Published May 7, 2026
Leo the American
Stephen White
Executive director of the Saint John Paul II National Shrine
Much has been made about Pope Leo XIV being the first American Pope. Far less, however, has been said about how this might shape his understanding of Vatican II.
Not every part of the Church experienced the Second Vatican Council the same way. In some places, notably Africa and Asia, the Council ushered in decades of massive growth for the Church. In Europe, not so much. Being an American, Pope Leo experienced those years — both the good and the bad — in a distinctively American way.
A few years after he was born, Leo’s boyhood parish built a new church and school. It was the late 1950s and the Church was booming. By 1989, that school was closed; the parish was eventually merged and sold off. The high-school seminary Leo attended? Long gone. The Catholic high school where Leo’s older brothers went? Closed.
Pope Leo knows, firsthand, such painful parts of the American post-conciliar story. But he knows the good parts, too.
If the past half-century has seen some hard pruning and institutional dieback, today there are real signs of growth and renewal. The Church in the United States, perhaps implausibly given what it has been through, retains a vibrance and vitality that is exceptional among developed nations.
Why is that? Reading Pope Leo’s recent catechesis on the documents of Vatican II (and Lumen Gentium in particular) provides a hint. Leo’s reading of the Council resonates deeply with the mainstream of the American Church. The American Church, and the American Pope, hardly have a monopoly on this reading of the Council. But one would be hard-pressed to find anywhere that embodies that ecclesiology as well as the United States.
More than 60 years after the close of Vatican II, the perspective of the Council and its consequences (good and bad) that Pope Leo brings with him may prove a real blessing — and a distinctively American blessing — to the universal Church.
Stephen P. White is a fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. White’s work focuses on the application of Catholic social teaching to a broad spectrum of contemporary political and cultural issues. He is the author of Red, White, Blue, and Catholic (Liguori Publications, 2016).
