The quiet American: How Pope Leo is pushing back against Trump

, born as Robert Prevost in Chicago and known for most of his life as “Bob,” has had a quiet start to his pontificate. But with the world facing crisis after crisis, the first-ever American pope is stepping up his efforts at moral suasion in defense of a fading international order that the American president, among other leaders, is rapidly dismantling.The papacy has always been political.

But now, some of the biggest challenges to its vision of society are coming from the U.S.—just as the 1.4 billion-strong Catholic Church is led by an American for the first time in its 2,000-year history.The Midwestern pontiff brings a deeper understanding of American society and politics than any previous pope. That means his critiques can’t be dismissed by U.S.

politicians as easily as a foreign pope’s would be, say senior church officials.Complicating his task is the fact that millions of American Catholics voted for Trump. However, the conservative advocacy group CatholicVote, which helped mobilize support for Trump, is now warning that “widespread mistrust” among Catholics over his hard-line immigration tactics could cost the Republicans some of those gains.Leo doesn’t want to be the anti-Trump, senior Vatican officials say.

Rather, the pope is advocating positively for a world that reflects Catholic teaching.But the contrast of style and substance between the world’s two most prominent Americans—one a brash billionaire businessman who speaks in superlatives, the other a former missionary who spent years helping the needy in Peru—is too glaring to miss.“They’re offering very different images of America. But they’re both authentic representations of who we are,” said Elise Ann Allen, author of “Pope Leo XIV,” a new biography, and a