that Prevost reposted reads.

In a more pointed example, the account in February posted an opinion piece from the National Catholic Reporter, a liberal-leaning Catholic newspaper, titled: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

It's telling that the rabid MAGA base are livid about Leo XIV being the head of the largest American Christian denomination (via Greg Sargent at the New Republic (paywalled)): 

Right after the news broke that Robert Francis Prevost was elected as the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the internet produced lots of evidence that he has promoted articles critical of JD Vance and Donald Trump, and even expressed sympathy for George Floyd. That prompted MAGA figures to erupt in anger. They attacked the new pope as anti-Trump, pro–open borders, a Marxist, and soft on thugs and drug dealers, as Media Matters documented...

In a podcast with Matt McManus (a contributor to Commonweal) Sargent covers some of the attacks (via transcript):

McManus: Well, I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot more about the new pope’s views over the next couple days as people scour everything he is ever written and everything that he is ever said. The choice of the name Leo is itself significant. Pope Leo was widely regarded as the “People’s Pope” or the “Workers’ Pope” because he is one of the founders of Catholic social teaching. Now, to be clear, the O.G. Pope Leo was by no means a socialist or a Marxist, the way they, say Laura Loomer, is trying to imply that the current Pope Leo is a Marxist. But he did stress that there were significant problems with capitalism that led to the emergence of things like atheistic socialism and atheistic Marxism and called for a conciliation between workers and capitalists that would favor the workers—or at least better their conditions. So I think that in itself is telling about the direction that he is planning on going in.

But if you look at some of the stuff he said over the past couple years, he is very clearly pro-immigrant. Back in 2015, he stated that he was opposed to the death penalty. He spent a long time in Peru, by all accounts living in quite modest circumstances and demonstrating an unusual level of concern for the poor. So that’s all a positive sign.

Sargent: Well, MAGA is not happy about any of it. Charlie Kirk accused the pope of “retweeting George Floyd propaganda.” Laura Loomer erupted over the idea that the Pope seemed to endorse the need to pray for Floyd, calling him a “career criminal” and “drug addict.” MAGA figure Sean Davis called the Pope anti-Trump and pro–open borders...

If you are known by your enemies, then we know Leo XIV is going to be someone standing up for the immigrant, the impoverished, and the "what the hell happened to our jobs" citizenry.

It's still early, but there ought to be a betting line in the UK on how quickly the Pope is going to excommunicate JD Vance, and for whichever sadistic stance Vance will take in defense of trump's crimes.

In the meantime, just be aware the new Pope is a White Sox fan (the first known pontiff to attend a World Series!), an eater of Chicago-style hot dogs and tavern pizza (not sure about deep dish, alas), and now comes with his own Power-Up music intro.

Just as long as Bobby... uh, Pope Leo remembers this one key thing from the Blues Brothers:

Boys, you gotta learn not to talk to nuns that way.