Around 40,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Square last night, the mood markedly more expectant than the evening before. While Wednesday had felt like a formality destined to disappoint, Thursday hummed with anticipation – and it delivered.
The general consensus in the run-up to the conclave was that an American pope was unlikely. As the world’s strongest economic and political power, adding to that the honour of hosting the world’s most influential spiritual leader seemed excessive. The United States has also had the furthest to go in addressing the problem of clerical abuse. The ghost of the serial sexual predator Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has not yet been fully exorcised, and the Church still appears to be under reconstruction after its credibility was demolished by countless scandals.
Leo may help bring disaffected English-speaking Catholics back into the fold – particularly Americans, many of whom have felt alienated over the past decade of Church politics
Robert Barron, the bishop of the diocese of Winona–Rochester, who has become something of an internet personality in recent years, summed up the papal pundits’ consensus on an American pontiff in an interview with EWTN.
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