Politicians, foreign heads of State
and Pope Leo's family on Friday reacted to his election with
former Trump strategist Steve Bannon saying the first US pontiff
was the worst choice for MAGA Americans.
Ultraconservative Catholic Bannon said Leo's election had been a
vote against his old boss Donald Trump and that Leo was the
worst choice for the Catholics in the Make America Great Again
(MAGA) movement.
"The worst choice for MAGA Catholics", the election of Leo XIV
"is an anti-Trump vote by the globalists of the Curia", said
Bannon, former chief strategist during Trump's first term,
Politico reported.
Bannon, a week ago, had predicted the election of Chicago-born
Cardinal Robert Prevost, who also has Peruvian citizenship due
to his long missionary work in the South American country..
In an interview with British anchorman Piers Morgan, Bannon had
indicated the Augustinian maths and theology graduate and former
head of the Vatican department that appoints bishops as a "dark
horse", an outsider pushed by the alleged "powers that be" which
the MAGA movement identifies in the so-called 'Deep State' and
'Deep Church'.
Cardinal Prevost recently criticised US Vice President JD
Vance's interpretation of Christian love as having to be given
first to family, then other acquaintances, and only later to
unknown people like migrants.
"JD Vance is wrong: Jesus does not ask us to rate our love for
others," said Prevost on February 5.
Vance, a conservative Catholic convert of six year standing, had
said in an interview with conservative outlet Fox News:
"As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen,
your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. That
doesn't mean you hate people from outside of your own borders,
but there's this old-school [concept]—and I think it's a very
Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and
then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community,
and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and
then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the
world."
He said he was citing the thought of St Augustine, whose
teachings inspired the Augustinian order that Leo belongs to and
once led.
Trumpian conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer called Leo a Marxist
and woke pope.
"He is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, a woke in favor of open borders.
He is a convinced Marxist like Pope Francis. Catholics have
nothing good to expect: another Marxist puppet in the Vatican",
Loomer, the conspiracy influencer, staunch Trumpian and
super-trusted advisor to the US president despite having no
official role in the administration, said on X.
Two European heads of State, King Felipe VI of Spain and King
Charles III of the United Kingdom, welcomed Leo's election.
Felipe said the new pontiff, who is of Spanish as well as French
and Italian origin, was calling for dialogue in a polarized
world.
The new pope "expressed the desire for a Church that builds
bridges, that fosters dialogue and is always a bearer of peace",
a message that constitutes, "in a world marked by polarization",
an "urgent appeal to overcome divisions and conflicts and to
open paths towards mutual understanding": said the king.
"May his pontificate be a true source of hope for humanity",
added the Spanish monarch, speaking during the award ceremony of
the European Charles V Prize to the former EU High
Representative Josep Borrell, at the Monastery of Yuste
(Extremadura).
King Charles III sent a private message to Pope Leo
congratulating him on his election, Buckingham Palace said.
The message paid tribute to the new pontiff's dedication to
service, compassion and spiritual guidance of the faithful
throughout his life, sources said.
King Charles and Queen Camilla were the penultimate public
figures to meet Pope Francis before he died.
The last public figure was US Vice President Vance, who met him
in the Vatican on Easter Sunday, the day before he died.
Pope Leo XIV's brother John Prevost said after his younger
sibling's election as 267th leader of the Catholic Church that
it had been a shock and he couldn't believe it.
"It was a shocking moment. I was on the phone with my niece and
we couldn't believe it. Then the cell phone, the iPad and the
home phone went crazy," Prevost said in describing for the first
time to the media the moment of his 69-year-old brother Robert's
election as pontiff.
Leo XIV is the youngest of three children, raised by a father
who is a school superintendent and a mother who is a librarian
in the southern suburbs of Chicago.
"We had a normal childhood. It's a little strange, but all three
of us knew what we wanted to do from an early age," said the
71-year-old former principal of a Catholic school. "Rob knew he
was going to be a priest from the time he could walk," John
said.
"A neighbor once told him he would be pope one day. That was a
good prediction, right?" The pontiff's brother said they spoke
on the phone the night before the conclave began and discussed
what name he would choose if he were elected pope.
"I told him not to choose Leo because he would be 13th (an
unlucky number, ed.), but he apparently did some research," he
said.
Then Cardinal Robert Prevost voted in Republican primaries in
2012, 2014 and 2016, the Washington Post said Friday.
Leo, when he lived in his native Chicago, voted in the Illinois
Republican primaries in 2012, 2014 and 2016, according to
electoral records, the Post reported, adding that Prevost also
voted in the general election, the last of which was last
November, via mail-in ballot (Illinois does not have a party
registration system, but voters choose the party primaries they
want to vote in).
The new pope, who is a tennis and baseball fan and still plays
tennis, is known to be close to his family.
A humble man, he washed his own dishes in the Vatican.
Leo is considered a moderate who will follow his more
progressive predecessor Francis in reaching out to the poor and
migrants but who may well be more conservative on identity
issues like blessings for gay Catholics.
In his first speech from the balcony of St Peter's he said the
word "peace" nine times, calling for a "disarmed and disarming
peace" for all, and said that evil would not prevail.
Pope Leo XIV also has Creole origins from New Orleans, the New
York Times said Friday.
Leo's maternal grandparents, in fact, lived in the Seventh
District of the Louisiana city, a traditionally Catholic area
and a melting pot of people with African, Caribbean and European
roots, said the NYT.
Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié moved to Chicago at the
beginning of the 20th century and had a daughter: Mildred
Martinez, the Pope's mother.
The discovery means that Leo XIV is not only the first pontiff
born in the United States, but also comes from a family that has
fully within it the complex and rich fabric of American history,
said the US paper of record.
The pope's grandmother was "the daughter of pastry chefs" in
Normandy, according to the newspaper Ouest-France, citing the
Revue française de généalogie.
Suzanne Fontaine, the newspaper specifies, was the paternal
grandmother of Robert Francis Prevost.
The woman was born in Le Havre, the French port overlooking the
Atlantic (department of Seine-Maritime), in 1894. She died in
the USA in 1979.
Her two parents, the great-grandparents of Leo XIV, are both
Norman.
Ouest-France bases its article on information collected by the
'Revue française de généalogie' (French magazine of genealogy)
which attempts to reconstruct the multiple origins of the new
American Pope, but with a lot of European blood, with ancestors
in France, Italy and Spain.
Suzanne's father, Ernest, continues Ouest-France, citing the
French Genealogy Review, was born on September 17, 1857 in
Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, a former town of over 3,500 inhabitants
located in the department of Calvados, in Normandy.
"His roots were all in Calvados, with some ramifications in the
Manche (Guilberville) and the Orne (Domfront)," the French
magazine points out, before adding that Suzanne's mother,
Eugénie, was born in Paris, "daughter of a Norman from the Pays
de Caux".
As for their activity, writes Ouest-France, "Ernest and Eugénie,
it seems, were pastry chefs in Le Havre".
Suzanne Fontaine died on October 10, 1979 in Detroit (Michigan),
in the USA.
The French newspaper points out that Leo XIV's paternal
grandfather, Jean Prevost, was born "in Italy in 1876 and was a
professor of Romance languages in Illinois. He died in 1960.
"To find out if the Pope feels close to his French origins," the
newspaper finally suggests asking him directly.
Pope Leo XIV's election was also being celebrated in Chiclayo,
the city in northern Peru that he was the bishop of between 2015
and 2023 as part of many years of pastoral service in the South
American country.
"I am convinced that Pope Leo XIV will continue the path of
communion and closeness to the poor that characterized the
pontificate of Francis," said Monsignor Edinson Edgardo Farfán
Córdova, the current bishop of Chiclayo.
"As soon as he arrived in Peru, he fell in love with the
country.
"He worked in Chulucanas, Trujillo and Chiclayo, where he left a
spiritual and human mark that many of us still remember.
"There are photos of him walking through the hills of Piura.
"He was a shepherd among the people, a man with the smell of
sheep".
After Leo's election on Thursday the local faithful gathered in
front of Chiclayo cathedral, chanting: "the Pope is Chiclayo,
long live the Pope!".
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