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

> "Cardinal George of Chicago, of happy memory, was one of my great mentors, and he said: 'Look, until America goes into political decline, there won't be an American pope.' And his point was, if America is kind of running the world politically, culturally, economically, they don't want America running the world religiously. So, I think there's some truth to that, that we're such a superpower and so dominant, they don't wanna give us, also, control over the church."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-pope-could-it-be-american-c...

For what it’s worth, I was just reading that Leo wasn’t seen as “completely” American due to his many years in Peru — he’s even a citizen. Take that as you will.

For what it's worth, Peru is in South America. Still American, Technically.

From reading online comments, I'm starting to believe that those who reside outside the US are more strident defenders of the idea that "US citizens only" = "American" than US citizens themselves.

Not in Central America. We call US citizens "Gringos" Unfortunately, this does carry a variable negative weight.

Now, Latin Americans living in the US proudly call themselves "Americans"

Edit: Albeit long, the correct gentilice for the US is "Estadounidenses" as in "Estados Unidos de América"

"Estadounidense" is also a bit odd, since there are Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the formal name for Mexico). I don't think it is likely to confuse very many people, but still odd.

If you say "Mexico" in Mexico, most people will think you're referring to Mexico City.

Really? Do people call the city just "México", by itself, not "Ciudad de México" or similar?

There is a similar situation in Quebec (the province and its capital city are both just called "Québec" in French, whereas in English we use Quebec/Quebec City). However, there is usually no ambiguity because French grammar requires the definite article for (masculine) names of large territories like countries and provinces, but not for cities. E.g. "Je vais au Québec"[1] = I'm going to Quebec (the province) vs. "Je vais à Québec" = I'm going to Quebec City.

I'm not sure if there is any similar grammatical distinction in Spanish.

1: au is a mandatory contraction for à + le