We are not serious people. Want proof? On the same Thursday that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost became the first U.S.-born pope in history, Donald Trump tapped Our Lady of Box Wine to be the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
This is not to say their titles are equivalent.
Jeanine Pirro’s scope of influence is primarily domestic, praise the Lord, while Pope Leo XIV, as Prevost will henceforth be known, holds global sway. Whether that’s a positive development is yet to be seen. By some accounts, he was a dark horse in a conclave race which many predicted would deliver unto us a Pope Pizzaballa.
Leo’s announcement gave us much more to be excited about in the short term, if only for the memes flowing forth like honey from the rock. Since he’s a native Chicagoan, there were the obligatory yuks about deep dish communion and Malört.
Others couldn’t pass up the excellent wordplay opportunities, like comedian Josh Gondelman’s punchline: “I can't believe we have a pope from Illinois. People from Chicago usually hate the Cardinals.”
Leo’s announcement gave us much more to be excited about in the short term, if only for the memes flowing forth like honey from the rock.
There were the “it’s right there” jokes about Leo being a Chicago Pope, “one of the shows Jack Donaghy greenlit when he was tanking NBC,” quipped journalist Bobby Lewis.
Podcast host Ben Heisler gave Leo XIV the Chicago Bulls royalty treatment, setting Leo's debut on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to the Alan Parsons Project’s “Sirius,” aka Michael Jordan’s theme.
And on Friday, the Chicago Sun-Times gave the ultimate benediction with its cover.
We don’t necessarily kid because we love (“The only American pope we recognize in this house is Olivia,” wisecracked Imani Gandy) but, maybe, because we have some imagining of the papal conclave’s (possibly catty) selection process thanks to, well, “Conclave.”
When the previously unthinkable becomes a reality, our first reaction is jokes.
While the multiple Oscar-nominated film (and winner for best adapted screenplay) didn’t exactly light multiplexes on fire when it was out, and quietly sat on Peacock for some time, it peaked as the 17th most in-demand movie globally the day after the Oscars before fading from the top 100 with the awards season’s afterglow.
Not long after Pope Francis died on April 21, "Conclave" rose again to become the third most in-demand movie globally once Prime Video made it available, The Wrap reports. Today, only “Another Simple Favor” is more popular in the U.S., where “Conclave” sits at No.2. Not even a bunch of bishops covering “Mean Girls” can outdraw Blake Lively.
But let’s not forget that years before Ralph Fiennes slipped into a cassock, filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino sneaked us into his version of the Vatican’s inner political sanctum via “The Young Pope” in 2017 and its 2020 sequel “The New Pope.”
John Malkovich and Jude Law in "The New Pope" (Gianni Fiorito/HBO)
These rapturous visions may not have been universally appealing in their time, although that didn’t hamper the virality of “The Young Pope.” Like Leo, it begat a procession of memes solely based on our first glimpse of Jude Law as Pope Pius XIII, the fictional first U.S.-born pontiff, played by a British actor.
When the previously unthinkable becomes a reality, our first reaction is jokes. Eight years ago, the thought of a 47-year-old New Yorker named Lenny Belardo becoming pope was absurd.
Throw in Pius' strategy of flaunting his sexual magnetism while strategically withholding it from the masses ("Absence is presence," he preaches); his unapologetic smoking habit; and his petulant demands for Cherry Coke Zero. It's no wonder that “The Young Pope” soon became a coarse fascination.
Questions abound as to what kind of pope Leo will be, which we’ll only find out once he’s settled into the position. He’s the 267th pope, but only the third Augustinian, an order described by National Geographic as being known for pastoral care, education and missionary work.
In his first formal address to Roman Catholic cardinals on Saturday, Leo vowed to continue Pope Francis' missionary direction, highlighting objectives that his predecessor listed in his 2013 pronouncement “Evangelii Gaudium,” or the Joy of the Gospel. Leo specifically emphasized “growth in collegiality,” “popular piety,” a “loving care for the least and the rejected,” and “courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world,” according to The New York Times.
Before he was a man of the cloth, Prevost was a Chicago South Sider. His brother confirmed in an interview with the city’s local station WGN-TV that he is a White Sox fan, refuting early heresy claiming he roots for the Cubs, aka Satan’s Stickballers.
What matters to the Second City and the United States means little to a global audience likely to draw great significance from his naturalized Peruvian citizenship, which he obtained in 2015. Leo worked for a decade as a missionary in Trujillo, Peru, before serving as a bishop of a different Peruvian city, Chiclayo. The apparent hope is that Leo might unify the Americas, which have the highest concentration of the world’s Catholics.
The number of people who watched Sorrentino’s series when it aired on HBO or saw “Conclave” when it was in theaters is piddly compared to the number of Catholics worldwide, a 1.4 billion-strong flock. Its faithful have a keen interest in knowing what kind of man will be leading the Church until he dies or resigns, as Pope Benedict XVI did in 2013.
So do many non-Catholics, especially now. Recent TV shows and movies might bridge that knowledge gap for better or worse. Where “Conclave” removed some of the spiritual mystery from the process of selecting a new pope, reducing it to a matter of geopolitical pragmatism, “The Young Pope” shows the pontiff can be susceptible to the intoxicating effects of power as any mere mortal.
Today it provides a different and perhaps more informed viewing experience than when it first premiered. In 2017, there was no reason to suspect the Vatican would undergo a political shift. Instead, Law’s chiseled abs and insouciant grin were the secondi piatti following the generous serving of Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest on “Fleabag.”
But Pius' appeal extends beyond the carnal. “The Young Pope” paints him to be politically devious and as dangerous as any godless politician, a description more fitting than we’re initially shown.
Jude Law in "The Young Pope" (HBO)
With a backstabbing cardinal like the Vatican’s Secretary of State Angelo Voiello (Silvio Orlando) employing his version of coercive statecraft, shrewdness is essential. But then, Sorrentino conceived Pius as a conservative hardliner who would have favored brute force anyway. He surrounds himself with loyalists, starting by appointing his lifelong confidante and surrogate parent, Sister Mary (Diane Keaton), as his personal secretary.
“The Young Pope” was a fitting accompaniment to the first Trump era’s dawning, having premiered days before that inauguration. Sorrentino didn’t intend for his drama to meet that moment, but circumstances turned out that way.
“It is true that inherently there are some analogies that come out between the conservative ideas of this pope, and some of the conservative ideas that are emerging in some of the Western countries,” he said when Salon interviewed him back then, adding, “At the base of this character, the question I ask myself is, what could be the pope of the future?”
Many of us are asking some version of that right now.
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At 69, Leo is by no means a young pope, and nothing like Law’s hardcore conservative pontiff. Still, many wonder what to make of him.
Progressives cheered his announcement based on his papal name choice, an homage to Leo XIII, who was pope between 1878 to 1903. Leo XIII authored “Rerum Novarum,” an encyclical on capital and labor that marks the first time the Church affirmed workers’ dignity and the right to unionize.
Further boosting those hopes are past posts on an X account believed to be Leo's that criticize Vice President JD Vance (“JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love,” one reads), and others, like a reposted article about Francis’ recent letter to US bishops describing mass deportations as a major crisis “damaging the dignity of many men and women,” and of entire families.
These and other emerging details about Leo made some MAGA influencers blow their tops. Although Turning Point USA’s founder, Charlie Kirk, posted as close to a “let’s wait and see” opinion on X, hoping that Leo wouldn’t advocate for “open borders,” fellow right-winger Jack Posobiec lamented, “God save the Church.” That was a good deal more measured than Islamophobic Trump sycophant Laura Loomer, who became a meme herself by text screeching, “WOKE MARXIST POPE.”
Notwithstanding these fears, the new pope isn’t quite the same as Sorrentino’s titular “New Pope” either. The 2020 drama casts John Malkovich (another Illinois native, and charter member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company) as British nobleman and theocrat Sir John Brannox.
John Malkovich in "The New Pope" (Gianni Fiorito/HBO)
Historically speaking, Malkovich’s Brannox, who takes the papal name Pope John Paul III, would be as much of a rarity as Lenny Belardo, since there hasn’t been a British pope since Nicholas Breakspear's mid-12th-century reign as Pope Adrian IV. But we do not know whether Adrian shared his fictional counterpart John Paul III’s centrist vision.
Preaching his “middle way” uplifts the spiritually marginalized and appeals to a broad constituency. He even flirts with advocating for marriage equality after meeting with Sharon Stone, although he doesn’t admit that in her presence, and with a roomful of priests bearing witness.
“When will this pointless taboo be eliminated?” Stone asks about gay marriage for Catholics.
“When the Church has a brave, revolutionary, resolute pope – qualities none of which I possess,” he says.
So it is expected to be with Pope Leo XIV, who The New York Times reports in 2012 said in an address to bishops that Western media and popular culture cultivates “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel,” citing the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”
CNN reports he has also drawn criticism from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests over his alleged mishandling of two cases involving priests accused of sexual abuse: one in Chicago in 2000, and another in Peru in 2022.
On Thursday, Leo’s introductory greeting struck a similarly centrist tone to that of Malkovich’s Il Papa. After he praised the memory of Pope Francis, Leo said, “God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail . . .The world needs his light. Humanity needs him as the bridge to be reached by God and his love. Help us to build bridges with dialogue, to always be at peace. Thank you, Pope Francis.”
The world doesn’t lack coverage of the papacy or the Vatican. Popes make headlines whenever they address political issues during masses or in proclamations. Francis certainly did by meeting Vance in April — whose political views he did not approve of — and dying shortly thereafter.
Given the present political atmosphere, it’s easy to comprehend why the machinations surrounding this papal conclave were more of a culture-wide watch today than they might have been last autumn, let alone eight years ago.
Now that the world’s superpower is behaving like some ungodly blend of fascist state and playground ruled by bullies, the naming of an American pope has universally political implications. If we are not serious people, Trump is unserious to a sacrilegious degree. He even allowed the White House’s social media trolls to release a meme of him decked out as a roided-out pontiff within days of attending Francis’ funeral.
Silvio Orlando and John Malkovich in "The New Pope" (Gianni Fiorito/HBO)
But the late Pope Francis’ condemnation of Trump’s anti-immigration policies has a different weight coming from an Argentine than the same will have from a fellow American to whom 53 million Catholics may demonstrate some loyalty. When an amoral American president is proudly tanking his country’s international reputation, a centrist American pope’s rebuke could be politically deleterious.
Now that the world’s superpower is behaving like some ungodly blend of fascist state and playground ruled by bullies, the naming of an American pope has universally political implications.
Then there’s this observation from Robert Barron, bishop of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester in Minnesota, and an appointee to Trump’s newly created White House Commission on Religious Liberty. To CBS, he quoted one of his mentors as saying, “'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.”
On Thursday, the Holy See replied with its version of, “Thou shall not tempt us with a good time.” At least that’s how we’re choosing to see it, while taking in the fanciful speculations wrought in “Conclave” or Sorrentino’s dramas. As Malkovich’s John Paul muses aloud to Sharon Stone in “The New Pope,” perhaps life passes, but art remains.
Good thing too – memes are perishable, but worthwhile art has a long enough shelf life to inform our changing world. Even this comes with a warning, Stone tells Malkovich’s pope.
“Art passes too,” she says, “but a little more slowly, because art is more cunning.”
"Conclave" is streaming on Prime Video. "The Young Pope" and "The New Pope" are streaming on Max.
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