As Pope Leo marks birthday, more positive views of US Catholics may be on horizon, says scholar

(OSV News) — As the first U.S.-born pope marked his birthday, a Catholic scholar told OSV News he sees a potential shift toward more positive views of Catholicism in the U.S. compared to the past two decades.

Pope Leo XIV celebrated his 71st birthday Sept. 14, drawing tributes and good wishes from around the world — including his native Chicago, where at least one television station took to social media to salute the Windy City’s beloved son.

And whether he’s inspiring White Sox fans, savoring an Aurelio’s pizza, playing daily games or Wordle or — as then-Father Robert Prevost — wearing Nikes with his cassock, Pope Leo has given greater “access” to Catholicism in U.S. culture, said Anthony Smith, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

“I think Leo’s priorities and his Americanism is a way of fostering other more hopeful perceptions and associations of Catholicism than where it was 20 years ago,” Smith told OSV News.

Pope Leo’s “Americanism, and his comfort with popular culture, mass culture and sports make him a likable figure for many people,” said Smith.

Musing on the image of the future pope’s kicks — which appeared in the Vatican News documentary “Leone a Roma,” released in July — Esquire Magazine concluded that “it sort of makes perfect sense that Pope Leo is a Nike guy,” since he grew up as Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan was “flexing his own” custom Nike sneakers.

The magazine also described Pope Leo as “a modern-age Pope” who brings “Midwestern English to global papal addresses,” with an affable pre-papal name of “Bob.”

Esquire also compared the Nike photo to a 2023 viral AI-generated image of Pope Francis in a white Balenciaga puffer coat, saying that the archival Father Prevost photo wasn’t an AI creation “designed to fool us.”

The magazine said the Vatican News documentary about Pope Leo is “not the sort of thing you’d expect a sneakerhead to tune into, but suddenly, it absolutely should be,” thanks to the sneaker photo.

U.S. pop culture’s embrace of Pope Leo builds on a similar dynamic enjoyed by his predecessor, Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, according to Smith.

Speaking to OSV News, Smith — past president of the American Catholic Historical Association and author of “The Look of Catholics: Portrayals in Popular Culture” — described how Catholicism in the U.S. “began to help shape new understandings of America,” particularly between the Great Depression and the Cold War, the period explored by Smith in his book.

While Catholics were often viewed with suspicion and prejudice, “popular culture became an arena where Catholics began to help shape new understandings of America that were a little more inclusive of religious minorities and ethnic Americans,” said Smith, recounting the central premise of his book.

That “played out in movies” — such as Leo McCarey’s Oscar-winning 1944 film “Going My Way,” which starred Bing Crosby as a priest — that “weren’t propaganda for Catholics,” but featured “a kind of a subtle Catholicism” and “a little larger, capacious vision of America,” said Smith.

Fast forwarding to the present — through the rapid changes of the postwar era, the Second Vatican Council, the clerical abuse crisis and the papacies of his recent predecessors — Pope Leo shepherds the Church as its U.S. presence contends with divisive views over immigration, culture wars, religious disaffiliation and, where Christianity is growing, ascendant evangelicalism, said Smith.

Immigration in particular is an issue in which Smith sees Pope Leo “drawing upon Catholic tradition” and morality to be “a voice for immigrants and dispossessed refugees” in both the U.S. and globally, said Smith.

“The Catholic Church has long been concerned about immigration,” he explained. “I think it’s sometimes forgotten among some American Catholics, but the Church has always been an immigrant Church. It continues to be. It used to be the Irish, Italians, Poles, and now it’s Mexicans and people from Central America, Africans, Haitians.”

Smith clarified that Pope Leo is “not an American pope,” but one “who happens to be American,” forged not only by upbringing in the U.S. but by “his long experience in Peru” as a missionary and bishop.

“And I think that is really formative to understanding his priorities,” said Smith.

In a separate statement to OSV News, Smith said that Pope Leo “assumes a large presence in American culture, particularly given his Midwestern, Chicago roots.”

But, added Smith, “as leader of the Catholic Church with deep experience of the global Church, he may not be what some anticipate.”

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