Think of this irony. In 1924, Al Smith, Governor of New York, lost in the US presidential election. Among the reasons: he was a Catholic, and many feared a Catholic presidency would merely be a “pipeline to the Pope.”
Just slightly over 100 years later, against all the prophecies and predictions that it couldn’t happen, an American was elected as Bishop of Rome, Pope Leo XIV.
Amongst all the chatter of the past couple of weeks—his Chicago origins, the Villanova years, the Augustinians, the mission work in Peru, his mother’s Creole heritag...
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