Trump and Pope Leo are now Earth’s most powerful Americans. They lead in different roles and realms

The motto of one newly elected American world leader: ” Fight! ” The other introduced himself to the world with his first public word as pope: “ Peace.”

The contrast between President Donald Trump and Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV couldn’t be more stark — politically, personally or in their world views. They lead in different roles and realms.

But Leo’s historic election last week to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics as the first U.S.-born pope means that the two most powerful people on the planet are Americans. That raises questions about American influence at a time when Trump’s tariff wars and “one way or the other” threats have upended eight decades of global order and sparked distrust among allies toward the United States.

The prospect of too much American power in geopolitics is widely considered one reason that the Catholic Church had not elected an American to the papacy across the country’s nearly 250-year history. Until, that is, the former Cardinal Robert F. Prevost of Chicago — Pope Leo XIV — was chosen last week to be the 267th pontiff.

“The irony of Leo’s election is that many in the rest of the world will view it as a sign of hope — as an American who can speak for them rather than act against them,” said David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture.

Pope Leo is another kind of American on the world stage

The shock and delight of the not-well-known cardinal’s election soon shifted into robust discussion about how the top of the global pecking order could be populated by two Americans.

Trump is known to not enjoy sharing attention or primacy, as his “America first” foreign policy approach makes clear. American Catholics chose Trump over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.

In one apparent appeal to them, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself dressed as a pope during the days of mourning for Pope Francis, who died April 21. The move was not appreciated by some Catholics and Italians. Trump denied posting the image himself and said anyone who was offended “can’t take a joke.” He insisted that “the Catholics loved it.”

Even so, Trump wished Leo well and called it a “great honor” that the new pope was American.

Pope Leo, meanwhile, is in some senses a politician as well, with a calm manner and the approach of talking to his fellow cardinals in small groups before the conclave, they said. Though he was born in Chicago, Leo — then Prevost — spent two decades as a missionary in Peru before being appointed by Pope Francis in 2023 to lead the Vatican’s powerful office that vets bishops around the world.

He wouldn’t be the first pope to wade into world politics. Pope John Paul II, for example, is rightly credited with helping bring down communism. But Leo enters the papacy having already criticized Vice President JD Vance, the highest-profile Catholic in American politics, on social media. Leo is at odds with the administration on such policy issues as immigration — Trump’s signature issue — and the environment.

Like Trump, Leo has turned his attention to the media. On Monday in Vatican City, he called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the calling for “all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press.” In contrast, Trump’s approach to journalists has been combative, from the White House to the courts.

Trump and Pope Leo are in ‘different lanes’ as leaders

In early February, Leo — then still Prevost — shared an article from a Catholic publication with the headline, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

It came days after Vance — a convert to Catholicism — discussed immigration in a Fox News interview by referencing a Christian tenet “that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”

Leo, speaking Italian to thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square, described a different vision for the Church and human relations: “We have to be a church that works together to build bridges and to keep our arms open, like this very piazza, welcoming.”

Vance suggested the papacy is “bigger” than politics and social media. “It’s very hard to fit a 2,000-year-old institution into the politics of 2025 America,” he said during an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, adding that “it’s better for all of us if we allow the church to be about the saving of souls.”

In the rise of Trump at the same time as Leo, “the gospel meets the culture,” said Steven Millies, director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Religion and politics, he added, are misaligned because they are “oriented toward different purposes.”

“What both Francis and then Cardinal Prevost were doing was being bishops — teaching the Gospel, and reminding us the Gospel always is on the side of the poor, the afflicted, the suffering,” Millies said in an email. “That’s not Trump’s lane as a president, a reality TV star or a businessman.”

How American is Pope Leo’s world view, anyway?

Leo’s decades in Peru — he is a citizen of both countries — can give him a broader view of humanity and power, and religion and politics, scholars say.

Beyond the obvious personality differences with Trump, Leo is expected to wield power differently — to the neediest people first, for example, whereas Trump cut off American aid. Leo did not mention his American roots during his first speech, nor did he speak in English — a sign, some Vatican watchers said, of his global priorities.

“Even though it is factually true that Leo is the first U.S.-born pope, it makes more sense to think about him as the second pope of the Americas. This challenges ‘America first’ approaches and imagines the region more holistically, as Pope Francis did first, with its center of gravity in the global south,” said Raul Zegarra, assistant professor of Roman Catholic theological studies at Harvard Divinity School.

“All of this points to a pope that understands global leadership through dialogue instead of isolation; who understands power through service, instead of domination,” he said. “It is hard to imagine a sharper contrast with the current administration in the U.S.”

To hear some of the American cardinals tell it, Leo actually is not all that American in style or outlook, and his U.S. heritage played little if any part in his selection as pope. But Trump hovered over the proceedings.

Six American cardinals who had participated in the conclave took the stage at a press conference as “Born in the USA” and “American Pie” blared from speakers. Then, one after another downplayed Leo’s American roots. One quoted a phrase that was going around, that Leo is “the least American of the American” cardinals. Several said they expected Leo to be a “bridge-builder” with the Trump administration — the meaning of the Latin word “pontiff.”

Asked whether the cardinals elected Leo to offset Trump, several said no.

“I don’t think at all my brother cardinals would have thought of him as a counterweight to any one person,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York.

“Obviously the cardinals were quite aware of things that have occurred in the United States, statements that have been made, political actions that have been taken,” said Wilton Gregory, archbishop emeritus of Washington. But the conclave’s goal, he said, was choosing “who among us” could strengthen the faith.

Said Millies: “It’s not that the world should fear a U.S.-born pope. Quite the reverse: As ‘the least American of the Americans,’ he is untainted by our recent politics and may seem safer even as, still, he is an American intimately familiar with this nation’s better angels.”

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.