A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #22-25 - MAGA and Sorcerer. Pope Prevost and the US Administration (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

As R.F. Prevost's pontificate begins, it is necessary to make some 
considerations regarding this first experience of governing the Catholic 
Church by a member of the North American clergy. A fundamental premise: 
the election of an American cardinal is a recognition of the importance 
of the American-made Church and reflects the specific weight the United 
States holds within the Catholic world and the ecclesiastical apparatus, 
considering that the United States represents the financial heart of 
Catholicism, ranks fourth in terms of Catholics in the world with 
approximately 62 million faithful, and ranks second, after Italy, in 
terms of the number of cardinal electors in the conclave. Let us 
therefore attempt to describe the characteristics of the North American 
clergy from which Prevost hails. To date, little has emerged about the 
current pontiff's orientation regarding doctrinal or political matters, 
so we will limit ourselves to retracing some of his biographical and 
pastoral career.

Prevost was born in Chicago, the son of European immigrants, with some 
Creole ancestry. A man of European descent, born and raised in the 
United States, he divided his life between the Americas and the Vatican, 
where he lived as General of the Augustinian Order for 12 years. A 
significant portion of his ecclesiastical experience, over two decades, 
was spent as a missionary in Peru. He served as Prefect of the Dicastery 
for Bishops, one of the most important dicasteries in the Roman Curia, a 
key hub for selecting the ruling class. He was therefore a key figure in 
the Roman Curia, capable of representing a balance between the "Roman 
center" of the Church and the "decentralization" strongly accentuated by 
Bergoglio's appointments of cardinals from outside Italy and Europe. 
Translated into a language more akin to political mechanisms, a Vatican 
Dorothean. The conclave's choice therefore appears to have been oriented 
not exclusively toward the U.S.A. but toward both Americas. Apparently a 
new defeat for Eurocentrism, and especially for the Italocentrism of 
cardinals; but in reality, Prevost reestablishes the balance of 
alternation at the See of Peter, active since the 1960s, between a 
pontiff who comes from the Curia and one who comes from outside. This 
alternation has been occurring for decades and has been respected in 
this case as well.

There is no doubt that, politically, the conclave election of a pope 
born in Chicago but whose experience was formed as an Augustinian 
missionary in Peru is also an indirect response to contemporary US 
politics, marked by political messianism that sees Trump as America's 
savior. In recent decades, American Catholicism has always been 
politically and theologically more conservative. Indeed, for Steve 
Bannon, Trump's former strategist, the outcome of the conclave was more 
rigged than the 2020 election against Trump. According to Bannon, 
Prevost is the figure needed to counter the MAGA (Make America Great 
Again) movement: an un-American American, a missionary in Peru, and an 
opponent of Catholic traditionalism. Even more outspoken is Trumpian 
influencer Laura Loomer, who even called Leo XIV "a Marxist puppet."

The relationship between politics and Catholicism in the U.S. has 
changed profoundly in recent decades. In 1960, Kennedy proclaimed that 
he would not allow his faith to dictate his political line. The concept 
has now reversed: the new right recruits Catholics as such, preferably 
recently converted (as in the case of Vance), to fight left-wing 
radicals and liberals. The culture wars have now enlisted a Catholicism 
that has adapted to the long-standing trend of tele-preachers, whose 
function is to create electoral pools and mobilize opinion campaigns. In 
this all-out revival of faith as a political crusade, Vance, for 
example, presents himself as a new apostle, so much so that he has 
attempted to formulate a new ordo amoris, establishing a new hierarchy 
of Christian love. The Vice President states: "It's a concept that I 
think is very Christian, where 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 you can think about and prioritize the rest of 
the world: much of the far left has completely inverted that. (...) It's 
not a way to run a society." He continues: "America First doesn't mean 
hating everyone else, it means having leadership that puts the interests 
of American citizens first, just as the British prime minister should be 
concerned about the British and the French prime minister should be 
concerned about the French."The Vatican has taken a stand on this 
matter, and on February 10, it addressed a letter to the US bishops, 
citing the catechism: "Christian love is not a concentric expression of 
interests that gradually extend to other people and groups. The true 
ordo amoris is one that builds a brotherhood open to all without 
exception." This is one example among many; but the disputes between the 
Trump administration and the Vatican do not end here.

Prevost's choice is also a clear signal on the issue of immigration. A 
clear message had already been sent to Capitol Hill when, as prefect of 
the Dicastery for Bishops, Prevost, in agreement with Bergoglio, had 
helped install Cardinal Robert Walter McElroy, a proponent of 
immigration policies, in Washington, coinciding with Trump's arrival-an 
unmistakable political signal.

This is the climate in Leo XIV's homeland, in a significant part of the 
Catholic world overseas. What we must avoid is playing the game that so 
enthralls the media: measuring the degree of conservatism or 
progressivism of ecclesiastical figures, often judged solely and 
exclusively by the resulting political conflicts. This game has been 
detrimental to Bergoglio, since the opposition to the right, especially 
on the issue of migrants, has determined much of the unconditional 
positive opinion the left has expressed of Bergoglio. We would not want 
this mechanism to repeat itself with Prevost, especially given the 
initial signs of the way the American Maga world welcomed his nomination 
as pope.

Finally, let us remember that from the very first days of his 
pontificate, Bergoglio made a sort of declaration of war, greatly 
amplified by the media, against the Roman Curia, which he called the 
"leprosy" of the papacy. This was the calling card with which Pope 
Francis made his debut and which likely earned him enormous popularity. 
But while these bombastic declarations received such media hype, they 
were equally empty in concrete terms, as nothing changed in the Curia 
during Bergoglio's pontificate. Indeed, over the years, individuals 
implicated in unedifying events or scandals were promoted. Just as 
Bergoglio's encyclicals Laudato si' and Amoris Laetitia, touted by both 
the Catholic and secular worlds as universal messages of harmony and 
peace, were deliberately ambiguous and failed to produce any concrete 
change. The goal was to pursue a communications strategy that ultimately 
proved successful, to announce a change that ultimately failed to 
materialize. We know that power cannot reform itself, cannot renounce 
its privileges, but only delude itself into thinking it intends to do so.

Daniele Ratti

https://umanitanova.org/maga-e-stregone-papa-prevost-e-lamministrazione-usa/
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