First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV

I strongly believe the American choice was a strategic decision made by a group of highly intelligent individuals.

To placate or appeal to the current American leadership?

What's the desired outcome? European, NATO, or Ukrainian security guarantees?

From what I read, the new pope is much like Francis on human rights and political topics, but a bit more conservative about church doctrine. Perhaps it's to have a counterpoint to Trump in America, to show that not all American-born leaders are trash? Time will tell, I suppose.

They picked an American, who actually lived and worked in Peru, and not archbishop of New York that Trump suggested.

To exert political pressure on the current American leadership by influencing the masses and achieve the objectives of the Catholic Church? Have you forgotten what happened with Wojtyła and Solidarność?

I wouldn't presume Prevost is more doctrinally conservative than Francis, just because Francis wasn't as liberal as popularly claimed. Rather, American conservative bishops attempted to paint Francis as doctrinally liberal as part of their rhetorical strategy to attack Francis' non-doctrinal liberalism (e.g. on high-profile but non-doctrinal matters related to discipline, liturgy, etc). Similarly, progressive activists chose to interpret Francis' policies as doctrinal shifts, when they weren't. Though it's possible the latter phenomenon was something Francis was content to leave uncorrected. Francis seemed to embrace ambiguity in his pronouncements as a method of rapprochement.

Is it possible that this move is to reinstate Catholicism in the United States, given that Evangelicals appear to be gaining influence?

Current USA leadership is already taking actions well aligned with the church (such as stripping rights from women, homosexuals).

What do you mean reinstate? The country was founded by the descendants of people who for the most part hated Catholicism.

On some things.

On others, like social safety nets, rights for migrants (particularly those from Latin America where Leo XIV spent a lot of time), and militarism, the RCC and Trump's GOP are at stark odds.

I think Catholicism has much bigger problems in the US then evangelicals gaining tracking.

Like people which by the Wikipedia definition of fascist being fascist using Catholicism as a tool to push their believes which are not at all compatible with the current world view represented by the Church in Rome.

A Pope which is able to say "I denounce ... as unchristian and un-american" which isn't some random person in Rome but someone seen as an American is kinda useful if you want to reduce the reach of such influences.

Here's an oddity: apparently Noam Chomsky doesn't fully agree with you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmSJnuF7_zg

Yes, but... the Spanish reached present-day New Mexico before the English reached present-day New England.

> What's the desired outcome? European, NATO, or Ukrainian security guarantees?

that would be pretty dump to try, I don't think there are any such goles

> To placate or appeal to the current American leadership?

only we speak about "appealing to them to be more human", "appealing to them to follow christian values", denouncing people which claim to represent christian values in their action which in fact are opposite to what the Roman Church things Christian values are etc.

if we speak about directly influencing politics, especially geopolitics that seems very unlikely to be the intend, or doable

If they want someone who can effectively oppose Trump, why would they pick someone he suggested?

Probably meant 'reinvigorate'.

Maryland was founded as one of the original colonies as a haven for Catholics. There have always been Catholics in the US, though certainly it has been a bumpy ride; there were questions about how accepted JFK would be as the first Catholic president.

While the Church is conservative in some ways people dislike it also advocates things like peace, ending capital punishment, and nondescrimination based upon race. In my home city, the Church was the only place that wasn’t racist. For my entire life, the Church has been the only place in America with a majority that didn’t want to bomb poor brown people all over the planet. In modern America, not wanting to bomb people is… umm… foreign to both sides of the political spectrum.

My national news agency (the NOS) reported that this happened despite his nationality, not because of. According to their article, the dislike of most of the world against American happenings made him a less likely candidate.

Sure, but the Spanish colonization had virtually no impact on the ethnic, political, or religious development of the United States other than some water and land rights in the Southwest.

Same thought could have factored in Francis' conclave for LA, but % of Catholics continued to fall.

Thanks, I am not that informed, I don’t know why I even commented.

What relevance, in any way, does this hold to the current discussion?

Additionally, Noam refers to Trump's statements from the beginning of the Ukraine war. Trump's position on the matter has done a total 180 since. Why would Noam continue to hold the same view if Trump doesn't?

I suppose like so many historical discussions, it depends on where you draw the starting line. Personally, I find understanding the colonization of the Americas and the emergence of the United States more effectively as a continuum that includes the Spanish, who were the dominate initial "new world" colonial power for a couple hundred years. Not to mention, who actually funded Columbus ;-). I understand this isn't the popular or common place to draw the starting line when reading US history, though. (And maybe not even a good way - just a way that I find personally more interesting.)

> original colonies as a haven for Catholics.

That didn't last thar long though. Since it was overtaken by Protestants who banned Catholicism (like it was banned in all the other colonies ) in 1689.

I consider that as very unlikely, as he wasn't on top of the list of favorites. But of course we don't really know.

>Sure, but the Spanish colonization had virtually no impact on the ethnic, political, or religious development of the United States other than some water and land rights in the Southwest.

Texas, California, Florida, totally unimportant backwater states, right? No Latin American culture, ethnicity, political or religious influence to speak of.

Who are you talking about?

What did any pope actually do to oppose anybody?

How much Latin American representation would you say there was in the US colonies and United States before 1950?

Yep he's more of a citizen of the world than an American, otherwise I don't think he would have ever been considered. It also helps he was held in high regard by Pope Francis.

Maybe the Roman Catholic Church* is that way. Evangelicals are not. They are for whatever their crazy leaders want, including blowing up brown people whenever they get in the way or cross borders. Also counting fascism as family values.

How different would US western expansion have been had the Spanish not colonized Central America and Mexico? What would European colonization of the Americas have looked like if Spain hadn’t extracted such great wealth? How much did the Spanish American war and the resulting transfer of Cuba, Philippines, and Puerto Rico to US control change the character of US power? How do you untangle the history of New Orleans without considering Spain? And what would be the cultural character of the southwest without Spain’s influence?

Yeah, peace on their own terms and ideology.

I believe the question implied "in living memory". Popes notoriously don't directly speak up even against atrocities such as genocides, let alone act on it (with levers that are most certainly in their control, such as excommunications).

To be fair, most people around the world could be considered citizens of the world compared to the average American.

If you're talking about crossing country borders, then maybe. If you're talking about distance traveled, I would venture to guess that Americans on average travel further distances. The United States of America has states larger than many countries in Europe.

You and entropicdrifter are wrong and defen is correct. Defen said "Spanish colonization had virtually no impact on the ethnic, political, or religious development of the United States", as opposed to the Western Hemisphere. He is correct.

Whether Texas or California, the land that is now the American southwest was almost completely empty before the Mexican War; about 80,000 hispanos, or about 1% of Mexico's prewar population, mostly in New Mexico and southern Colorado. They were very, very isolated, living in "islands", and were already dependent on the US, not Mexico, for trade <http://web.archive.org/web/20070517113110/http://www.pbs.org...>. The American takeover and attendant influx of settlers completely changed the region; by 1860 California alone had 380,000 people] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#Pop...> and was a US state.

*85% of Mexican Americans today are from post-World War II immigration.* As late as 1970 <http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/05/01/a-demographic-portrait...> there were five million people of Mexican ethnicity in the US, including one million born in Mexico. Now there are 33.7 million and 11.4 million, respectively. The number of people of Mexican ethnicity has grown by ~16X in 75 years (from ~2 million in 1940), while the US population has grown by ~2.5X. Had the Mexican-ethnic population grown by the same rate as the broader US there would be 5 million today, not 33.7.

History, even recent history, has been rewritten in peoples' minds by popular culture. Los Angeles's stupendous growth in the first half of the 20th century was driven almost entirely off of internal US migration. So many Iowans moved to LA that it was joked that southern California should be renamed "Caliowa". Almost everything we think of about the city, demographically speaking, is a post-1970 phenomenon.

According to Census estimates <http://web.archive.org/web/20080912052919/https://www.census...>, the city of Los Angeles was 7.1% Hispanic (almost all Mexican, of course) in 1940, and 15-17% in 1970. In 1990—let me repeat, two decades later—it was 39.9%. The non-Hispanic white population went from 86.3% in 1940, to 61-63% in 1970, to 37.3% in 1990. As of 2020 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#Race_and_ethnicity> the city is 46.9% Hispanic and 28.9% non-Hispanic white.

"We didn't cross the border; the border crossed us" is only true for the aforementioned hispanos. If alien space bats had rotated the contiguous US 180 degrees in 1945, all other Mexican Americans would be living in Buffalo and Portland and Boston and Rochester and Detroit. Those cities would be known as the home of Cal-Mex and Tex-Mex cuisine, not LA and El Paso and Phoenix.

The deliberations of the conclave are secret in perpetuity. It is not possible for your news agency to report on why this candidate was selected. Whatever they said is an outsider's guess.

Didn't Trump suggest someone from NYC?

I mean, the choice of John Paul II was also a "strategic" choice - he(or simply the fact that he was Polish) was credited with contributing to the toppling of communism and Poland, and in a broader sense with the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

Pope John Paul II was a crucial figure in the fall of communism in Poland, even though he never opposed the state directly - just the fact that he was Polish and that the state couldn't censor his speeches and visits and demonstrated to the deeply religious nation that there is a path outside of the the one dictated by the state that is credited with a significant contribution to the forces that eventually led to the events of 1989.

I mean, if the person above is Italian, and live in Rome, they can probably get a much better quality of gossip than you or I.

I appreciate this response! Thank you.

Citizens of the world usually refers to cultural exposure and appreciation for differences around the world. I have never seen it refer to distance travelled, however I can see how some Americans can use that definition to try and change the topic

Vance? Thiel? The Opus Dei folks?

You caught me, I was trying to change the topic... ?

(/s)

I didn't specifically say you were.

Are you under the impression that the United States doesn't have a diverse mix of cultures, or that people here don't appreciate differences? That's literally what the "great melting pot" thing is all about.