As Pope Leo marks birthday, more positive views of US Catholics may be on horizon, says scholar
Pope Leo XIV celebrated his 71st birthday on September 14, receiving tributes worldwide including from Chicago. Scholar Anthony Smith says Leo’s Americanism and engagement with popular culture could shift U.S. Catholics toward more positive views of Catholicism. Leo’s approachable image—wearing sneakers, enjoying sports, and speaking in Midwestern English—makes him a likable figure for many. Media coverage such as Esquire’s profile and a Vatican documentary highlight how Leo’s personal style and cultural engagement resonate with American audiences.
17 days ago
Pope Leo XIV’s public image as the first U.S.-born pope, combined with his familiarity with American popular culture, may help foster more favorable perceptions of Catholicism in the United States, according to Anthony Smith, a University of Dayton religious-studies scholar. Smith also emphasized that Leo’s years as a missionary and bishop in Peru make him a global church leader rather than simply an “American pope.”
Pope Leo celebrated his 71st birthday on September 14, receiving messages from around the world and attention from his hometown of Chicago. Vatican employees marked the occasion with an angel-food cake during his visit to inaugurate an exhibition at the Vatican Library.
Smith said Leo’s Chicago identity, comfort with sports and popular culture, and approachable public persona make him “a likable figure for many people.” His cultural connections include references to the White Sox, Chicago pizza, daily games and Wordle, as well as a photograph of him wearing Nike sneakers while serving as a priest.
The sneaker image attracted attention from Esquire, which portrayed Leo as a modern pope whose Midwestern English and informal pre-papal identity—including the nickname “Bob”—make him accessible to American audiences.
Smith connected Leo’s reception to a broader history of Catholic representation in U.S. popular culture. He said that, particularly from the Great Depression through the Cold War, films and other cultural forms helped present Catholicism as part of a more inclusive understanding of American identity, despite earlier suspicion and prejudice toward Catholics.
As an example, Smith cited the 1944 film Going My Way, starring Bing Crosby as a priest. He described the film as offering a subtle presentation of Catholicism rather than straightforward propaganda, while advancing a broader vision of American society.
Smith said Pope Leo’s cultural appeal follows a dynamic also associated with Pope Francis, whose identity as the first Latin American pope contributed to his visibility in U.S. popular culture.
Leo leads the Church in the United States amid disputes over immigration, cultural conflicts, religious disaffiliation and the growth of evangelical Christianity. Smith identified immigration as an area where the pope draws on Catholic tradition and moral teaching to speak on behalf of immigrants and refugees.
Smith said the Church has historically been shaped by successive immigrant communities, including Irish, Italian and Polish Catholics, followed by Mexican, Central American, African and Haitian Catholics.
Although Leo’s American origins give him a significant presence in U.S. culture, Smith cautioned that he should not be understood simply as an American pope. His long experience in Peru as a missionary and bishop, Smith said, is central to understanding his priorities and his leadership of the global Catholic Church.
Smith therefore suggested that Leo may appeal to American audiences while also differing from expectations shaped by his U.S. roots. His Midwestern and Chicago background is highly visible, but his experience of the worldwide Church remains a defining part of his papacy.
How does Pope Leo XIV’s Americanism reshape U.S. Catholic identity?
Pope Leo XIV’s Americanism appears to reshape U.S. Catholic identity not by making Catholicism more national, but by presenting the American Church as a distinctive local expression of a universal faith. Its center is Eucharistic, missionary, and civic—rather than merely cultural or political.
Leo frames American Catholic identity through a shared Eucharistic history. His National Eucharistic Pilgrimage connected the nation’s 250th anniversary with prayer “under God,” while recalling Catholic beginnings at St. Augustine and the witness of American saints, martyrs, immigrants, educators, and missionaries.
This shifts Catholic identity away from nostalgia for ethnic Catholic subcultures. The defining question becomes not, “Which Catholic community do I belong to?” but, “How does the Eucharist form us as one people sent into American society?” The Church’s charitable work in education, healthcare, and social services is presented as flowing from Eucharistic communion, not as a substitute for evangelization.
Leo’s Americanism is therefore conditional. He celebrates the nation’s religious heritage, but he places the “earthly homeland” beneath the “heavenly” one. American identity can be received gratefully, yet it cannot become the Church’s ultimate loyalty.
This distinction matters because Catholic Americanism has historically carried a danger: the assumption that Catholicism and American political institutions possess a providential harmony. William Portier warns that, after Catholics gained social influence, this claim could become an ideological endorsement of the existing American order rather than a critical Christian witness.
Leo’s emphasis on pilgrimage offers a corrective. Pilgrims belong to the country they travel through, but they are not absorbed by it. The Church can affirm American ideals while judging American policies, injustices, and cultural assumptions by the Gospel.
In Magnifica Humanitas, Leo teaches that Catholicity means both universality and rootedness. Local communities must interpret their circumstances responsibly, while exchanging gifts with the wider Church.
For U.S. Catholics, this encourages an identity that is:
His ecumenical pilgrimage with American Orthodox Christians illustrates this approach: American Catholic identity is strengthened by returning to the apostolic sources shared by Christians, not by isolating itself within national boundaries. His message concerning Indigenous peoples likewise insists that cultures possess authentic gifts, while the Gospel also purifies and transforms every culture.
Leo’s approach could also reshape how Catholics participate in public life. Catholic identity would not be measured by attachment to one party, ideology, or national myth, but by whether Catholics contribute to the common good and defend human dignity.
That corresponds to Leo’s call for dialogue and cooperation in building a more just society, while maintaining the Church’s freedom to challenge human experience with the Gospel. It also accords with Benedict XVI’s insistence that American Catholics need a well-formed laity capable of critically engaging dominant culture and resisting secularism that excludes the Church from public debate.
Thus, Leo’s American Catholic is neither withdrawn from public life nor simply identified with American liberalism. The Catholic participates in democracy as a disciple, bringing judgments shaped by revelation, natural reason, solidarity, and concern for the vulnerable.
The decisive question is whether this vision can avoid two opposite distortions.
First, assimilation: Catholicism could become a religious vocabulary for American civil religion. Schindler recalls the older debate over “Americanism,” including the danger of elevating natural or active virtues over supernatural faith and the contemplative life.
Second, sectarian withdrawal: Catholics could reject the American public order so completely that they abandon their responsibility to serve society. Leo instead emphasizes dialogue, service, evangelization, and cooperation for integral human development.
His proposed balance is a Church deeply present in America but not possessed by America: grateful for its history, attentive to its wounds, active in its civic life, and continually converted by Christ.
In short, Pope Leo XIV’s Americanism would reshape U.S. Catholic identity into a Eucharistic patriotism under judgment—love of country purified by the universal Church, public engagement governed by the Gospel, and national belonging subordinated to communion with Christ and the whole human family.