I wonder why I’m internet-stalking the pope
The “Trump effect” on the U.S. is not a political statement but a message of a “great unknown” that is Trump’s America
The president called a man’s election a great honor for the country. But there are obvious signs Trump and the new pope — who in his first statement urged peace and unity — are immediately at odds.
Like his predecessor, Robert Francis Prevost, he advocated for helping the poor and migrants. He pointed out the importance of protecting the environment. He’s called for racial justice and recently criticized the views of Vice President Vance, a Catholic, on the church.
An expert on theology and religious studies says that the election of a pope is not a political statement but a political message.
Pope Francis wrote to the U.S. bishops in February, slamming the beginning of the Trump administration’s deportations. Francis wrote that “worrying about personal, community or national identity … easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.”
Throughout his time in politics, Trump has characterized the arrival of migrants at the U.S. border as an “invasion” – even as many have been displaced by economic uncertainty, violence and climate change. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has shaken the world order, alienating long-time allies and seemingly cozying up to autocratic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Though the election of a U.S. pope seemed impossible to close watchers of the church, the “Trump effect” on America and the international global order, Faggioli said, is one of the things that “made the impossible possible.”
Leonardo and the Vatican. I am not a Buddhist, but I’m intrigued by the current status of the catholic church in the modern era
Lego has been with Leonardo since they were in sixth grade. They attended high school, seminary and Villanova together. He said that Leo was always “centered on helping people. They say he was very willing to do things.
“If the church is open to the spirit, the spirit will look for at the time probably the best or candidate to lead the church. And our role as Catholics throughout the world is once that expression of the spirit becomes public … our next journey is we begin to work together and continue to discover how the spirit is alive in the world,” Lego said.
He continued, saying “now with an American pope maybe that position, from his point of view of power, could be used for a benefit of all. There’s always two sides to a coin.”
The account I followed had a picture with a few retweets that were linked to articles critical of Donald Trump’s immigration policy. The words were a sign that he was still active and engaged in the new pope’s thought process, even if they were not directly from him. I guess he didn’t have time to wipe his socials, I thought first, knowing that a giant MAGA political backlash was on the horizon. The pope only has an hour — if that — between being chosen and revealing himself to the world. Definitely not enough time to make sure his timelines are clean.
When the white smoke came up above the Sistine Chapel, I immediately turned on my television to see who the next pope would be, but I knew that the internet would tell me more about the new pope faster than it would on television. That, and the memes would be good.
I’m not a Catholic, and didn’t grow up one. My religious affiliation is most likely categorized as “lapsed Buddhist” I’ve always been curious about the catholic church, its deep history, its vast theology, and its artistic influence and societal dominance, internal politics and external diplomacy of the modern Vatican. I sometimes joke that I treat and exoticize Catholicism the same way that white men exoticize Japan, but my fascination itself is sincere: I am astonished that somehow, the Vatican has maintained its mysticism in the modern era — an earthly waypoint between the physical and the divine.
It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that I learned less about the pope through his online footprint than I did through interviews or Vatican press releases.
From the discussion around his retweets, I found out he supported gun control legislation, opposed the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and called on Trump to support climate change legislation. I found out that he had written a book on religious statistics. I learned from one post that he’d been a registered Republican, only to learn moments later that Illinois doesn’t have partisan voter registration. According to The Washington Free Beacon, Leo XIV has voted in Republican primaries before. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone posted a screenshot of the pope’s Venmo transactions.
I didn’t have to dig for it. A friend of mine who graduated from an augustinian high school sent me a message because it was going nuts among people he knew, because people who had gone to Augustinian schools in the US would know someone who knew him. Robert Prevost’s account is currently set to private — wild, because 68-year-olds rarely set their Facebook accounts to private by default — but there is one public photo available: the future Pope Leo XIV, wearing aviators and a black windbreaker, atop a pony. That’s a meme right there, thought my horrible, earthly, secular mind.
Why a social influencer isn’t a digital footprint: How the freaking pope might find a way to hide their social footprint
If the social media profile belonged to someone I didn’t know well, I wouldn’t have sent it. There is a strong argument to be made regarding the legality of mining public figures for their digital activities if they are political leaders with some degree of accountability. The requests make congressmen’s careers hard to maintain. Old tweets can land someone in hot water in the present day. It is possible to find a former Fox News anchor’s phone number if you look at their public reviews.
The moment you try to apply that standard to the freaking pope, though, the logic just grinds to a halt — not because a world leader shouldn’t be held to this standard, but because it is utterly baffling that one can even mine the socials of the Vicar of Christ. It is strange to think that a religious figure may be subject to scrutiny of their internet history, or that they possess something as anodyne as a digital footprint, particularly someone who may have had a hand in founding a role that is said to dates back to the time of Jesus.