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...

That's an interesting thought but if they're actually that concerned about it then they'd wait longer than four months. It probably has more to do with America's predominant religion being protestantism by a very wife margin for most of the country's existence. We didn't have a Catholic president until Kennedy and even then proving to the common American that Catholics aren't insane Vatican mindslaves was considered a hurdle he had to overcome.

If there's a political motive in not choosing an American pope until now it's that for most of American history it wouldn't have granted them any influence over American politics. If there's a personal motive it's that until recently they felt insulted that America went for almost 200 years before finally electing a Catholic president.

> America's predominant religion being Protestantism

Tangent: Protestantism is not a religion. The religion is called Christianity. I have seen this trend for quite a while of Protestants (or people born in Protestant countries) of referring to Christianity branches as religions. I find it very segregational. The whole point of all the branches is the same guy whose name begins with C.

But yes, given the state of America today, having an American pope will definitely be an interesting development in the context of many lobbying groups wishing for a vaticanised America.

In the end Christianity is just a branch of Judaism ;)

It's unlikely that Protestants (including all the weird splinter groups/cults/sects in the US), Catholics and Orthodox will ever reunite into the same church again, so calling them separate religions is fair I think.