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May 9, 2025

Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu

Habemus Americanum

Newly elected Pope Leo waves from the balcony at Saint Peter's Basilica on Thursday. Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

You could have knocked most American Catholics down with a feather.

Few among the faithful believed that they’d ever live to see an American Pope. But the Vatican’s secretive conclave of cardinals proved them wrong. And not for the first time, the Church of Rome demonstrated that it mastered the game of politics centuries before today’s dominant Western democracies even existed.

The new Pope Leo XIV was until Thursday evening known as Cardinal Robert Prevost and to his friends as Bob. Now he leads 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.

His emergence from the double doors of the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square soon after the white smoke from the Vatican chimney signaled his election, sent the crowd wild, and caused an outpouring of pride in the US.

“Holy smokes!! An American Pope! From CHICAGO!!!” wrote former Obama administration political adviser David Axelrod on X. In Washington DC, priests and worshippers rushed to the city’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to pray.

The first American pope arrived at a momentous moment when an American president has turned the world on its head. So, it’s hard to believe that the cardinals weren’t making some kind of political statement, even if Leo’s duties -- in a role Catholics believe serves as God’s representative on Earth -- supersede politics.

America First, Leo is not. Despite growing up in the Windy City and attending Villanova University in Philadelphia, he spent more than two decades in Peru, where he became a naturalized citizen. While Trump was amassing his billions, the former Robert Prevost was living a spartan life consistent with his vows of chastity and poverty. He speaks multiple languages and it was notable he spoke in Italian and Spanish in his first remarks as pontiff and didn’t utter a word of English. He also gave a shout out to his former diocese in Peru.

As is the way in the US, Leo has already been sucked into a political vortex. One of his most pressing tasks will be to unify the American Catholic Church, which is split down the middle on issues like LGBTQ rights and prohibitions on women priests. Conservative Catholics are likely to be disappointed that he’s seen as a continuity pick with the late Pope Francis, who criticized the Trump administration’s immigration policies and backed action to fight climate change. Liberals may see his elevation as a rebuke to MAGA world.

President Donald Trump hailed Leo’s election as an honor for the United States. Once he learns more about the new pope’s doctrine, his position could sour.

It will be fascinating to watch how Trump deals with this new reality: there are now two towering American figures of great power bestriding the globe. And they could hardly be more different in conduct and temperament.

'None of our business'

US Vice President JD Vance on Thursday explained why the Trump administration is yet to launch a peace effort to ease the latest crisis between India and Pakistan, following multiple efforts by previous presidents to stop conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

“What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit, but we're not going to get involved in the middle of war that's fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America's ability to control it,” Vance told Fox News. “You know, America can't tell the Indians to lay down their arms. We can't tell the Pakistanis to lay down their arms. And so, we're going to continue to pursue this thing through diplomatic channels,” he said.

“Our hope and our expectation is that this is not going to spiral into a broader regional war or, God forbid, a nuclear conflict,” Vance said. “Right now, we don't think that's going to happen.”

At the front of the queue

Trump badly needed the thing he’s supposedly better at getting than anyone else on Earth — a deal.

And the United Kingdom gave him one.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government on Thursday won the race to be the first country to make a trade agreement with Trump after he launched his global tariff war.

Of course, the hyperbolic president proclaimed one of the great breakthroughs in history. “This is a maxed-out deal,” he said. But as always, he’s exaggerating.

The pact is way short of the comprehensive free trade accord with the US that Britain has craved since leaving the EU. But it eliminates tariffs on British steel and aluminum exports to the US and lowers duties on car exports. The UK will ease tariffs on beef and ethanol exports that are important in Trump’s rural heartlands.

But Britain will still face a 10% tariff on most exports to the United States.

Let’s be honest, this was just about the easiest deal that Trump could get. Others, with America’s biggest trading partners, like the European Union, Canada, Mexico and Japan would be far more complex. But they are vital if the president is to justify the damage he’s already done to a US economy sliding into negative growth and the stock market-linked pensions of millions of people.

This was mostly about symbolism. To satisfy markets and his own Republican lawmakers, Trump needed to start making good on his vow to forge 90 deals in 90 days after he paused many reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries more than a month ago.

Britain had a card to play that boosted its national interests. Ever since being overtaken as the world’s major superpower, British leaders have sought America’s friendship and protection. This is what led the UK into the disastrous war with Iraq. In the treacherous new era dominated by Trump, the “special relationship” is harder to maintain than ever before. Still, Starmer’s team played on the president’s sentimental attachment to the old country, especially his late mother’s native Scotland, where he has two golf resorts. And he was predictably dazzled by King Charles III’s letter inviting him for a state visit that Starmer pulled out of his suit pocket during their first Oval Office meeting earlier this year.

“Donald. This is a really fantastic, historic,” Starmer said on the Oval Office speakerphone on Thursday. He also drew an analogy with commemorations of the day the US and the UK vanquished the Nazis on VE Day. “To be able to announce this great deal on the same day 80 years forward, almost at the same hour … with the UK and the US standing side-by-side, (is) I think incredibly important,” he said. His words were a reminder of how World War II remains the most powerful mythology in UK politics and national identity.

Starmer’s government turned a trick by being the first in the queue to do a deal with Trump, despite former President Barack Obama’s warning in 2016 that the UK would be at the "back of the queue" for a trade pact with Washington if it left the EU.

But the question is now the same as with every Trump deal. Will he honor it?

Thanks for reading.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts Chinese President Xi Jinping for a Victory Day parade, celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany.