Pope: I am proud to be an American
Pope Leo XIV spoke with journalists during his flight to Uruguay, saying he had not doubted that he could make the 12-day trip despite recent surgery and a cancerous lung nodule. He said he was proud to vote in his home state’s U.S. midterm election and would have voted in Peru’s election if mail-in voting had been available. The Pope said health care should be a right for everyone and added that he hoped to return to playing tennis. He introduced Maria Montserrat “Montse” Alvarado, the new prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, and praised her experience and creativity.
8 hours ago
Pope Leo XIV said he was proud to vote in his home state’s midterm election, and used a conversation with reporters aboard his flight to Uruguay to speak about health care, his recovery, and the Vatican’s communications team. 1
Asked by U.S.-based journalists about voting, Leo said, “I am proud to be American and to exercise this right.” He also holds Peruvian citizenship, but said he could not vote in Peru’s April elections because the country does not offer mail-in voting; he said he would have voted if he could. 1
The Pope said he had not doubted that he would make the demanding 12-day trip, despite October surgery and a diagnosis of a cancerous nodule in his lung. He called health care “a right for everyone,” and said he had not yet returned to playing tennis but intended to do so. 1
During the flight, which lasted about 13 hours, Leo introduced Maria Montserrat “Montse” Alvarado, the new Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication. He praised her experience and creativity and said she would accompany the journalists during the visit and assist the Vatican and the Pope with communications. Alvarado, a Mexican-American who previously worked at EWTN, is one of three women serving as prefects of Vatican dicasteries. 1
Catholic social teaching situates patriotism within universal human dignity
Catholic social teaching does not treat patriotism and universal human dignity as competing loyalties. It regards love of one’s country as a legitimate, particular form of love—one that must remain open to the equal worth and rights of people in every nation. Patriotism becomes distorted when it turns into contempt for other peoples, or when the nation is treated as more important than God and the moral law.
People naturally form attachments to family, culture, and country. Christian universalism does not require someone to become indifferent to these bonds. Pope Pius XII taught that a Christian may rightly give special attention to people connected by particular ties, while warning that love of country must not shut out consideration for others and their interests.
This is an ordered love, not an exclusive one: caring especially for one’s own community need not mean valuing others less. The Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church expresses the point by comparing love of country with love of family: loving one’s family does not cancel love of neighbor, and love of country need not cancel love for all people.
The distinction turns on what love of country asks us to do. Patriotism seeks the good of one’s people and country; nationalism, in the unhealthy sense identified by Church teaching, despises other nations or seeks one’s own country’s welfare at others’ expense. John Paul II stressed that genuine patriotism does not pursue national well-being by harming other peoples, since wrongdoing damages both aggressor and victim.
Patriotism is also active: it can mean preserving and developing a people’s culture and self-understanding. But it cannot justify hatred or racism, and it must not replace God with the nation or reduce faith to a feature of national identity.
The Pontifical Council for Culture connects a people’s particular identity to the universal dignity of persons. It describes national rights—including a nation’s right to exist and to maintain its language and culture—as human rights considered at the level of a community. But it immediately pairs those rights with obligations toward other nations and humanity: especially duties of peace, respect, and solidarity.
That balance matters. Universal human dignity does not erase legitimate differences among peoples; nor do national rights release a country from moral responsibility toward people beyond its borders. The Church’s account therefore rejects both contempt for one’s own people and a closed nationalism that denies the claims of others. Pope Francis warns that a supposed universalism that looks down on one’s own people can itself create divisions between people regarded as more or less worthy.
In brief, Catholic social teaching affirms love of country as a real good, but not an absolute one. A patriot serves the good of their own people in a way consistent with the dignity, rights, and legitimate interests of all peoples. That is why the Ukrainian Catholic catechism calls patriotism incompatible with hatred and says that obligations contrary to the faith cannot be demanded in its name.