Pope Leo XIV, the First American Pope
This year's selection did have competition. I have been increasingly alarmed by the Roberts Court's majority tilt towards expanding the authority of the Presidency.
But as a firstborn Franco-American (French Canadian descent) son, my heritage/culture centered on the Catholic Church. My favorite paternal aunt (Grace) was a sister/nun educator, and my beloved maternal Uncle Roger. Mom's only older sibling was a priest/pastor. From second through early sixth grade, I spent at least part of the year in Catholic school. I was one of the few altar boys who served the entire post-Vatican transition of the Mass from Latin to English (liturgy). I remember starting out as an 8-year-old cross-bearer through heading the altar boys at a South Texas AFB, serving the 6 AM mass daily. during high school. We still had tough restrictions when I was in early primary school. For example, we attended Mass at the start of the school day. I couldn't eat breakfast at home and still take communion during mass, so Mom would pack a breakfast as well as lunch, typically a hard-boiled egg sandwich (which I still love). We still observed fish on Fridays, etc.
I was very young then, but I remember and took pride in the first American Catholic President, JFK. I can still remember my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Darby. a Protestant. (I was her "boy doll" and Lisa was her "girl doll".) Then came that terrible day. Someone knocked on our classroom door, and Mrs. Darby started crying. She sent us out in the courtyard with our rosaries to pray for the soul of our murdered President.
I had a huge interest in American history, and it didn't take long to discover there was an anti-Catholic sentiment in the US. Via Google AI:
The KKK, in fact, targeted my New England French-Canadian heritage:
New England Anglos were paranoid about rapidly-breeding French Canadians, who segregated themselves from integration with the pervasive WASP culture. particularly in early public schools:
My own ancestors (at the great-grandparent level) in the late nineteenth century had emigrated from Quebec as part of a diaspora, as farmland was insufficient to support the growing population. The WASP media, including the Gray Lady. were obsessed with a
conspiracy theory that Quebec and the Church were plotting to annex New England. My grandparents and parents were born Americans, bilingual from birth, mostly French at home. So was I, and French was my dominant language until I started kindergarten, and there was talk about holding me back until they gave me an IQ test; the folks responded by speaking only English to me and my growing number of younger siblings. We still maintained some cultural ties; for instance, cretons, a savory spiced pork spread, remains my favorite sandwich of all time, and the last meal my late Mom cooked for me was a Tourtière. I largely lost my French fluency from disuse, although I did well in a French literature course at OLL.
My Mom's generation was almost fanatical about assimilation. Two paternal uncles had proudly served in WWII; my dad, the youngest, and his closest brother both served in Korea. and my dad, Vietnam. My two brothers and I were part of the Roots generation and obsessed about our genealogy. Not our Uncle Roger; when I once talked to him about the separatist movement in Quebec, he curtly told me that if I was interested in Quebec, I should move there. (I've never visited even once.) Uncle Roger did not want to be assigned to a dying French parish in the diocese and kept his fluency in French low profile around the bishop of his diocese. An amusing side story: Uncle Roger kept records of our family's genealogy from Normandy in a strongbox at the rectory. It was stolen, and I'm amused thinking of the thief's discovery that the box had contents only relevant to my family. Uncle Roger had no interest in having a replacement made.
As I've mentioned in past essays, I thought I had a religious vocation when I went to OLL as a 16-year-old freshman. I didn't see myself as a parish priest like my uncle; I saw myself as possibly part of a teaching order like the Jesuits or the Oblates. I did have a conversation with a Jesuit. but they never followed up (I guess I didn't pass the audition). There were mostly 2 reasons I think it didn't work out. I didn't really date before going to college, and even I could date in a former women's college. This was an issue because of a priest's lifelong vow of celibacy. Second, I was more of a traditional Catholic focused on sin, prayer, and doctrine than social reform and cultural responsiveness. I loved the old Latin mass, the pomp and circumstance, incense and sung liturgies, Gregorian chants, etc. For me, what ended even the pretense of a vocation was a mass on the UT campus while I was earning a Master's in math; the priest had given a sermon on Olivia Newton-John's hit, "Have You Never Been Mellow". Don't get me wrong; I love the song and the singer, but it's not material for a homily.
Modern America is maybe 19% Catholic, probably the largest religious denomination, although Protestants as a whole are roughly twice as many. Up to half of SCOTUS and roughly just over a quarter of Congress are Catholic. Former POTUS Biden is Catholic, as is current VP Vance.
When I was growing up, popes almost invariably were selected from a powerful group of Italian cardinals. Even as recent Popes were Polish, German, and Argentinian, I don't think anyone expected American-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, also a citizen of Peru, for his sustained missionary activity there, to be elected Pope.
