Pope Leo XIV: The Quiet American

Almost three months since Pope Leo’s election, he has appeared about as rarely in the news as a new pope can.

VATICAN CITY — The moment it was announced from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica that the College of Cardinals had chosen their Chicago-born confrere Robert Prevost as pope, I shared the widespread excitement of my fellow journalists, Catholic and otherwise — most of all, the Americans.

The result was even more newsworthy than if the cardinals had picked an African or Asian, as thrilling as those outcomes would have been. From a purely journalistic point of view, the election of a U.S.-born pope — something that conventional wisdom had said was impossible right up to the moment we learned it had happened — seemed like the discovery of a gold mine.


Americans would, for the first time, hear the leader of the Catholic Church speak English as his native tongue, and his every utterance would be parsed, justifiably or not, as commentary on the actions of President Donald Trump, himself a one-man jobs program for reporters. The two men would appear almost constantly on a figurative, and at times literal, split screen. Rome would become a media capital to rival Washington and New York.

Or so many of us thought.

Today, almost three months since the election of Pope Leo XIV, the media reality defies those expectations. Apart from Catholic outlets such as the National Catholic Register, which have naturally covered him with the intensity and enthusiasm demanded by their mission and audience, Leo has appeared about as rarely in the news as a new pope can.

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