America has finally joined the ranks of great Western civilizations and produced a pope, along with the Italians, the French, the Germans, the Greeks, the Dutch, the Jews, and, somewhat inexplicably, the Poles. (Better luck next time, Hungary; the former Warsaw Pact just ain’t as hot as it was in 1978.) I’ll leave for other publications the high-minded chin-stroking about how America only brought forth a pontiff after its imperial power began to recede and confine myself to reflections on the salutary effects an American pope could have on the Mystical Body of Christ.
And I do mean American. All these various sorts of Hispanophones are yelling at your humble correspondent about how, actually, Francis was the first American pope. Sorry, señoras y señores, damas y caballeros; you see, America is in our name, and “Argentina” is in the name of the place where the late, great Pope Frank was born and raised. If you go to some benighted place like Germany or Czechia, declare yourself an American, and start rattling off Spanish, they’re going to call you an imposter and run you off with barbaric hoots and shrieks. “American” means one thing, and it’s not “Argentinian.”
Chez Russo, we celebrated by mowing the lawn—I celebrated by mowing the lawn, after throwing a fistful of money at Mrs. Russo and telling her not to come back without the Widow, or at the very least Moët & Chandon. While engaging in this pleasant activity, I pondered the various Americanizations the pope could introduce to the Vatican. The first was, obviously, putting a lawn in the middle of Saint Peter’s Square. I’m sure John Deere would happily slap some white paint on an S140 so His Holiness Leo XIV, heir of Peter, chief of the Apostles, Servant of the Servants of God, could tear around the new Papal Lawn while smoking a horrible cigarillo and drinking an ice-cold 40 of Steel Reserve. What better way to continue the Franciscan example of servant leadership than having the pope keep up his own grass?
Making money is another tremendous American tradition that the Vatican is badly wanting. Crudely put, the Vatican has no money. In America, there are vast reserves of cultural know-how on making quick dosh. Here, bankruptcy itself is an art and science on par with making rockets and rolling coal. Who else could lead the Church through this difficult fiscal time and bring it out stronger? The first tactic that comes to mind is sponsorships, which, if you’ll observe all the gigantic Latin inscriptions festooning Rome, is in the Eternal City a very old and agreeable practice indeed. It boggles the mind: the Urbi et Orbi, by Expedia, coming to you wherever you want to be; encyclicals named for various pharmaceuticals; and, of course, when the inevitable day comes for Leo’s successor to be selected, the Papal Conclave by FanDuel, Official Betting Partner of the Vatican. This fresh twist on the New Evangelization may not be pretty, but I’d bet a dime to a dollar it’ll be effective.
Leo will also have an enviable bully pulpit from which to recommend the pleasures of the American sporting life to the dark continent of Europe. The footprint of the Circus Maximus can hold a football field and then some. The parks around Saint Paul Outside the Walls would accommodate a tolerable baseball diamond, if you remove the inconvenient trees and allow for a somewhat short outfield, which is better for an unfamiliar audience, anyway—the European mind is probably not prepared for the subtleties of the pitchers’ duel, but Aaron Judge mashing taters in a blowout against the pope’s hapless White Sox will doubtless stimulate even the most neurasthenic continental. And U.F.C. Roma 1 in the Colosseum is an idea that hardly needs expansion.
Perhaps most pressing for my more serious-minded readers—I know there are liturgy enthusiasts among you—Leo can introduce a new feast to the universal calendar: Thanksgiving, which is the very best of our native customs. The Papal Lawn will be an ideal place for maintaining turkeys, white, of course, which can amuse tourists by trying to scrap with the Papal S140.
Yes, floating on the champagne bubbles (Moët, as the Widow was mysteriously absent from the fine emporia of rural Maryland), I have decided it’s a very fine thing to have an American pope—even if he is from Chicago, a city that seems to me like a fiction, and not New York, the proper center of gravity for American life. Pimlico opens today, the weather is temperate, and the vast white and silver clouds scud across periwinkle skies toward that bright, hopeful, ever-vanishing future that every American yearns for in the depths of his bosom. A Yank is on the Chair of Peter, and all is right with the world. Long live Leo XIV Papas. Long live America.
