Addressing the crowd in St Peter’s Square, Pope Leo XIV paid tribute to the late Pope Francis, urging the crowd to remember his predecessor’s legacy.
2025-05-0816:306061040www.cnn.com
White smoke has risen above the Sistine Chapel, the signal that cardinals have chosen a new pope on the second day of the conclave. Follow here for the latest.
In his first words as pope, Leo XIV said to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square: “Peace be with you all.”
Leo XIV looked visibly emotional as he waved to the adoring crowd in the square below the balcony.
Robert Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV, has just stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. He will soon speak.
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of the United States has been elected the 267th pope and will soon step onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as the new leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
Prevost, 69, from Chicago, Illinois, is the first ever pope from the United States. He will be known as Leo XIV.
A leader with global experience, he spent much of his career as a missionary in South America and most recently led a powerful Vatican office for bishop appointments. He is expected to build on Pope Francis’ reforms.
He worked for a decade in Trujillo, Peru, and was later appointed bishop of Chiclayo, another Peruvian city, where he served from 2014 to 2023. Prevost also holds a Peruvian passport and has been a Peruvian citizen since 2015.
In an interview with Vatican News shortly after he became the leader of the Dicastery for Bishops, Prevost said: “I still consider myself a missionary. My vocation, like that of every Christian, is to be a missionary, to proclaim the Gospel wherever one is.”
The new pope is revealed as Robert Prevost of the US, the first American pontiff in history. He will be known as Leo XIV.
There’s tens of thousands of people packed into St. Peter’s Square right now — and dozens of flags representing countries across the world.
We’ve seen Italian, Argentinian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Brazilian, Filipino and Polish flags, among many, many more.
All eyes are on the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Francesca, a lawyer from Rome, told CNN that came to St. Peter’s Square today “Because it’s an epic moment.”
Asked if she has favorite cardinal in mind to lead the church, she said she does not. “It’s in God’s hand,” she added, and she said that no matter who is chosen, “we would be happy in any case.”
Francesca added that since the world and the church is divided in this moment, she hopes for someone who has the quality of reconciliation and diplomacy.
As soon as the news of the white smoke spread through the Italian capital, some people began running through the streets of Rome to get to St. Peter’s Square. People continue to stream into the square from every alley that leads to the Vatican.
In the square itself, people are hugging and crying tears of joy.
While earlier the crowd was angling to get a good view of the Sistine Chapel chimney, they are now inching closer to the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica where the new pope is expected to emerge any moment.
The 267th leader of the Catholic Church will soon step onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and make himself known to the world.
First impressions count. When Pope Francis stepped onto the balcony in 2013, he did so dressed in simple white robes, shunning much of the papal pomp of his predecessors.
He chose “Francis” as his papal name in honor of Francis of Assisi, the Italian saint who renounced his family wealth and championed the poor.
Francis also addressed the crowd with the simple Italian greeting, “Buona sera,” meaning “good evening.”
Among the cheers from the thousands in St. Peter’s Square who are celebrating the election of a new pope, the Swiss Guard and band are marching, adding to the vibrant and joyful atmosphere.
He added that the band and Swiss Guard’s presence might mean “that it’s not too long until we get the news of who has been elected as pope.”
United States President Donald Trump took the stage at a White House event today shortly after white smoke out started streaming out of the Vatican chimney, a sign that the college of cardinals has selected a new pope.
“I saw the smoke, but I haven’t seen the pope,” Trump told reporters in the White House East Room.
Trump drew criticism after the White House account tweeted an AI-generated image of him dressed as a pope ahead of the papal conclave this week.
Now that the white smoke signal has gone out, we are waiting for the new pope to appear on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
Traditionally, that happens about 30 to 60 minutes after the signal.
His papal name will be announced, and the new pope will then speak briefly and say a prayer.
His formal coronation will take place days after his election. The last two popes have been inaugurated in St. Peter’s Square.
The mood here is electric. People are rejoicing.
Connie said she hopes the next pontiff treads a similar path as Pope Francis by “helping the poor, fixing the world, helping the immigrants.”
It’s not clear if the new pope was chosen on the fourth or fifth ballot of the conclave, but either way, the results came relatively quickly on the second day of the conclave.
The cardinal electors vote with folded ballots, which are shaken in an urn to mix them up and maintain secrecy.
And who the new pontiff is remains a secret for a little while longer — the new pope will be announced to everyone at the same time on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The past two popes, Benedict XVI and Francis, were also appointed on the second day of voting. Before them, John Paul II was appointed on the third day.
The white smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel means that each of the last three popes were elected in the afternoon of the second day of the conclave.
Pope Benedict XVI was elected after four rounds of voting; Francis was elected after five.
We still don’t know if the pope who was just chosen was elected at the fourth or fifth time of asking.
We just heard a huge cheer of relief and joy as we saw the white plume of smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel.
After watching the chapel’s chimney for much of the past two days, all eyes will now turn to the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, where the new pope will soon make himself known to the world.
We still can’t see inside the Sistine Chapel, but previous conclaves have taught us that the new pope will now be putting on the special papal garbs and taking a moment in a private room to compose himself before he is introduced to the world.
A cardinal will soon proclaim “Habemus papam,” a Latin phrase meaning, “We have a Pope.”
In this short speech from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, we’ll learn the identity of the cardinal who has been elected — and the papal name they have chosen.
The bells of St. Peter’s Basilica are ringing to welcome the news that a new pope has been elected.
The crowd in the Vatican’s main square burst into applause when the white smoke began to pour out of the Sistine Chapel’s chimney.
White smoke has risen above the Sistine Chapel, the signal that cardinals have chosen a new pope on the second day of the conclave.
His identity, and the name he will take as pontiff, will be revealed soon.
Watch the moment:
Once a candidate receives more than two-thirds of the vote, he will be asked two questions by the highest-ranking cardinal in the conclave.
First, “Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?”
Then, “By what name do you wish to be called?”
A pope’s choice of name can hint at the direction their papacy may take. The late Pope Francis chose his name in honor of Francis of Assisi, the Italian saint who renounced his family wealth and championed the poor. He was the first pope to choose Francis as his name.
Pope Benedict XVI, Francis’ predecessor, said he chose his name – which means “the blessed” in Latin – after Benedict XV, whom he said helped steer the church through World War I.
So, what name might the new pope choose? Take a look at our explainer.
Read the original article
Comments
By dang 2025-05-0819:01 Related: https://catholicreview.org/chicago-native-cardinal-prevost-e...
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928742, but we merged that thread hither)
> "Cardinal George of Chicago, of happy memory, was one of my great mentors, and he said: 'Look, until America goes into political decline, there won't be an American pope.' And his point was, if America is kind of running the world politically, culturally, economically, they don't want America running the world religiously. So, I think there's some truth to that, that we're such a superpower and so dominant, they don't wanna give us, also, control over the church."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-pope-could-it-be-american-c...
By snickerbockers 2025-05-0823:525 reply That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months. It probably has more to do with America's predominant religion being protestantism by a very wife margin for most of the country's existence. We didn't have a Catholic president until Kennedy and even then proving to the common American that Catholics aren't insane Vatican mindslaves was considered a hurdle he had to overcome.
If there's a political motive in not choosing an American pope until now it's that for most of American history it wouldn't have granted them any influence over American politics. If there's a personal motive it's that until recently they felt insulted that America went for almost 200 years before finally electing a Catholic president.
By netdevphoenix 2025-05-098:2111 reply > America's predominant religion being Protestantism
Tangent: Protestantism is not a religion. The religion is called Christianity. I have seen this trend for quite a while of Protestants (or people born in Protestant countries) of referring to Christianity branches as religions. I find it very segregational. The whole point of all the branches is the same guy whose name begins with C.
But yes, given the state of America today, having an American pope will definitely be an interesting development in the context of many lobbying groups wishing for a vaticanised America.
By dctoedt 2025-05-0921:19 > the same guy whose name begins with C
Nit: "Christ" is actually a title, not a name — it's the English version of the Greek Χριστός (christos), from the Hebrew mashiach (in English, messiah, anointed one).
His name was Yehoshua (or Yeshua or Y'shua, "Yahweh is salvation" — in English, "Joshua") whose Greek version is Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous, anglicized to "Jesus", although the Spanish pronunciation hay-sooss is closer to the Greek).
By snickerbockers 2025-05-0917:32 I don't consider myself part of any organized religion at this point, but I grew up going to this really iconoclastic presbyterian church where we only ever talked about the two testaments of the Bible and the only formal rituals we had were eucharism and the baptism (which, IIRC is because those are the only two rituals with a basis in the gospel) and from that perspective it's always seemed like whatever catholicism is, it's not the same religion as our relgion because they have all sorts of extra stories and tradition that seemed entirely foreign. We didn't even have an antagonistic relationship with them, our pastor never talked about other religions during sermons because he wanted to avoid our church getting involved in any of the negative aspects of christianity and focus only on the sort of positive community-building that jesus does in the gospels. The catholics have a massive canon of saints who they pray to instead of god, a church that claims to derive its authority from jesus himself via claiming one of the disciples to be their first pope, and a tendency to put mary the virgin at the forefront of everything (not that protestants ever had anything against her, but the catholic preoccupation with her really is bewildering from a protestant point-of-view) that seems irreconcilable from the the viewpoint that the religion begins with the old testament and ends with the new testament. I don't even consider myself a christian anymore and yet I still sometimes find myself feeling like Catholicism is no less alien than islam.
That said, looking back there were a couple problems with the protestant viewpoint: one is that there's no attempt at explaining god's apparent 2000-year vacation and another being that the bible was effectively nonexistent until the council at Nicaea and I'm not sure what legitimacy there is in them having any authority to decide what is and is not canon unless you accept the catholic church's authority.
I hear you about these being a bunch of different branches of Christianity. But the difference between branches of Protestantism and Catholicism is old and significant.
It'd be like saying "Talking about Rust is segregational. It's just all branches of programming languages starting with C". Technically true, but not a useful distinction.
> It'd be like saying "Talking about Rust is segregational. It's just all branches of programming languages starting with C". Technically true, but not a useful distinction.
That analogy is not valid. Protestants argue that catholicism does christianism in a sloppy way, whereas they do it right. If you're going with a programming language analogy, it's like a C++ programmer arguing that onboarding cppcheck and --Wall --pedantic is the only acceptable way to work with C++, and everyone else is doing it wrong.
By snickerbockers 2025-05-0918:38 >That analogy is not valid. Protestants argue that catholicism does christianism in a sloppy way, whereas they do it right. If you're going with a programming language analogy, it's like a C++ programmer arguing that onboarding cppcheck and --Wall --pedantic is the only acceptable way to work with C++, and everyone else is doing it wrong.
Every sect within a religion is going to argue that they are the ones doing it right and the others are either wrong or at least suboptimal depending on the state of inter-sect relations. I would peg the Protestants as C and the Catholics as C++ in this analogy, as the chief defining feature of protestantism is that they do not acknowledge the legitimacy of just about everybody who has ever claimed to speak on God's behalf past a certain point; thus, like C, their view of religion is inherently stagnant. They don't necessarily deny that God continues to interact with his creations, but they've realized that statistically speaking any given prophet or saint has an approximately 0.0 probability of actually conveying messages from God so they'll just stick with the ones that are so old that just about everybody [who calls themselves christian] already agrees on them. This is similar to the way that many C programmers are really C++ programmers who got tired of all the dumb new C++2x bullshit and just want to write computer programs.
Both the protestant religion and the C programming language have viewpoints that make sense given the histories of their respective subjects, but the major drawback of these viewpoints is that they have chosen to limit themselves to only iterating through new interpretations of old ideas; both of them are fundamentally incapable of innovation because being incapable of innovation is the fundamental core of their belief systems. Thus, if God ever really does try to leave the protestants a voicemail or if bjarne stroustrup ever does come up with an idea that isn't terrible and needlessly complicated, both the protestants and the C programmers will miss out on it.
I will not even attempt to speculate as to which programming languages should represent islam and judaism in this analogy because i do not want to die or have my account banned.
By OneDeuxTriSeiGo 2025-05-0917:29 That's really not fair because the different sects and denominations of Christianity have different apocrypha and different translations (or lack of translations) of the source texts.
And of course they vary widely in rites, practices, and liturgy.
People think they are closer than they are. The difference between the protestant denominations, catholic denominations, mormans, jehovah's witnesses, etc are quite major and in a very real sense the separation between these different sects of Christianity are essentially only a few steps removed from the separation Islam has from Christianity.
By disgruntledphd2 2025-05-099:30 Protestantism is more like C++ than Rust on this analogy.
It's mostly compatible and people keep confusing them.
By skissane 2025-05-0917:42 > Tangent: Protestantism is not a religion. The religion is called Christianity. I have seen this trend for quite a while of Protestants (or people born in Protestant countries) of referring to Christianity branches as religions.
Deciding what is a “branch” of a religion versus whats is an independent “religion” is more subjective than objective. This might become clearer if we move away from Christianity for a moment, and look at the same question for some non-Christian religions
Consider the southern Indian religious movement of Ayyavazhi - most people, both in India and outside it, consider it a branch/denomination/sect of Hinduism, including even many followers of Ayyavazhi - but some of its followers and leaders insist it is a separate Dharmic religion [0]. The question is (in part) political - Dravidian nationalists and Tamil nationalists are more likely to call it a separate religion, Indian nationalists (Congress) and Hindu nationalists (BJP) want to view it as part of Hinduism
Meanwhile, most people consider Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism to be separate religions from Hinduism - but the British courts in India decided they were branches of Hinduism, a classification still followed by the Indian legal system to this day. Many Hindu nationalists promote the idea that these traditions are branches of Hinduism, even though most of the Indian followers of those religions reject the idea.
It is standard to classify the Alevis in Turkey as an Islamic sect - yet the Turkish government wants to insist on the idea they aren’t even a sect, just a “cultural movement”, to promote the fiction of a homogeneous Turkish Islam - but while some Alevis are fighting for government recognition as a separate sect of Islam, there is a movement among Alevis (Ishikism) which claims it is a separate pre-Islamic religion, and its Islamic content is just a superficial distraction (dissimulation) to prevent persecution. Meanwhile, many hardline Sunnis around the world agree that Alevis are a non-Islamic religion - and some of the most hardline Sunnis will even say that of mainstream Twelver Shi’a.
So, the boundary between “branch of a religion” and “separate independent religion” is more subjective (theological and political) than objective.
[0] https://m.economictimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/tamil-n...
In the end Christianity is just a branch of Judaism ;)
It's unlikely that Protestants (including all the weird splinter groups/cults/sects in the US), Catholics and Orthodox will ever reunite into the same church again, so calling them separate religions is fair I think.
By AStonesThrow 2025-05-0911:231 reply But the numerous reunions effected by the Catholic Church have been nothing short of miraculous.
For starters, there is a Catholic Church corresponding to every Eastern/Oriental Orthodox Church in existence. Belarussian Orthodox Church/Belarussian Catholic Church. Including some unique outliers: Melkites, Maronites, Chaldean Catholic.
These Catholic Churches "returned" to communion when their head bishops decided to rejoin after centuries of schism. Thereafter, these churches are open to new individual converts, as well as entire parishes or eparchies coming into communion anew.
Furthermore, the Personal Ordinariates were erected quite recently to accommodate conversions from the Anglican church. It began long before that: the Catholic Church has received Anglican priests, with their families, ordained them as Catholic priests, and set them to parish ministry. Yes, even the married ones. Some Anglican priests or bishops became prelates, and entire parishes converted to the Catholic faith. They even retain their own liturgy, "Divine Worship", which is based on the Book of Common Prayer. If you're a fan of the old Tridentine liturgy, just imagine if that were presented in English instead!
Today there are no fewer than 24 Catholic Churches in communion with Rome, including a brand-new Eritrean Catholic Church, corresponding to the split in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
So I disagree with your pessimism because we have plenty of examples, in the distant past as well as quite recent history, where Protestants and Orthodox alike have come back into communion with the Catholic Church. Thanks for bringing it up!
By snickerbockers 2025-05-1212:38 The great schism between the orthodox and catholic churches isn't like the schism between the protestants and Catholics. The protestant and catholic split is rooted in a fundamental disagreement on what the religion is; historically there has been conflict intertwined with politics too, but (Ireland notwithstanding) that isn't relevant to the Catholic/Protestant divide.
It is true that certain protestant sects are effectively "the catholicism we have at home [in england]" and you are right that those probably can be convinced to rejoin the catholic church but the majority of protestant sects have a firmly-rooted belief that the church is an organization created by humans to worship god and there is nothing inherently sacred about it. They also tend to reject anything outside of the old and new testaments compiled at nicea as being canon.
There's a fascinating bit of cognitive dissonance wherein they believe that God is still actively involved in the world and has been for the past 2000 years yet they haven't made any attempts at recording them; I think the logic is that they'd need the church to have some sort of divine authority to add to the bible and they've already ruled out the church having that authority so the bible is effectively set in stone forever. But that's irrelevant, I'm getting off-topic here.
Anyways, as far as unification goes it doesn't really matter that nobody knows or cares about ancient wars between catholic and protestant kingdoms and it doesn't matter that they can all get along and be neighbors and even have their churches work together on charity projects because the schism between the catholics and protestants is rooted in ideology not animosity. There's no compromise between the pope being a direct line of succession from peter and the pope being "just a guy in rome who makes great sermons" and I can't imagine they're going to want to take 1700 years of catholic lore and add it into their canon like its no big deal either.
Another roadblock is that the protestants themselves are highly fractured, often due to minor disagreements over pedantic minutiae that at least 99% of their members don't care about (IIRC one of the disagreements was over whether Jesus meant it literally when he said the bread and wine are his flesh and blood or rather that was a figure of speech, i think the calvinists and the lutherans are on opposite sides of that disagreement) but they've all had a long history of peaceful cooperation and they've never let that turn into an actual conflict yet still they never even try to unite. They don't see any point as long as they can coexist peacefully as separate churches because the only thing that would grant them is consolidation of power, which they are largely disinterested in. So even putting the ideological debates and factionalism aside, they'd need to be convinced that there is even a point in unifying with the catholic church when they can continue to peacefully coexist as separate organizations.
By snickerbockers 2025-05-0917:48 >In the end Christianity is just a branch of Judaism ;)
hoo boy, be careful who you say that around, some of the jewish denominations have some very strong opinions about Christians calling themselves jews lmao.
anyways, I think beyond there being a major disagreement on whether there's any legitimacy to jesus being worshipped as a messiah or the new testament as a whole, the primary reason why they're considered separate religions is that judaism is ultimately centered around the fathers of the jewish/Israelite ethnic identity making a sacred covenant with God that cements them as his chosen people, whereas christianity's basis lies in Jesus' sacrifice forging a new covenant between God and all peoples (jewish and gentile alike). The reason why there's so much undying support for israel among modern evangelicals is that they believe judaism is still a legitimate religion because in their view there's no reason why the old covenant shouldn't still be valid for Jewish people who never partook in the new covenant.
By nurettin 2025-05-109:08 Yes, protestantism is a sect, with a history of conflict with catholicism. Catholics have a huge body of literature and claim stories about tens of thousands of saints and holy/blessed people (you could get lost in those stories for years and never see the end of it, quite beautiful.) whereas the default protestant position is to be skeptical due to the self serving nature of the catholic church.
Pope Leo is obviously not going to represent any american interests, just like the earlier popes not representing german and argentinian interests as that would be blatant and absurd.
By Intermernet 2025-05-0910:421 reply Anything is a religion if enough people agree to it. If Scientology can call itself a religion than "Protestantism" is legit.
It seems that the baptist subsection of Christianity already have a bunch of different interpretations of Christian scripture. Historically it's only a matter of time before the inevitable schism, and then they also get to claim to be a different religion.
By motorest 2025-05-0911:07 > Anything is a religion if enough people agree to it. If Scientology can call itself a religion than "Protestantism" is legit.
Protestantism, by definition, is Christianity. The very nature of protestantism is that the Catholic church needed to fix errors and discrepancies. If anything, protestantism advocate that they do christianism right, whereas the Catholic church is a tad sloppy.
By DeusExMachina 2025-05-0917:02 I am an Orthodox Christian and I can tell you that to us, Protestantism definitely looks like a completely different religion.
Despite claiming that they follow Christ, our and their definition of "following" is so different that what they do and believe often looks unrecognizable.
The same can be said about the difference between Catholics and Protestants. Despite our disagreements, the Orthodox and Catholic churches still share a lot theologically. The same cannot be said about Protestants (although, that also depends on what denominations you consider).
It's not to say that we don't share any values. We actually do and there are many individual Protestants that behave in a more Christian way than some members of the Orthodox Church.
However, that is not a highly relevant factor. For one reason or another, there are many atheists and members of other religions that do as well. But those still remain clearly separate and would never be classified as Christians.
By foretop_yardarm 2025-05-0910:44 I agree on your sentiment and it’s also in the Bible: 1 Cor 3:3-6. It bothers me when people switch denomination and say they have “converted.”
By adammichaelc 2025-05-0916:58 If that is how we wanna logic through this, all of these religions are Judaism; Jesus-branches and Torah-branches and Mohammed branches and on and on…
By pjc50 2025-05-099:30 Eh. While the correct term is denomination, in practice the separate arms of Christianity have fought each other and function separately. Like Sunni vs Shia vs other muslims.
Anti-Catholicism runs deep in America, but the particularly weird issue is the converts. People who convert into Catholicism tend to be much more conservative than those born into it, often much more so than actual Church doctrine. Hence the Vance controversy.
OTOH, 6 of the 9 supreme court justices are catholic so there might be some influence there although I think the influence is probably more from the somewhat uniquely American brand of conservative Catholicism.
By Thorrez 2025-05-099:34 More like 6.5 out of 9.
Gorsuch was raised Catholic, and thus the Catholic Church still considers him a member. Gorsuch hasn't publicly stated whether he considers himself Catholic or not. In 2017, one of his friends said:
>Trent, Gorsuch’s close friend, said he believes Gorsuch would consider himself “a Catholic who happens to worship at an Episcopal church.”
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/18/politics/neil-gorsuch-religio...
By petesergeant 2025-05-097:041 reply ‘The next Pope is from Chicago’ sounds like the kind of thing 1800s American nativists would panic about
Give Twitter another 24 hours to stew over his past ministry and his Peruvian citizenship, and one will find our modern Know Nothings making similar hullabaloo.
By snickerbockers 2025-05-0919:571 reply Is it even viable to run for pope as a priest who spent his whole life in a first-world country? I can't imagine somebody who has spent a significant portion of his life doing charity work or spreading the church to some new population losing out to some guy who spends his whole career preaching to a crowd of predominantly-white bourgeois Americans in a boring midwestern suburb where the biggest problem is either too many DEI programs in local schools or not enough DEI programs in local schools.
By w0de0 2025-05-1010:31 There is no shortage of the downtrodden and dispossessed in the USA, if you seek them. The problem in this hypothetical would rather be that acknowledging and prioritizing such people in America is likely to be, for many fellow first worlders (to include parts of the American Catholic hierarchy) an inherently radical, polarizing, and political act. I doubt such a priest would be so rapidly promoted as was Leo XIV.
Acknowledging and prioritizing similarly marginalized people in poor countries, or at least in countries less tetchy about their failings and political pieties, carries less political risk. (Which is not to claim Prevost cynically avoided American ministry to the poor.)
That said, that such ministry is qualification at all seems to me more a product of Francis’s remaking of the college of cardinals with a notably Franciscan philosophy. The majority of post-WW2 popes have been European, of the first or second world. Benedict was German and John Paul Polish.
By remarkEon 2025-05-095:33 For whatever reason, and I guess this is mostly based on my experience with my Catholic friends and family, even if they are not lawyers the Catholics just love arguing about rules. Perhaps that's because Catholic Dogma and Tradition is complicated. In any case, I suppose that means it should be unsurprising that a lot of Catholics end up studying Law and as a result provide a wide pool to draw from when it's time to nominate Justices to the Supreme Court.
By hn_throwaway_99 2025-05-090:484 reply > That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months.
I don't think they had much control over when Francis died.
By ToValueFunfetti 2025-05-090:57 The concern is that America would be too powerful if they had this power over Catholicism as well. There's no concern about waiting until it's time to appoint the next one.
Sure, but there clearly wasn't much concern if an American got 2/3rds of the vote on day 2. They didn't have to elect a new pope this quickly.
130+ cardinals aren't going to be stuck in Sistine Chapel for months just to assuage some hypothetical concerns about America.
By tekknik 2025-05-1012:00 At one point they took the roof off of a building because they were taking too long. Another, they changed their diet to bread and water. In one instance they stopped their pay until they decided.
You should look into the history of choosing a pope, it’s wild.
By watwut 2025-05-097:05 They had to. They are locked there, isolated, until they elect. That is how catholic pope elections work. Their job is to elect and then move on their normal duties and interactions.
By snickerbockers 2025-05-0919:49 Then they appoint somebody else and wait until he dies and then appoint Pope Americus the First. The hypothesis is that they didn't want an American pope until America is in decline and that America is in decline due to the re-election of Donald Trump. I will admit the part about Donald Trump is something i assumed with no basis and it is possible that the OP did not mean to say that America is in decline solely as a result of this, but whenever i read about America losing its international influence it's always somebody complaining about the tariffs or insulting Canada or whatever.
Anyways, nothing can end America on such a short timescale. Even if Donald Trump's recent decisions will cause the downfall of America's global pseudo-empire we are not anywhere near a point of no return and he could give up on playing "5D chess" and fix this all within a month; some opportunities would be lost which leads to some unrecoverable economic damage but we'd still be largely in the same position as we were six months ago; consequentially, any fears they may have had about appointing an American pope during a period of global American hegemony are still valid.
By therealpygon 2025-05-0919:371 reply > they’d wait longer than four months.
Why? Is there any reason for anyone in the world to think this behavior will change suddenly? Is there a reason the church wouldn’t think the US has a crisis of faith if those in power and their followers are so willing to commit sin against their fellow man? Clearly we all know how Jesus proclaimed, “Gather ye the masses of immigrants and send them to another country, lest they not be tortured for their grave sins of migration.”
Very late to this discussion, but you should read the Vatican's laws on migration and citizen-only residency, before talking about "sin against fellow man". I am not even Christian, but I find the Popes very hypocritical.
By AStonesThrow 2025-05-1317:231 reply Are you referring to the laws of the Vatican City State, which is a microstate-sized enclave with barely enough infrastructure to support the Roman Curia? The Vatican City State, where the vast majority of its male populace are celibate, unmarried, no wife and no children? The Vatican City State, where tourists abound and comprise a giant revenue stream by their presence? The Vatican City State, which is surrounded by an ancient and cosmopolitan city which plays host and home to thousands of refugees and immigrants?
Or are you referring to some other type of hypocrisy?
What the actual hell?
Yes, I am referring to that Vatican city. Immigration is extraordinarily harsh and strict - your cherished principles of Christianity do not apply. Hence the hypocrisy.
If you believe the city too small, then please consider Italy - which require asylum applications to be submitted while in a third country, the "Cutro Decree", limits on number of non-EU citizens who can enter, non-EU citizens need work permits, nothing given for "family reunification" - laws that are strictly applied or you are kicked out with little fanfare and 1000% less drama than in the USA.
Yes, the hypocrisy is mindbogglingly astonishing. I can say even more firmly: What the actual hell ?
By therealpygon 2025-05-180:43 Italy? You mean where it is illegal to immediately deport someone to their own country if they can show they would be in danger due to EU and International law, and if safe, will be sent to a third country or back to their own country and allowed to apply? Or were you just trying to throw out an example hoping no one would know better about the difference between this, and sending people to third-world torture camps?
> That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months.
Are you suggesting that the decline has only been apparent since Trump's re-election? For some (myself included), America has been in obvious political decline for some time - highlighted and spurred along by some significant events (Trump's first election and the nature of US involvement in Gaza to name a couple).
By snickerbockers 2025-05-0919:31 I personally don't think it makes any sense to claim America's in a decline on a short-term basis; my point is that a decline is inherently something that would only be visible over a longer scale of time.
The reason I said "four months" is because America's media establishment has been pushing this narrative that the tariffs and the argument with zelensky have somehow ended american hegemony overnight; I personally believe it's impossible for these events to cause a noticeable decline on such a short basis because there's far more to america than merely not taxing imports and giving limitless amounts of free stuff to ukraine with no strings attached, but I have developed a pavlovian response to the phrase "America's in decline" because it really is all about Donald Trump with these people.
I would personally put the origin of "America's Decline" at 9/11 because that was the beginning of America's self-doubt about what their place in the world is and what it should be. Everything since then has been the five stages of grief on a nationwide scale. Currently we're somewhere between Depression (stage 4) and Acceptance (stage 5) which is why we gave up on Afghanistan, and also why so many people are opposed to funding Ukraine; there's a legitimate fear that arming the Ukrainians will in some way come back to bite us in the ass 20 years later just like arming the mujahideen did.
For what it’s worth, I was just reading that Leo wasn’t seen as “completely” American due to his many years in Peru — he’s even a citizen. Take that as you will.
Americans will say they are Italian because their great grandma ate spaghetti once, but God forbid someone is American because he was born there
GP is right, he is not "completely" American in the sense that he is both American and Peruvian because of his dual citizenship. He also spent most of his life outside of the USA.
Which I think is a great thing as the representative of a worldwide religion. Born in the US, an English-speaking country in North America, lived in Peru, a Spanish-speaking country in the South America, then in Italy, an Italian-speaking country in Europe.
By kashunstva 2025-05-091:211 reply > he is not "completely" American
As for being completely American: dual citizen of U.S. and another country here. On each April 15, the U.S. still considers me completely American even though I haven’t earned a cent there in over a decade. So in an official sense, that moniker sticks to you like Super Glue.
Granted, the new pope may have a wider scope of cultural influences than many, if not a majority of Americans, it sounds like his formative years were spent in the U.S. so I’d call him American.
There’s a really interesting question here. Will the USA claim the right to tax the new pontiff? Likely answer is no, but legally the statute suggests yes. But who knows? There’s never before been a US citizen who is also a foreign sovereign.
> There’s never before been a US citizen who is also a foreign sovereign.
Éamon de Valera was born in New York City in 1882, and served as President of Ireland from 1959 to 1973
Bhumibol Adulyadej was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1927, and served as King of Thailand from 1946 until his death in 2016
That’s just two US-born individuals who became head of state of another country, there may be more.
I assume both were US citizens at birth (de Valera was born into poverty, abandoned by his Spanish father, reputedly an artist; Bhumibol‘s father was a student at Harvard)-whether or not they ever formally renounced their US citizenship, I don’t know
By madcaptenor 2025-05-0913:00 I was wondering whether Wikipedia would comment. They don't, but somebody already edited Bhumibol's article to say that "His father was enrolled in the public health program at Harvard University, which is why Bhumibol was the only monarch to be born in the US until the 2025 papal conclave elected Pope Leo XIV."
There are some sources indicating that children of foreign sovereigns would be exempt from automatic citizenship, but Bhumibol's father wasn't the king, just the king's brother.
Éamon de Valera's case is unambiguous.
There are surely other world leaders who spent significant time in the US - Benjamin Netanyahu spent some time in the Philadelphia area as a child, for example. And a little bit of research turns up Naftali Bennett, prime minister of Israel in 2021-22 - he was a US citizen (born in Israel to US citizen parents) until he had to renounce his US citizenship when elected to the Knesset.
Famously Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel (which is a largely ceremonial post), which presumably would have come with Israeli citizenship, but he turned it down.
By SideburnsOfDoom 2025-05-099:081 reply > there may be more.
> Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City
By skissane 2025-05-0910:17 Not a foreign sovereign - Boris Johnson was never head of state, only head of government - a distinction often forgotten in countries like the US which merge those two offices into one. (Which is not about the UK being a monarchy-parliamentary republics such as Ireland, Malta, Germany, Austria, Israel, keep the two distinct)
By itsmartapuntocm 2025-05-0914:361 reply I believe King Rama IX was not technically a U.S. citizen because his parents were considered foreign diplomats. In any case he never tried to claim citizenship and was only ever considered Thai.
By skissane 2025-05-0917:16 So, a foreign prince (not the King, his brother) enrols as a student at Harvard - would he be considered a “foreign diplomat”? He wasn’t formally acting as a diplomat, and unless he happened to be officially accredited to the State Department as one, I doubt he would have technically counted as one either. Was he present in the US on a diplomatic/consular visa, or a student visa?
Also, in most countries (the US included), one’s status as a citizen/national is legally independent of whether one tries to “claim” it.
By dleen 2025-05-096:07 Éamon de Valera (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89amon_de_Valera), US citizen and President of Ireland.
Two things:
1. Does the Pope have significant personal income? 2. Does, which what I think you are getting at, the law apply to a head of state?
> Does the Pope have significant personal income?
Monthly income for pope US$32,000 equivalent.
> Does, which what I think you are getting at, the law apply to a head of state?
I don’t know if he will exempt as head of state, but as ordinary US citizen he will be paying taxes to US as his income exceeds FEIE exemption threshold.
By graemep 2025-05-0911:13 I am not sure that is correct. Different sources show very different amounts.
The $32k seems suspiciously close to the monthly €2,500 reported by other sources multiplied by 12.
There also seems to be some confusion between the assets and income of the pope and the papacy.
he is completely US American because he was born and raised there and studied there, maths and philosophy amongst other things.
and in addition he is also Peruvian.
so he's more than American. hyper American if you will. and now he's the head of state of the Vatican, too.
a triple whopper of sorts ;-)
By davidw 2025-05-090:22 Definitely a "yes, and" thing. I'm working on dual citizenship and I would not consider myself "less American" once I got it.
By DonHopkins 2025-05-099:312 reply You can't study maths in America. There is only one math in America.
By madcaptenor 2025-05-0913:00 There are many sports though.
By froh 2025-05-0917:52 loool TIL
my cheap excuse is that Europeans learn en-uk ;-)
By bbor 2025-05-0822:26 I mean, this is supposedly the logic of the electing cardinals, not randos. They intentionally were avoiding an American pope until now, and this was (again, supposedly) a mitigating factor!
Personally I don’t believe in nationalism, so he’s just a dude from Chicago if anything.
By oiwjeilrjle 2025-05-090:04 [flagged]
By johnnyanmac 2025-05-0821:141 reply Well, Trump is trying to prove otherwise. I guess this would be one of the few backfires if such an act did make it through.
By carlosjobim 2025-05-0822:51 When the war comes, dual citizenship might become complicated. Certainly a pope cannot be a citizen, but for others.
1955 born (chicago) 1977 seminary grad (chicago) 1982 ordination (->rome) 1985 canon law doctor (->peru) 1999 midwest augustinians (->chicago) 2001 global augustinians (->rome) 2015 bishop (->peru) 2021 dicasterate (->rome)At 69 that's pretty close to half of his life, and since it's the early half there is more weight to it as it forms the context from which the rest is understood.
> the context from which the rest is understood.
What? Speaking from experience, the country you go to after 20s is the one you choose, not the one you were forced to live in. This has a huge factor in your thinking more than the number of years on paper.
By cjbgkagh 2025-05-0916:07 On the nature/nature aspect people are already predominantly nature. For the nurture component of the residual the early years are very formative. As an expat who has spent much more of my life outside my country of birth than in it, and knows many other expats who have done the same, from my observation our upbringing still dominates our behavior. It is also a selection criteria bias where expats are more likely to identify with other expats even when not from the same country or residing in the same country which is one of the reasons expats tend to form communities with other expats. The problem with self assessing behavior is that the same biases which determine behavior is used for assessing the behavior where much of what is considered merely normal is ignored leading to over-weighting the size of the unusual component.
But the Church hierarchy probably decided the young priest would be stationed in Peru, not the priest himself.
By ekianjo 2025-05-104:31 Sure, but the fact that he stayed there for many many years means that it suited him. If you want the change countries the Church has processes for that.
By brailsafe 2025-05-0820:14 Well, I don't know if it would be fair to compare him to your typical midwest American boomer who's been living in the suburbs since they were 27 and shows up in the middle of the day to protest against apartments going up in their neighborhood.
/s
By dragonwriter 2025-05-0820:511 reply Wait till you see how long Cardinal Pizzaballa who was viewed as the most likely Italian contender for the Papacy, has spent in the Holy Land and not Italy.
> Cardinal Pizzaballa
Not going to lie, I had to check that this was a real name (it is)
By andrew_lettuce 2025-05-091:221 reply Is this the guy they where hoping would take the name Papa John?
By madcaptenor 2025-05-0913:01 That would have been amazing. (And not impossible, there have been plenty of Popes named John.)
I have a coworker right now whose name is Carmelo Martini. Seriously, I had to ask him: "did your parents name you after their favorite drink?".
I get the joke but it goes the other way around. Martini is a common family name from the north of Italy (Carmelo is common given name in the south). The drink was named after the name of company producing it (actually half of it.) The company was named Martini because that was the family name of the founder.
The drink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_(vermouth)
The company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_%26_Rossi
By SideburnsOfDoom 2025-05-099:13 Much like how a first name Mercedes or a last name Ford isn't necessarily a person named after a car. The cars are named after people
By card_zero 2025-05-095:02 If we're doing funny name corner, I still remember Cardinal Sin (of Manila).
By throwaway2037 2025-05-098:51 Yeah, his full name is even better: Pierbattista Pizzaballa
Personal motto: Sufficit tibi gratia mea ('My grace is sufficient for you')
This guy is a baller.
By labster 2025-05-0823:30 And I had to look it up to make sure you weren’t both leading me on. Now that’s a spicy surname!
By datavirtue 2025-05-0823:12 His name makes me super hungry
By conradev 2025-05-093:03
https://x.com/michaelschwab13/status/19206566870456855622005 world series (chicago)
By CobrastanJorji 2025-05-0819:142 reply I think it was Aristotle who said "Give me a child until his mid-twenties, and I will give you a complete American."
By protocolture 2025-05-0823:33 No the quote is "Show me a child in his mid twenties, and I will show you an american"
even as a joke of Aristotle living 2,000 years before the United States existed, I don't get the comedic affect
By calebkaiser 2025-05-0819:321 reply It's a play on the popular quote "Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man", attributed to Aristotle
By andyjohnson0 2025-05-0820:19 Attributed to Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, although this is disputed.
By swat535 2025-05-0821:27 He is moderate. Even, with his speech and choice of clothing, somewhat confrontational with Francis.
Traditional papal symbols of Benedict XVI return and that whole speech of “Do not be afraid to evangelize with the truth” gave me a sense of confrontation with the modern ideology.
If Peru gets to claim this pope, then the US gets to claim Tesla, Einstein, etc. lol
By StopDisinfo910 2025-05-096:181 reply Nobody claims the pope. This is a weird take. We are not talking about some sport celebrity.
It’s true that the man was born in the USA and was a bishop in Peru. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Peruvian catholics were happy to have a pope who lived their country.
By madcaptenor 2025-05-0913:031 reply The Peruvians definitely seem to be happy about it:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/08/pope-leo-xiv-p...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewdl4e57v7o
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/for-us-pope-is-peruvi...
and, unsurprisingly, the Peruvian-Americans:
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/paterson-nj-new-pope-le...
By StopDisinfo910 2025-05-0915:46 > The Peruvians definitely seem to be happy about it
I don’t really see that from the articles you linked.
It’s all quotes about how the Pope is Peruvian (definitely true as he indeed has the Peruvian nationality) and how Peruvian people feel blessed in that.
Even your last article reinforces that he is a dual citizen with knowledge of both culture which obviously makes people joyful.
I have yet to see people argue if he is more American or more Peruvian apart from here.
By brudgers 2025-05-0821:02 I suspect that’s going to be a political talking point sooner, not later.
For what it's worth, Peru is in South America. Still American, Technically.
By bitshiftfaced 2025-05-0818:176 reply From reading online comments, I'm starting to believe that those who reside outside the US are more strident defenders of the idea that "US citizens only" = "American" than US citizens themselves.
By fernandopj 2025-05-0818:32 Yes, there's true to that, if only because "we" (latin americans) have given up to that discussion and just don't want to be confused with USA citizens.
By catlikesshrimp 2025-05-0818:313 reply Not in Central America. We call US citizens "Gringos" Unfortunately, this does carry a variable negative weight.
Now, Latin Americans living in the US proudly call themselves "Americans"
Edit: Albeit long, the correct gentilice for the US is "Estadounidenses" as in "Estados Unidos de América"
"Estadounidense" is also a bit odd, since there are Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the formal name for Mexico). I don't think it is likely to confuse very many people, but still odd.
If you say "Mexico" in Mexico, most people will think you're referring to Mexico City.
By catlikesshrimp 2025-05-0821:18 Mexico City was "Mexico DF", but was changed years ago to CDMX. That stands for "Ciudad de mexico"
I think there are legal implications. Akin to "Washington District of Columbia"
Decades ago, Mexicans refered to the capital as "el DF" But I dont know about more recently.
By umanwizard 2025-05-0822:031 reply Really? Do people call the city just "México", by itself, not "Ciudad de México" or similar?
There is a similar situation in Quebec (the province and its capital city are both just called "Québec" in French, whereas in English we use Quebec/Quebec City). However, there is usually no ambiguity because French grammar requires the definite article for (masculine) names of large territories like countries and provinces, but not for cities. E.g. "Je vais au Québec"[1] = I'm going to Quebec (the province) vs. "Je vais à Québec" = I'm going to Quebec City.
I'm not sure if there is any similar grammatical distinction in Spanish.
1: au is a mandatory contraction for à + le
By temp0826 2025-05-094:52 It could just be people in the area I'm usually in (Yucatan/Q Roo) referring to it that way, but I have heard it from several people.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-05-0818:45 > the correct gentilice for the US is "Estadounidenses"
Which nobody uses. (It’s also meaningful to note that I would call myself an American in English but not in Spanish.)
By rootsudo 2025-05-0919:09 You mean someoen that lives in the E.U.?
I think most people worldwide basically know what you mean when you say American, but are actually referring to a person from the US, via context. It is pragmatic label. They aren’t from the US so they don’t have to worry about some identity based thing or feeling like they are stealing the name from two continents, for their one country.
On the other hand, some of more conscientious people in the US are feeling a little awkward about the name these days. So it isn’t surprising that we’d be the ones objecting.
By umanwizard 2025-05-0819:54 > some of more conscientious people in the US are feeling a little awkward about the name these days
I guarantee less than 1% of Americans feel like this or are even thinking about the issue at all.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-05-0818:441 reply > some of more conscientious people in the US are feeling a little awkward about the name these days. So it isn’t surprising that we’d be the ones objecting
If the folks who got us into this mess with label obsession move on to something less charged like USian, that’s probably for the net good.
if the language police want to tell Americans what they're allowed to call themselves and expect any actual adoption they had better come up with a better word than "USian". How do you even pronounce that? Oosh-an?
But also sure, telling Americans to rename things, that hasn't caused ANY backlash now resulting in the renaming of huge bodies of water to stupid things, keep up the cultural dictates, it's totally working!
By JumpCrisscross 2025-05-0818:56 The whole enterprise of constantly renaming things is stuoid. But there are groups on the idiot left (LatinX, USian, xey/xem) and right (freedom fries, Gulf of America) who enjoy it. Between gender and race-based language policing and a nationality-based one, I think the latter is a safer place to constrain them.
By bee_rider 2025-05-0819:20 I think ultimately we won’t be able to refer to anything without offending somebody, given how polarized the US is. Of course my side’s backlash is totally reasonable, actually, it is an inevitable response that was caused by the other side trying to force some top-down change via the language police.
By umanwizard 2025-05-0819:53 "American" in English is the demonym for the US. It doesn't have any other meaning except in rare and unusual circumstances. The fact that it means something different in some other languages doesn't change that fact.
By moogly 2025-05-0818:55 [flagged]
Not in English. I know in the Spanish speaking world there's a single American continent, but as far as I know across the English speaking world it's taught as two continents, North and South America. We have the term "the Americas" to refer to both.
By skissane 2025-05-0910:51 I really think this is a failure of education, teaching kids that there are N continents as if that were some kind of objective truth, as opposed to the reality that the definition of “continent” is at least partially conventional, so there are several different values of N which are arguably correct - anything from 4 to 7 is mainstream (at a global level)
Wikipedia is helping, though.
It says (I didn’t know this) that the “single American continent” model was mainstream in the US prior to WW2, so even if there is now a single definition in the Anglosphere, that’s a relatively recent development.
I remember as a kid believing that the Americas contained three continents-North, Central and South. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have ever thought that, and given how conventional these definitions are, can it really be said to be wrong?
By lynx97 2025-05-098:01 Well, in Ecuador and Peru, where I used to travel for 2 months, a lot of people were making a point of saying "América del Sur" to differentiate their place from the USA.
Geographically speaking, America was a single continent till the Panama channel was built
Accurately speaking, that wasn't true before the Panama canal was built, and remains not true subsequently.
By AdhemarVandamme 2025-05-098:301 reply How would you argue such claims, geographically and/or accurately speaking? — Other than: that’s how I was taught it is; or that’s how my favourite teacher/book/source-with-some-authority says it is.
There is no generally-agreed-upondefinition for “continent”, in the same way that there was no generally-agreed-upon definition of “planet” prior to the IAU 2006 General Assembly.
Continents are identified by convention (and there are a few competing conventions) rather than any strict criteria.
I was taught (in Europe) that there are 6 continents, 1 of which close-to-uninhabited: Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, America, Antarctica. This convention is the same as the one for the UNSD “continental regions”. The five interlocking rings of the Olympic flag represent these five inhabited continents.
There’s another convention that considers Eurasia to be a single continent. And another that even considers Afro-Eurasia to be a single continent.
> And another that even considers Afro-Eurasia to be a single continent.
Well, as per parent's logic, that claim is out the door ever since the Suez was dug out.
Yes. A continent is a big contiguous mass of land. There were 3: Eurasia-africa, America, Oceania and Antarctica.
Suez and Panama channels created other continents.
As an Australian, inculcated with the orthodoxy that this was the largest island while also being the smallest continent - how does 'Oceania' fit with your quite technical 'big contiguous mass of land'?
If we made another small rut parallel to either Suez or Panama, would we add 1 to the count of continents?
By Clubber 2025-05-0821:33 Technically 2.
You could educate yourself, you know, instead of trying to regurgitate something that someone else said that you thought looked clever.
What would you call Americans? United Statesians?
There are two countries called the United States in North America, there's the United States of Mexico, and the United States of America. People from the United States of Mexico are called Mexicans, and people from the United States of America are called Americans.
And what about people from the continent of North America? There's called North Americans, just like people from South America are called South Americans.
By dragonwriter 2025-05-0823:261 reply > There are two countries called the United States in North America
No, actually, there aren't.
> there's the United States of Mexico, and the United States of America.
No, México’s formal English name (which is an exact literal translation of its Spanish name) is United Mexican States (it is Estados Unidos Mexicanos not Estados Unidos de México)
By sebastiennight 2025-05-097:461 reply > Estados Unidos Mexicanos
I think this would translate to Mexican United States ; you're mixing up the word order.
By dragonwriter 2025-05-098:021 reply > I think this would translate to Mexican United States
If Estados Unidos existed in Spanish as a compound, non-proper, noun phrase—that is, if "a united states" was a generic name for a thing—rather than Unidos and Mexicanos both being adjectives that modify Estados, then that would be a plausible translation. But that's (1) not the case, and (2) even if it was the case, that's not how it is used in the actual official name of the country of México.
> you're mixing up the word order.
To be clear, you are asserting that the government of México messed up the word order in its own official English name.
By sebastiennight 2025-05-0910:14 Sorry, I did not realize this was the official translation.
I was just commenting on the fact that adjective order in Spanish is usually reversed vs. the English one, and the adjective closest to the noun remains closest to the noun.
Wikipedia mentions that an alternate official name is Estados-Unidos Mexicanos:
> All three federal constitutions (1824, 1857, and 1917, the current constitution) used the name Estados Unidos Mexicanos[29]—or the variant Estados-Unidos Mexicanos,[30] all of which have been translated as "United Mexican States"
Interesting that it's still translated this way. I'm wondering if there are some political considerations there (eg to avoid being called the "Mexican US"). Thanks for your response. I learned something today.
By yazantapuz 2025-05-091:041 reply Well, yes. In spanish we use "estadounidense" a lot.
By theodric 2025-05-098:43 In Spanish, which is not English
By marcus_holmes 2025-05-098:221 reply > What would you call Americans? United Statesians?
Aussie here, mostly we call them Seppos. Or Yanks if we're being polite.
By bigbluedots 2025-05-099:041 reply No, we don't.
By skissane 2025-05-0911:02 The terms “yank” and “seppo” were more common in older generations of Australians. If you could go back to the 1940s, I think you’d hear both terms a lot (in certain informal contexts)
One still occasionally hears “yanks”, but it is quite rare. “Seppos”, one more often hears joking about calling Americans that than anyone actually doing so-and the rare occasions the term is used (as opposed to merely mentioned), are (in my personal experience) self-conscious exercises in derogatory jocularity-related jocular coinages are “Sepponians” and “Seppostanis”
Of course, it is a big country, and terms which have fallen out of general use may be retained or revived in some pockets-I can only describe my own personal experiences
By tokai 2025-05-098:23 >What would you call Americans? United Statesians? Personally I call them Burgers.
By bjornroque 2025-05-090:53 [dead]
By aleph_minus_one 2025-05-097:39 > What would you call Americans? United Statesians?
US-Americans
I've heard people expressing disappointment (or triumph) because there's an American pope now, as if that would somehow strengthen Trump's position, but I don't see how.
Trump doesn't control him and the pope owes no allegiance to Trump, but as an American pope, I think American Catholics are more likely to listen to him, and I think his moderate views could do a lot of good to the extremism of US politics.
By graemep 2025-05-097:43 I agree. There is no reason to expect the Pope to just back the country he is a citizen of, let alone the current government of his country. Popes have not usually done so in the past.
By 71bw 2025-05-098:13 With their almost religious following of Trump, I find it more likely for them to ignore the Pope.
By throw90897349 2025-05-098:401 reply [flagged]
By dotancohen 2025-05-098:551 reply When I Google for massacres of Christians, all I find are links to Islamic factions in Africa and the Middle East. Where in America are Christian communities being wiped out by terrorists?
By pasquinelli 2025-05-099:04 israel killing christian palestinians is what i assume they're talking about.
By dragonwriter 2025-05-0820:271 reply > I guess I interpret it as "America has gone into political decline." I'm a bit surprised to hear a Trump appointee say that
What do you think the premise of the motto Make America Great Again is? The difference between Trumpists and others who see a decline is that the former see the 2016 and 2024 elections as reverses in the decline, whereas other see them as sources or exacerbations.
By SirensOfTitan 2025-05-0822:016 reply Anyone who sees Trump as either an aberration or a savior is deeply deluded on the state of America.
In my opinion, the US world order’s decay was unmasked in 2008, and it has been accelerating since. The two economic realities between the poor rural America and the rich coastal cities (and even within them there is so much clear wealth disparity) have only gotten worse, and the political and bureaucratic system isn’t really capable of skillfully dealing with it.
Trump actually speaks to the realities that few politicians will (Bernie Sanders did too in 2016, hence his appeal), though his prescribed solutions are likely just accelerating the country’s demise.
By camillomiller 2025-05-096:38 Agreed. The 2008 crisis and the Snowden revelations were the long turning point
By agumonkey 2025-05-095:13 Trump is basically a golden populist then. All these parties will gladly point as t issues, because it give them the spotlight.
By dmix 2025-05-0822:52 Well said
By zug_zug 2025-05-0914:12 I disagree. 1% issue aside - There are things Trump has done that have no American precedent, such as Jan 6th, openly insisting he'll run for a 3rd term, and too many others to list here. In that sense he is absolutely an aberration.
By selfhoster11 2025-05-098:42 I don't see why you'd say "deeply deluded" is the only option, instead of simply "not that knowledgeable" being one.
As a European, the election (and then re-election) of Trump was an aberration, but that's because I didn't know about/follow US's internal problems.
By watwut 2025-05-097:12 It is not primary about economy or powerty. That one is an excuse, a rationalization.
He wasn't a Trump appointee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_George
By senderista 2025-05-0819:542 reply "Robert Barron, bishop of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester in Minnesota, was appointed less than a week ago by President Trump to the new White House Commission on Religious Liberty."
Honestly it looks like we've got a HNer quoting a journalist quoting a bishop quoting a cardinal.
The cardinal who said 'until America goes into political decline, there won't be an American pope' died in 2015 (i.e. before Trump's first term)
The bishop who quoted them does hold the post you mention - but they didn't originate the quote, they just quoted it.
By CGamesPlay 2025-05-0823:30 Thanks for this. The quote-of-a-quote in the original article was confusing, made worse by the fact that it was said by Robert who is not the new Pope, formerly known as Robert.
By skissane 2025-05-097:03 I wouldn’t assume that just because Trump appoints someone to a commission, they and Trump see eye-to-eye about whatever.
Bishop Barron is pretty middle-of-the-road as far as US Catholic bishops go - he’s not much of a progressive, but nor is he a traditionalist or hardline conservative. On most issues on which Pope Francis and President Trump disagreed, Barron’s views and instincts are closer to the late Pope (who made him a bishop and then gave him a diocese) than to Trump’s
By Calwestjobs 2025-05-0820:052 reply Great symbol was - every cardinal standing on balconies with/besides him.
No media covered / decoded what that gesture signifies.
By dragonwriter 2025-05-0820:25 It symbolizes the unity of the Church (and the College of Cardinals specifically) with and supporting the new Pope; its not exactly opaque.
By dragonwriter 2025-05-0820:43 No, its a normal part of the process mentioned briefly (but not explained, perhaps because the symbolism is... really exactly what it seems on the surface) in most of the “what will happen with a new Pope” stories.
By wahern 2025-05-0820:43 Since this is a thread about the new pope, note that Catholic doctrine interprets that passage to mean you can only divorce if the original marriage was invalid. The Greek word, porneia, has more literal or abstract interpretations depending on context. Protestants and Orthodox[1] interpret it to mean illicit sex, particularly adultery, but Catholics interpret it to mean something closer to incest, which would imply a marriage was never valid in the first place. Catholic doctrine argues this interpretation is easier to square with the preceding statements by Jesus in Matthew that "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." That is, that marriage is indissoluble by man--i.e. a spouse can't dissolve a marriage just be screwing around. And also squares with Mark, who mentions no exception. OTOH, that's arguably asking too much of the text.
[1] That said, depending on which Orthodox theologian you ask, Orthodoxy doesn't permit remarriage, either. Some Orthodox will tell you that a second marriage isn't a sacramental marriage; that the original marriage is never dissolved. Rather, "remarriage" is a form of "Ekonomia", wherein the community sort of ignores some misbehavior, or withholds judgment, so as to avoid cutting a person off entirely. Pope Francis explicitly mentioned this concept of "ekonomia" when discussing his preference that (civilly) remarried Catholics be permitted the Eucharist. And he arguably had this concept in mind when advocating for the blessing of people in same-sex relationships.
By myvoiceismypass 2025-05-0820:302 reply American Christianity != American Catholicism
By slowmovintarget 2025-05-090:05 Christianity > Catholicism
By tomhow 2025-05-1013:12 This comment combines nationalistic and religious flamebait all at once, which is against the guidelines. Please keep the guidelines in mind when commenting on HN.
I know many American evangelicals who believe Catholics are not true Christians, and as such, when they're talking about Christians they are not including Catholics in that discussion.
I was in an interview once and the prospective employer asked me what church I attend. I replied, "Catholic." He said, "Is that even Christian?" So, yeah, plenty of Americans have a skewed view of Catholicism.
Being asked your religion in a job interview is wild (outside of a few select jobs, like Pope)
By StopDisinfo910 2025-05-096:26 As discrimination based on religion is illegal in most of the world, it’s also probably exposing the person asking and the company to a lot of potential legal risk. It’s a big no where I live and part of the things you are explicitly trained to never ask about.
By michaelsbradley 2025-05-0820:56 More or less, though it's such an umbrella term at this point that a self-described "evangelical" may disclaim Protestant identity, not having an awareness of the historical link and intending to convey that they don't feel aligned with a Protestant denomination such as Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. I've met many Evangelicals who said something along those lines when the subject came up in conversation.
By dragonwriter 2025-05-0821:00 Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism are distinct and relatively recent (18th and 19th century in origin) strands within Protestantism (both being particularly prominent in the US.) They aren't equivalent to Protestantism.
By michaelsbradley 2025-05-0821:011 reply [flagged]
By ivape 2025-05-0822:05 What part? I see you have a lot of faith-based links in your profile. Perhaps you think you are some kind of authority. Maybe you are! I have the wonky belief that God talks through us all, so anything you say, I'd actually take quite seriously.
By nashashmi 2025-05-0820:40 Not sure if your vote is a religious thing or a political one. Basically you can vote for a satanist to take over a government. But you are damned if you are a satanist or in govt run by one.
It’s funny seeing people talk about the decline of America. I can remember the same conversations in the 1970’s, late 2000’s as well.
By kashunstva 2025-05-091:322 reply > I can remember the same conversations…
Do you remember a president from those eras who when asked whether he believed that he was duty bound to uphold the Constitution answered “I don’t know.”?
> It’s funny seeing people talk about the decline of America.
Funny? I’d rather say it’s pretty sad.
By derektank 2025-05-095:34 Nixon said many things that were nearly as offensive to the rule of law and separation of powers as outlined in the constitution, even if they weren't as ignorant as anything Trump has said
He said the quiet part out loud but that doesn't change the fact that presidents have been ignoring the constitution for decades.
It's a trivial example but Biden trying to unilaterally declare the ERA law was absurd and his student loan forgiveness was obviously going to be found unconditional and he did it anyway.
Those aren't the actions of someone who takes the constitution seriously.
Nevermind the patriot act...
> Nevermind the patriot act...
Whether you agree with it or not, at least the Patriot Act was passed by Congress and not simply Executive Orders because it's too inconvenient to work with Congress on legislation.
By WrongAssumption 2025-05-099:072 reply I don’t know that the majority of congress choosing to violate the constitution really makes your point.
It passed the house with 357–66 and senate with 98–1. That's well passed the required two thirds for passing an amendment if they wanted to.
I'm as critical as anyone, but GP's point stands.
By refurb 2025-05-101:12 Amendments need more than Congressional approval
It was passed in 2001, surely there has been adequate time for parties to get a case to the Supreme Court and get it ruled as such.
Especially with how quickly some of the Trump EOs have been turned down.
By parineum 2025-05-0921:39 It's very difficult to challenge because the secret nature of it.
In order to sue, you have to prove standing and in order to have standing, you have to know you were harmed. It's hard to prove you were harmed if everything is top secret.
If we ever hit a point where nobody is talking about America being in decline, that will mean we are entering decline.
I do think we’ve been in a down period when it comes to politics for a while but I am mid to long term optimistic about things getting better. This is not the first time we’ve had crazy massively divisive politics or populist crackpottery. Overall I do not think we are in any kind of terminal decline.
What is happening is that other countries are rising. I think that’s good for us. When America was the only superpower it made us lazy and foolish.
Look at how it works out in the corporate world. Take Intel for instance. They had a near monopoly for about a decade on top performing CPUs and it destroyed the company. Google carved out a monopoly on search and they are complete trash now. Pride cometh before a fall because pride causes the fall.
What other countries are rising? I mean China is an obvious one but seems to be struggling. Europe is in decline. India continues to struggle.
If anything, the US has pulled even further ahead since 1990. Back then the USSR was a near-power to the US, but has fallen significantly since then.
Since all power is relative, you’d need to see the US falling relative to another country. And right now, I don’t really see a country on that trajectory.
China is gaining power as we speak. And USA is abdicating that power. Also, Russia seems to be a big winner currently, America will help them keep parts Ukraine and prepare for another invasion.
It’s certainly an amusing thread to read, the US has more power, no it has less, China is pulling ahead, actually it’s struggling, so is India, or not.
If only there were numbers we could compare.
By watwut 2025-05-0919:20 China is not without problems and had some problems in economy. This situation allows them to get ahead, internally plausiy blame Trump even for issues that existed even before, get new aliances and power.
America is not gaining power, that part is pure wishful thinking.
By zelphirkalt 2025-05-091:381 reply My optimism for the US is quite limited, because they have kinda knowingly dismantled their own democracy, and are in the process of dismantling it even more, while the president tries as hard as possible to become a Putin-like dictator, and important decisions are made by tech giant owning oligarchs. A while longer and the US might enter a civil war or will simply lose all good will it had directed towards it in the world and will then stand alone, while other countries enable the US' competitors. If Americans do not change something about their trajectory soon, it will not end well for them, and probably not end well for many other countries either.
The US has a history of hitting rock bottom every so often. First constitutional crisis leading to the replacement of the articles of confederation, civil war, Great Depression and the new deal, the Vietnam era, and now the collapse of the post Cold War order.
I am not sure fascism will take here. Americans might think they want it until the fascists start telling them what to do. We are kinda starting to see that.
We will see more. Wait until some stand your ground red blooded American homeowner guns down a bunch of ICE goons doing a warrantless raid on the wrong house. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve been checking the news for it daily. Then Trump tries to confiscate guns. I’ve been predicting for years that it’s MAGA who will try to “come for the guns.” That will be a hoot as they say a few hours South of where I am.
Of course they still have the culture war card. For some reason trans derangement syndrome (TDS) still has a hold on people. I don’t understand why that particular thing works so well, even on some people you would not expect.
> For some reason trans derangement syndrome (TDS) still has a hold on people. I don’t understand why that particular thing works so well, even on some people you would not expect.
I think it work as good as it does since there are no trans people around most people at all. It is a TV thing.
Outside of big cities I have never seen anyone. Prevalence measures varies but in my 30k pop county there should be like from 3 to <1.
By zoklet-enjoyer 2025-05-098:291 reply I live in Fargo, ND. Conservative, small city. I work with 3 people who are trans and know another 3 outside of work and regularly see others around town. It does seem like a trend and I doubt most of them have dysphoria, but they're around and visible even in conservative areas.
Fargo is the main population centre in North Dakota though, right?
But ye the line between bisexual and transsexual have been blurried lately. Or maybe better put, I am not keeping track of the trends since I am no longer a student.
By zoklet-enjoyer 2025-05-122:53 It is and we have 3 colleges, so that probably has something to do with it. Lots of younger people. And maybe it's more visible to me because my girlfriend's kid is gay
By DonHopkins 2025-05-0910:502 reply >Outside of big cities I have never seen anyone.
It's not their responsibility to present themselves to you for enumeration and measurement, festoon themselves and their cars with trans pride tattoos and flags and bumper stickers, or allow you to sexually assault them by inspecting their genitals before playing sports or taking a shit.
Maybe they're just ordinary every day people, going about their ordinary every day lives, all around you, without you even knowing about it, because it's none of your business.
In fact, maybe that's what transphobic bigots with Trans Derangement Syndrome most fear, that they are surrounded by everyday normal trans people going about their everyday normal lives, but they don't even know it, and that is why they are so obsessed with inspecting other people's genitals and denying them human rights.
Any transphobic bigots with Trans Derangement Syndrome want to chime in and explain exactly why you're so obsessed with other people's genitals, which are none of your business? Or Trump voters who support him and his normative gender role enforcers grabbing women and children by the pussy to judge whether or not they're allowed to play sports or use public restrooms, all in the name of "protecting women", at the same time as they celebrate taking away women's right to abortion? Care to share your browser history, so we know if you're jerking off to the same secret obsession that gets you so hot and bothered in public?
NORTH CAROLINA: Anti-trans Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for North Carolina governor Mark Robinson called himself a 'Black Nazi,' admitted to liking trans porn:
https://www.advocate.com/election/mark-robinson-black-nazi-t...
>“I like watching [transgender slur] on girl porn! That’s fucking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote in one comment verified by the outlet. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!” -Mark Robinson aka "minisoldr"
Unjustly confronting women, accusing them of being men, and expelling them from the bathroom just because they don't look stereotypically feminine enough for you is not "protecting women". It's as sexist and bigoted as it gets.
WASHINGTON, DC: Lauren Boebert & Nancy Mace confront woman they thought was trans in ‘predictable’ Capitol bathroom incident:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lauren-boebert-nancy-mace-confron...
>A misguided attempt to enforce Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s discriminatory anti-trans bathroom policy at the Capitol led to an embarrassing misstep by GOP Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina who were involved in an incident on Thursday that transgender Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride's office called “predictable.”
>The pair confronted a cisgender woman in the restroom, mistakenly believing her to be the Delaware Democratic lawmaker, who is the first out transgender member of Congress. McBride had previously said she would follow House rules after Johnson banned transgender people from using the bathroom in line with their gender identity. The incident has reignited criticism of Johnson’s anti-trans bathroom regulations, which critics say endanger and harass all women.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Woman says Boston hotel guard told her to leave bathroom because she ‘was a man’:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/boston-hotel...
>Same-sex couple says they were appalled after being confronted and wrongfully accused in women’s restroom.
>A couple visiting Boston says they were left confused and appalled after being forced out of the Liberty Hotel during a Kentucky Derby party on Saturday, following what they describe as being confronted and wrongfully accused in the women’s restroom.
>Ansley Baker and her girlfriend, Liz Victor, both cisgender women, said a hotel security guard entered the women’s bathroom and demanded Baker leave the stall she was using, claiming she didn’t belong there.
>“All of a sudden there was banging on the door,” Baker recalled to CBS News.
>“I pulled my shorts up. I hadn’t even tied them. One of the security guards was there telling me to get out of the bathroom, that I was a man in the women’s bathroom. I said: ‘I’m a woman.’”
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA: Cis Woman Mistaken as Transgender Records Being Berated in Bathroom:
https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/11/01/cis-woman-mistaken-...
>A woman in Las Vegas says she remains shaken from her experience last week when another woman berated her in a public restroom for being transgender. The problem is that she's not trans, and, as she puts it, regardless of whether she had been, the entire situation was plainly wrong.
>In Las Vegas, Jay, a 24-year-old cis woman, was driving with her boyfriend on Thursday when she said she had to use the restroom.
>Jay says the couple stopped at Rampart Casino after being out all day to fix a seat belt on their car.
>Because she knew she would take longer, she gave her boyfriend some money to gamble while he waited and she went to the bathroom.
>"As soon as I got in, I went straight to a stall," Jay tells The Advocate. "About a minute or so in, I start to hear a woman being extremely aggressive. At first, I wasn't hearing exactly what she was saying until I started hearing her say, 'Trans, figure out your identity at home ... they better not come out of there. .. that's not allowed ... that's a boy, [and] they think this is [OK] because it's being taught in schools.'"
> It's not their responsibility to present themselves to you for enumeration and measurement, [...]
Come on. That is not what I meant. I recognise almost everyone my age that went to school here. People talk.
By DonHopkins 2025-05-0914:471 reply >People talk.
Yeah, they do, don't they? And because of that, it's really tough to be trans or gay or whatever in a small town. And that drives people into the closet, and drives them to leave.
How much do you really know about those people you never saw again after high school?
By rightbyte 2025-05-108:45 Yes? I am not arguing otherwise.
> I don’t understand why that particular thing works so well, even on some people you would not expect.
When you engage these sorts of people and ask the right follow-up questions, there's some common underlying concerns that underpin the polite fictions.
I've found that for men, they are scared that the next woman they look at covetously might have been AMAB. Even if they understand that there is a difference between sex and gender, they are scared that their acquaintances aren't, and are terrified of the prospect of being "tricked" into being attracted to someone who they see as a man. For women, I've found that they see men as biologically and intrinsically dangerous, and that a tiger doesn't change its stripes just because they are alienated from masculinity.
Not that I agree with either viewpoint. Being worried about being "accidentally gay" speaks more to underlying insecurities surrounding masculinity, and "men are inherently dangerous" is just misandry. But I'm no longer surprised by TDS.
By sapphicsnail 2025-05-0921:391 reply I don't think this is happening organically. Trans people are such a small percentage of the population but we've been getting a ton of media coverage. There's a concerted effort on the right to demonize us and that filters down into the culture.
I can't speak to men but women are so much more comfortable around me since I came out. Most of my partners and friends have been cis women. One of the best parts of transitioning is random women will come up and talk to me when I'm running errands. This started happening early in my transition when I was very much visibly trans. People can be weird around me if they haven't met a trans person before but the people who are hostile tend to be terminally online.
By LexiMax 2025-05-0922:56 I'm not trying to downplay the inordinate amount of media coverage transfolk are getting.
However, effective propaganda needs an audience willing to listen and accept the things they're being told. I don't think that propaganda turns good people hateful. Instead, I believe it gives people predisposed to certain hateful beliefs a socially acceptable excuse they can repeat for feeling the way they do.
> For women, I've found that they see men as biologically and intrinsically dangerous, and that a tiger doesn't change its stripes just because they are alienated from masculinity.
This is demonstrably true in many scenarios. Such as, males being transferred to women's prisons because they say they are women. As a consequence, female prisoners have been sexually assaulted and raped by these men. Drawing attention to this isn't misandry, it's reality.
So...there's a funny little consequence of putting in the work to have those real-life conversations, and that's that one starts to be able to see "past" post-hoc justifications like yours.
Trying to argue the "facts" with anonymous internet denizens is pretty much useless, because especially in today's post-truth landscape, you can find justification for any horrendous opinion if you dig deep enough. That is even assuming the person you're talking to is even real and not an AI, a bored sociopath on an alt account, a paid shill or otherwise.
Thankfully, spaces like these are very much not representative of real life, where most individuals are nice, decent people minding their own business, and "saving face" isn't seen as such an imperative away from the public scrutiny of the internet.
By bobalob 2025-05-107:47 Depends who you talk to, I suppose.
In the real-life conversations I've had about this issue, most people are horrified when they find out that men, transferred to women's prisons due to trans activist policy, have been sexually assaulting and raping female inmates. Keeping in mind that this isn't a hypothetical about what might happen but is a direct result of harmful policy, and involves documented cases and real victims.
It tends to prompt a rethink about this whole topic.
By FirmwareBurner 2025-05-097:111 reply >Google carved out a monopoly on search and they are complete trash now.
Google search is only trash to the tech savvy user base, but the normies have no issues with it.
By theodric 2025-05-098:46 Aren't the normies using ChatGPT to generate something closely resembling plausible answers now, exactly because Google's quality has dipped? Jeez, the normies I know sure are, to a man...
By harimau777 2025-05-091:15 Back then we didn't have a fascist for president or a court full of people who will make up anything to get the results that they want.
By mensetmanusman 2025-05-0820:383 reply “ That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising.
The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; the increased self reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it - actually there is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind.”
From the last Pope Leo over 100 years ago.
By Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 2025-05-0820:545 reply Neat thanks.
Btw how do you know this?! Have you memorized stuff of all the passed popes?
This is the beginning of perhaps the most famous of Leo XIII.'s many encyclicals, entitled "Rerum novarum" from 1891. To my knowledge it is the first of many papal encyclicals on social issues. It thus marks an important point in church history (and beyond that in the history of ideas in general).
For further details see the encyclical's Wikipedia entry at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rerum_Novarum
For the text itself: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docum...
By Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 2025-05-095:17 Thanks a lot!
By mensetmanusman 2025-05-0820:583 reply These are the types of things talked about in small groups near your local cathedral by members of groups like Opus Dei everywhere around the world. All are welcome :)
By dragonwriter 2025-05-0822:002 reply I don't think Opus Dei spends a lot of time discussing Rerum Novarum, honestly.
By tclancy 2025-05-091:39 I dunno, they spent a ton of time talking about how to get rid of the last pope, so who knows which other "Actually believe the teachings of Christ" popes they bad-mouth when they get together?
By CGMthrowaway 2025-05-0823:052 reply What do they discuss? There is an Opus Dei church near me and I always wondered what was up
Opus Dei is an extreme reactionary group within the church. Leo XIII was a liberal pope responsible for the social doctrine of the church (this text).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_Opus_Dei
Personal experience: when I was in high school in my country there was a teacher who was in Opus Dei. He tried to recruit students by leaving them a letter and inviting them to a "scholarship". I got such a letter, I was so excited. The school found out about that and investigated. We're a mixed-race country. The Opus Dei teacher has invited exclusively white students. He had invited top students #2 to #4 in my class by grade, but not #1, who was black.
By mensetmanusman 2025-05-0910:572 reply Meanwhile I mostly interacted with Opus Dei members near Harvard that were Nigerian, Spanish, and Mexican.
Each country has their own racial hierarchy that may not, and usually does not, match yours.
By mensetmanusman 2025-05-0917:47 This was the US.
By adl 2025-05-1219:02 Where they wealthy? That's the only thing the Opus Dei cares about.
By CGMthrowaway 2025-05-0914:511 reply Depending on how you count, Egypt, Morocco, Bangladesh, North Korea...
By 4ggr0 2025-05-0916:27 i know what you mean, although they're not single-race (i hate using this expression, omg) in a binary way. or at least only if you exclude the minorities in these countries who still make it diverse, be it in a small way.
By lambdaphagy 2025-05-0914:07 When I visited an Opus Dei house once for a philosophy lecture they were discussing Plato, the Timaeus in particular.
By mystified5016 2025-05-0913:451 reply As long as you aren't a smug asshole about it, most religious people don't mind talking about religion with atheists. You have to be honestly interested in what they have to say and not just looking for a way to 'prove them wrong'
By 90s_dev 2025-05-1013:05 Conversations with those kinds can be fun too, if you're in the right mood.
By hokumguru 2025-05-095:01 Especially atheists
By bb86754 2025-05-092:14 Yup
By toofy 2025-05-099:08 while it wouldn’t surprise me to learn they might be discussing this, but if they were it would almost certainly be in disgust—opus dei is very very extreme in their dislike of ideas such as those from pope leo.
one of my grandparents dabbled, and every single one of them i’ve met were very… trying to be kind here… veerrry very into the church. not a normal into the church, much more extreme. i’m desperately trying not to use the c word, but it really does fit. if one finds themselves being taken in, truly, please, take just a lil bit and learn how orgs like scientology and heavens gate etc… recruit people. the recruitment similarities are uncanny. the after effects are uncanny.
The last Leo was a notable pope. His views are well known. You don’t need to memorise everything, a lot of what they’ve said over the years is available in books or online.
Pope Quartz: https://xkcd.com/2501/
I was raised Catholic and couldn't have even told you there'd been a single Pope Leo, let alone 13 of them before today. The only Pope quote I could even give you is the term "Ex Cathedra".
By PortiaBerries 2025-05-0821:5710 reply It never ceases to amaze me how poorly catechized the majority of cradle Catholics are. I don't intend this to be directed at you, but it's a standing joke among traditionalist Catholics that "I was raised Catholic" is the preamble to a statement of either ignorance or heresy.
Growing up to Scottish and Irish Catholics in England, I remember talking to a bunch of Ulster protestants as a teenager when the topic turned to religion - I said "Well, I was raised Catholic but I'm not really a believer of any kind" and the response was "Ah, so you're one of THOSE Catholics!".
Turns out there are a lot of 'those' Catholics.
By B1FF_PSUVM 2025-05-090:24 Don't go to church, but know which church they are not going to.
By CGMthrowaway 2025-05-0823:083 reply For most of history 99% of Catholics could not read, much less own a Bible. The fetishization of theology is not necessary to be a good Catholic
By TheFreim 2025-05-0823:35 Literacy is a great gift which shouldn't be squandered: much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more. To try to make knowledge of ones spiritual heritage out to be "fetishization" is inappropriate in my estimation. This reminds me of a story told by Dr. Scott Hahn, a Catholic biblical scholar, about an experience he once had (closely paraphrased):
Questioner: "Why do we need to know all of this [bible study, theology, etc]? I can just think of the medieval peasant who is illiterate and thus disqualified from any and everything that you're talking about."
Dr. Hahn: "I think the best response to your question would actually come from the medieval peasant himself, because if you could imagine him standing here next to me he would look at you and say, 'You're using me as an excuse? You have books, you have literacy, you have access to these resources, and you're using me as an excuse to not take advantage of them?'"
Bibles were the first book to sell in large numbers when the printing press was invented.
Before that the church did expect at least priests and monks and nuns to be able to read the Bible, and there were a lot of them.
Most is strictly true, but you are talking about a millennium between the clear primacy of Rome and the invention of the printing press, and half a millennium since so its not hugely more.
Finally, historically most people could not own books and had no to limited literacy. Literacy is not necessary to be a good anything, but its definitely better to be literate and have access to things to read.
By AStonesThrow 2025-05-1219:17 A phenomenon that I see all too often is the absurdity of young adults who try to plow through writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Church Fathers, which is great, so when do they have time to read Scripture itself?
I think it's great that literacy and the printing press has democratized the reading of books, but when you're faced with such a corpus presented by Catholic tradition, you really need to pick and choose your weekly time investments!
I've inquired with a few religious orders as a layperson. The first thing you will find when inquiring with them is the thickness of tomes that land on the table for all adherents to read. Each religious order has a particular spirituality that is synthesized in the writings of saints and mystics. So if I was not already well-acquainted and well-grounded in the Old and New Testaments, and in the habit of reading those every day, what good would it do me to read Aquinas? Or Leo XIII encyclicals? Pointless.
The Bible itself has so many layers and aspects and messages for us. Many scholars invest entire lifetimes in understanding only the Bible. The only way to be a good Christian is to live the life. It doesn't matter what books you've read, at the end of the day, only your experience and your response to the Holy Spirit. If that means reading books, then good. If that means welding metal, also good. But, don't try to break open the words of Aquinas before you've read Daniel, or Matthew!
By User23 2025-05-096:02 For most of history even a single book of the Bible would cost a princely sum.
Even today a single manuscript vellum scroll is a significant expense.
> I don't intend this to be directed at you, but it's a standing joke among traditionalist Catholics that "I was raised Catholic" is the preamble to a statement of either ignorance or heresy.
It's cool, no offence taken.
My mother took it all very seriously, but she was also syncretic New Age/Hindu/Catholic; she got me baptised at birth and took the lead with Sunday school and going to Church etc, my dad was mainly interested in getting me into a good school that was Catholic but himself was atheist.
I actually read the entire New Testament while at school, took it at face value, thought "this doesn't work, does it?" and went to Wicca for a bit before deciding that wasn't for me either.
I think at no point did anyone bother to explain the structure of the Catholic church, they just kinda assumed we all knew it, when what we knew was from pop culture. I think your local priest was unavoidable knowledge, but pop culture gave me bishops, the Pope (but not the fact that his official title isn't that until it came up on the quiz show QI), and the obvious joke about Cardinal Jaime Sin. The actual education gave me no sense of ranks or the organisation or how nuns and monks fit in — just the same five bible tales (birth, walking on water, feeding of 5000, eye of the needle, death and resurrection) over and over again. With singing.
The pattern you've noticed, I think also applies to the UK citizenship test: there's a general sense that most people born with UK nationality wouldn't be able to pass the test to become a citizen as an adult.
By brianwawok 2025-05-0822:481 reply Growing up Catholic we learned all that stuff at CCD which was a Wednesday night “Sunday school”. Otherwise no idea how you would pick it up without google.
By pbh101 2025-05-099:26 Or Catholic primary/secondary education.
But still, both are highly variable in quality/coverage and likely much less consistent than you might assume if unfamiliar with the space.
Who the pope is, is not really relevant. It's not like the pope will suddenly go against the key scriptures or something.
Also, most Catholics are born in catholic families so it's not like they chose catholicism over something else.
By graemep 2025-05-097:56 > Also, most Catholics are born in catholic families so it's not like they chose catholicism over something else.
I do not know whether that is true any more, at least in all countries. At one Catholic parish I knew in Britain about half the congregation were adult converts.
Then there are a lot of people who leave and return. I might count as that - Catholic family, was agnostic (and married in registry office, which turned out to be useful), and now am definitely a Christian but feel denomination does not matter and do not really accept much of the Catholic theology (and some of its practical consequences, such as no women priests really bother me). OTOH I have not, and would not, formally leave the church either.
By ZoomZoomZoom 2025-05-099:041 reply Who the president is, is not really relevant. It's not like the president will suddenly go against the constitution or something.
Bring serious, it's kind of important due to the Pope's infallibility.
Irrelevant analogy. You can't change country super easily but you can stop being a Catholic in 5 seconds if you decide it.
By disgruntledphd2 2025-05-0915:001 reply > you can stop being a Catholic in 5 seconds if you decide it.
How does one officially leave the Catholic Church?
Sure, you can stop attending church and taking communion, but you're still on a list somewhere in your parish(es).
Some places have church tax based on your religion, such as Germany. I've heard varying claims from locals about the difficulty of leaving organised religion, though for me as an Auslander it was as easy as just saying "none" in the right box when setting up my tax ID.
By ekianjo 2025-05-1015:58 I am aware of Germany but that's an exception. In no other (developed) country are your taxes tied to your faith.
Apostasy is not that quick or easy. Depending on a country the church can fight you on that.
By ekianjo 2025-05-102:06 Any example?
By im3w1l 2025-05-090:10 I was raised atheist and the education I received on religion was also firmly from an atheist (I guess anthropological?) viewpoint. What we were taught was that religion in theory (e.g. what is written in the holy books) and religion as it's actually practiced can often be quite different and none of them is realer than the other. Or something like that, it was a while ago.
>It never ceases to amaze me how poorly catechized the majority of cradle Catholics are.
The classic example being asking one "What is the immaculate conception?"
That said, I have no reason to think that the average Catholic is more or less knowledgeable about his religion than any other Christian.
By kens 2025-05-094:51 What most people get wrong is that the immaculate conception is the conception of Mary, not Jesus, and is completely different from virgin birth.
No idea how old OP is, but I think there's a pattern amongst Millennial cradle Catholics in particular. You grow up with it, maybe you went to Catholic grade school and high school, perhaps even a Catholic college (Notre Dame if you're lucky, Creighton or Marquette if you didn't get that 1500 on the SAT or a 34 on the ACT that you wanted). And then there's sort of a fork when you hit adulthood. You either drop it and never come back, or you passively drift away and then one day you get married and have kids and start taking it seriously again. I knew the reference because of the latter. I suspect there's a lot of Millennial Catholics who are like that.
This is to say, or rather explain, that I respect those who convert and have a predilection to Traditionalism. Part of the reason cradle Catholics drifted away is that the boomer generation basically ruined the mystique and the tradition, so when you're a kid it just felt like another chore.
By User23 2025-05-095:59 The OP AKA Dominicans date back to 1216.
Haha obviously I’m kidding you but that’s truly tangentially relevant
By cperciva 2025-05-091:17 Isn't that the point though? To provide a disjunction?
"I was raised Catholic" is like "I'm not racist but".
By thrwww 2025-05-0822:19 [flagged]
By asielen 2025-05-094:24 I would generally agree, except that there is a very well know Pope Leo that anyone who has taken any European history should know about. Pope Leo X that was Pope when Martin Luther kicked off the reformation.
By Sharlin 2025-05-0822:05 There are already a plenty of analysis pieces published by reputable news sources that discuss the new pope's chosen regal name and its significance, in particular in relation to the last Leo and his views and important writings.
By ccppurcell 2025-05-099:27 Someone asked me the same question! I just know that popes pick their names to indicate what their priorities are. Francis picked a totally new name. I think that in itself signals a time of change in the church, we can also look to st Francis And the traditional association with kindness, mercy, not to mention his "Rule" (basically that Christ had no possessions).
Typically the previous pope with that name is where you look. Maybe the first too. Leo I stood up to Atilla the Hun. Leo XIII championed trade unions and workers rights (though also rejected socialism). Make of it what you will.
By FrustratedMonky 2025-05-090:09 "From the last Pope Leo over 100 years ago."
everything old is new again.
history repeats.
we never learn.
The Terminator: "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves"
By actionfromafar 2025-05-0820:41 That definitely rhymes, more than rhymes actually.
