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Will Pope Leo XIV Confront MAGA?

Interview with
Massimo Faggioli

Robert Francis Prevost, the first US-born pope, embodies Catholicism’s anti-nationalist ethos. Will he follow Pope Francis in confronting the resurgence of nativism in the US and abroad?

Robert Francis Prevost Announced As the New Pope, Leo XIV

The newly elected Pope Leo XIV greets the crowd from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City on May 8, 2025. (Andrea Straccioli / Insidefoto / Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

On Thursday, the papal conclave announced its election of Robert Francis Prevost as Pope Leo XIV, the first US-born supreme pontiff in the history of the Catholic Church.

Jacobin interviewed Massimo Faggioli in the wake of the election about the continuities and break-ups that his papacy will bring following the pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis, a church reformer who, among other things, broke with the Roman authority’s open hostility toward left-wing thought.

Faggioli is a church historian at Villanova University and one of the best-known experts in the Catholic Church and its relation to American politics. His latest book is Da Dio a Trump (From God to Trump: Catholic crisis and American politics).

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