How Pope Leo XIV may lead church and navigate an increasingly vocal Catholic right in US

The Catholic Church set sail on a redirected trajectory under Pope Francis’ command, a direction that angered conservatives as he challenged traditionalist gatekeeping by working to empower everyday Catholics. 

Now, the newly elected Pope Leo XIV is at the helm, and experts believe it's unlikely he will completely turn the ship around and point it in a direction that predates Francis.

“The cardinals did not elect somebody who was going to reject the legacy of Pope Francis and take us back to the old church,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and columnist for Religion News Service. “That day is over.”

The 133-member conclave, an assembly of cardinals for which Francis appointed 80% of its members, concluded May 8 with the election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. The new pope's background and early remarks since his election, plus the significance as the first U.S.-born pope, is readjusting an earlier calculus for future change and any ensuing conflict.

In some of Leo’s earliest comments since his election on the idea of reform, the new pope said in a May 10 meeting with cardinals that he hopes to further some of the changes that Francis championed. Specifically, the new pope cited his predecessor’s work on synodality, referring to Francis’ call for “decentralization” in policy decision-making, and “dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities.”

These same reforms were at the heart of an escalating conflict between the Vatican and an emergent Catholic right in the United States, a movement that seeks more independence for American Catholicism. But earlier expectations about that widening division are upended with Leo's election.

“This is incredibly interesting because it changes the relationships between the Vatican and the West, and the Vatican and U.S. Catholicism,” Massimo Faggioli, a leading Catholic theologian and professor at Villanova University, said about Prevost’s election. “It’s really a different set of cards that the conclave has given to the papacy.”

Prevost, who most recently served as a top Vatican administrator who managed bishop appointments for Francis, spent most of his 44-year career in ministry in his hometown of Chicago and in Peru. He’s a dual citizen in the United States and Peru and is also a member of and leading figure within the Order of St. Augustine.

Faggioli and Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of theology and law at Boston College, said Leo’s American bona fides make it harder for U.S. critics to attack the new pope with some of the same claims they leveled against his predecessor.  

“You got someone who has a global outlook who’s rooted in the American heartland,” Kaveny said. “You’ve got a pope who understands America and who can’t be dismissed as, ‘You don’t like Americans.’”

'Continuity' with Francis, not 'repetition'

Conservatives over time revolted against reforms that Francis championed to change how the church operated due to fears they could alter Catholic doctrine.

Examples of some of these key changes under Francis were revised procedures for an assembly of bishops known as a synod by allowing women and laity to participate, and his appointment of women to lead certain Vatican agencies.

Backlash on the right, motivated by a combination of ideological and ecclesiological grievances, popularized attitudes that questioned the legitimacy of Francis’ authority. Francis sought to quell some of that uprising, and Leo in his prior post even had a role it in along the way.

In his role as a Vatican administrator over bishop appointments, Leo helped manage discipline for the incendiary Texas bishop Rev. Joseph Strickland, according to National Catholic Reporter. The Vatican removed Strickland from his post over the Diocese of Tyler in 2023, and for similar reasons pursued disciplinary action against two other high-ranking church leaders in the United States around the same time.  

Reese, author of the 1998 book “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church,” said Leo’s background with bishop oversight signals “we are going to have a lot of new bishops in the United States who are more supportive of what Francis did and what Leo is going to be trying to do.”

This emergent Catholic right in the United States has deepened in its loyalty to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert. Vance is among several Catholics in Trump’s Cabinet, some of whom are allies of this emergent Catholic right and its belief in applying narrow religious criteria to government policy.

These tensions contributed to clashes between Francis and the Trump administration, such as a February dispute between the late pope and Vance over immigration enforcement. Likewise, Francis' proponents within in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also expressed concern about Trump’s immigration agenda.

Amid that controversy, Prevost shared on social media articles that criticized Vance's stance on immigration and comments about Francis.

“I do not expect him (Leo XIV) to move quickly, but he will bring a geopolitical awareness to deal with the Trump administration,” said Mathew Schmalz, a professor of religious studies at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Leo has said little about other major social and cultural issues that have animated the emergent Catholic right, especially inclusion for LGBTQ+ Catholics and women’s ordination as deacons. Plus, Kaveny and Faggioli said that even if Leo engages these future feuds, he will do so with a different flair.

“This election is an election of continuity with Francis,” Faggioli said. “It will not be a repetition of Francis.”