A papacy against populism? That is a terrible idea

So is Pope Leo XIV woke or right-wing? Is he a Marxist in holy robes come to slay Trumpism or a traditionalist and a ‘transphobe’ who’s about to break every Catholic lefty’s heart? Will his papacy please Turning Point’s virgins in their ill-fitting suits or put a smile on the faces of the blue-haired people? The internet almost buckled under the weight of such panicked queries yesterday. And it was a truly sorry spectacle. Rarely has the frivolity and neediness of the digital left and digital right been so starkly exposed than by this frantic yearning for the new pontiff to add some spiritual weight to their political campaigns.

The 267th Bishop of Rome had barely stepped on to the Loggia of the Blessings – the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica – before he was being claimed by both sides of the culture war. It was an historic day. Cardinal Robert Prevost, from Chicago, Illinois, is the first North American pope. A man from the New World, as America was once known, is sovereign over one of the great institutions of the Old World. And his name will be Leo, echoing that of one of history’s most impactful popes: Leo I of the fifth century, celebrated as a peacemaker, and one of only three popes to have been gifted the title ‘the Great’.

Yet the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics had barely taken the news in, far less cracked open a beer to celebrate, before Leo was being glibly marshalled to all sorts of fashionable causes. The normally Vatican-sceptical left was first out the gate. That Leo spent years doing missionary work in Peru, and even better has retweeted critical commentary about Trump, got even the godless hot under the collar. Might he save us from the ‘far right’ and remind the world of the importance of ‘love and care’, wondered the hotheads at Occupy Democrats. Forget the proletariat – it’s the pontificate that will set us free!

Just two hours after Leo’s unveiling, a writer for the Guardian gushed that ‘if Pope Francis was the People’s Pope, then Leo XIV is all set to be the Workers’ Pope’. Steady on. We don’t even know his policies yet and already you’ve anointed him Arthur Scargill in a skullcap? Another Guardian columnist hopes he’ll be the ‘moral leader that the world so desperately needs’. Perhaps he’ll counter Trumpism and the populist scourge and become the ‘light we need in the current darkness’. You can smell the liberal desperation. Remainerism failed, Keir Starmer’s a bit shit, but perhaps God’s representative on Earth can repair our self-esteem.

American Prospect wonders if Leo’s ‘globe-trotting histories’ and his ‘cosmopolitan’ style will challenge the ‘just-us Catholicism of JD Vance’. Say it, guys – you’re hoping he’ll be more globalist than parochial, more in tune with your own class of post-borders, post-belief influencers than with the angry old notion that Catholicism is the one true church and anyone who fails to sign up might be headed for Hell. Even Rolling Stone dreams that Leo might be Kamala in a cassock: it’s relishing his ‘anti-Trump, pro-immigrant social-media [activity]’ and the angst it has caused to MAGA types. Quick, someone send Leo a pussy hat, get him into ‘the Resistance’.

This Leomania on sections of the left springs from post-democratic despair. Vexed by the dumb demos, and galled by their own failure to hold back the tide of populism, they fantasise that a ‘cosmopolitan’ pope might steer the world in a better moral direction. They essentially want him to reverse the ‘vibe shift’. It isn’t conversion to Catholicism that’s made them crush on Leo – it’s aversion to the oiks who dragged us into this supposed ‘current darkness’. Their fascination with Leo is directly proportionate to their frustration with democracy.

Their disappointment will be swift. In fact, it’s here already. Because, lo, Leo is Catholic. He’s anti-abortion, he says gay sex is a sin, he thinks you shouldn’t chop off your balls. ‘The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist’, he once said. The gushing gave way to whispers that he’s a ‘transphobe’. His ‘unearthed comments’ have caused ‘alarm’, said the initially keen Guardian. Alarm at what? That a man with Catholic beliefs is the new leader of the Catholic Church? They really thought the pope would be a Pride-friendly supporter of genital mutilation dressed up as gender reassignment? The mind boggles at such levels of self-regard.

It’s the Leomaniacs’ ahistoricism, the sheer philosophical paucity of their hot takes, that is most striking. You thought the man who’s just taken over the institution that was built on the site where St Peter was crucified upside down 2,000 years ago for his crime of Christian belief would subscribe to your gender woo-woo that some academic ponce dreamt up around 2013? Jesus Christ. (Sorry, Leo.) These people have no sense of the permanence of certain institutions, of the high principles to which some people, whether pope or mortal, seek to devote themselves. They are consumed by ‘the now’, by the instant and constant validation of their own hollow virtue. They think everything – even the Holy See – must bend to that narcissistic task.

The Very Online right wasn’t much better. At first they fumed over Leo, upon discovering his criticisms of Trump. ‘WOKE MARXIST POPE’, said foghorn made flesh Laura Loomer, like a poundshop Nietzsche with Tourette’s. But then they discovered he’s voted in Republican primaries, suggesting he might be a registered Republican, and they changed their tune. ‘He’s right wing!’, they cried in almost religious ecstasy. Maybe he is. But the institution he leads was founded centuries before the terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ were even invented. Listen, he’s not about to pop up on Charlie Kirk’s podcast. Not everyone is a footsoldier in your culture war.

It remains to be seen what stances the Vatican will take under Leo. It is of course possible that the Conclave that elected him hopes he’ll be an instrument of the ‘Trumplash’, as Freddy Gray calls it, where the Holy See might soften populism. My view? That would be a terrible error. Here’s a secret about the world’s Catholics. They’re not like the ‘tradcaths’ of the internet who madly obsess over the finer details of the First Council of Nicaea and who spent yesterday asking why Leo didn’t wear the traditional red shoes. No, they’re normal working people, who try to do good but sometimes fail, who sin and regret it, who attend Church but are stinging about its moral flaws. And many will have taken a punt on populism, that ‘darkness’, because while they appreciate being loved by Jesus, they also want to be respected by society.

Listen to those Catholics, Leo. You say you are for ‘the marginalised’ – well, they feel ‘marginalised’ too, as do their non-Catholic friends and colleagues. A Workers’ Pope might be a Guardian pipedream, but a pope who spurns the ear of the faux cosmopolitan elites and listens to the ‘left behind’ – that would be no bad thing.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy