Congratulations, Chicago Catholics.
Congratulations, Catholic readers: America just struck the jackpot in the Popestakes. Yes, Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago was elected Pope on Thursday, taking the papal name of Leo XIV, and I’ve never been less qualified to say anything interesting about a development that everyone expects me to have an opinion on simply because of where I live. I hate to admit it, folks, but not only am I Episcopalian, I was also born and raised in Washington, D.C.
But, suddenly, the world is talking for once about something other than Donald Trump, and it’s impossible not to notice how much more cheerful everyone has gotten for it. (We’ll worry about that new Air Force One jet from Qatar some other time.) What name shall we give this cleansing breeze, this brief era of good feelings? I was tempted to go with “Popetimism,” but that’s a bit too close to “poptimism” — the worst trend in the entire history of music criticism — so instead, let’s call it “popium” — as in, rhymes with “hopium” and contains similar qualities.
And I now designate the City of Chicago an official Popium den. Sure, I might be a hell-bound Protestant, but I’m proud to bask in the reflected enthusiasm of my Catholic brethren here: Chicago is now clearly the holiest city in the Western Hemisphere. (Read it and weep, tradcaths.) To be perfectly honest, the only bad news in all of this is that my city’s most observant Catholics are now going to begin acting like obnoxious hipsters, smugly saying things like, “Well, I saw the pope celebrate mass when there were only 50 people in the room,” like a guy who caught Springsteen at the Bottom Line back in ’75 and won’t shut up about it.
What makes me laugh the most about Bob Prevost’s ascent from “serious-looking Villanova theology student” all the way to the papacy is how, if you trust the details in the New York Times this morning, Leo XIV basically won the gig the same way Jude Law does in the ridiculous old TV show The Young Pope: as a stealth American picked after other factions deadlocked in conclave. (And people said it was unrealistic!)
Who’s the ambassador to the Holy See right now? Suddenly that seems like a hugely important diplomatic role, given the novelty of an American pope — the first in nearly two millennia – and it seems like we’re going to need someone higher profile than <checks notes> Brian Burch. (Somewhere, in the Trump White House, I hear the conversation: “Can we give that one to Marco too?”)
Political strategist Rory Cooper noted that one of the bright sides of Cardinal Prevost’s ascending to the Holy See is that, for the first time ever, Italian people finally may get to experience real pizza. But I was most heartened to discover that the Monsters of Wrigleyville will have no place in the Vatican: Pope Leo’s brother was at great pains to emphasize this week that the holy father was “never, ever a Cubs fan” — and good thing, as it would have disqualified him from the position. But my old friend Dan Szymborski reminds us, via imaginary billboard, of the more terrifying truth we all have to process: “EVEN A CHICAGO POPE CAN’T SAVE THE WHITE SOX.”