Trump, the Vatican, and the Problem of Power

When moral authority meets geopolitical force, perception becomes everything

There is a story doing the rounds about a recent meeting between representatives of the United States government and the Vatican’s diplomatic corps. Even without going into the details, the instinct it has stirred in many observers is most interesting. It has revived an old question, one that surfaces from time to time and is usually dismissed too quickly: why was it once said that there would never be an American pope?

It is worth stating at once that no such rule has ever existed. The Church has never formally excluded any nationality from the papacy. Yet for much of the twentieth century there was a quiet, almost unspoken assumption among those who followed Vatican affairs closely that an American pope was unlikely. Not impossible, but improbable. The reason was not theological. It was political in the broadest sense of the word.

The papacy claims a universal moral authority. The United States exercises an unparalleled degree of temporal power. To unite those two realities in a single person was thought to risk confusion. Not necessarily corruption, but perception. And in matters of global authority, perception is not a superficial concern. It is often the decisive one.

Does the present moment perhaps help us see why?