“[T]he Pope doesn’t take sides,” Leo told the crowd in Paul VI Hall on Saturday, a mix of Villanova Wildcats and Fighting Irish from Notre Dame.
The pope’s 7 thousand guests were in town for the opening game of the college basketball season on Sunday, Nov. 1 – All Saints’ Day – at Rome’s Palazzo dello Sport, to honor the first pope from the United States.
“Prevost has another opinion,” said the pope, a Wildcat himself who graduated from the Augustinian university in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, “but we won’t do that now.”
It is a fine distinction, the one between Robert Francis Prevost on the one side and Leo XIV on the other, “fine” in every sense of the word, and one we’ve heard the pope use before to deflect journalistic curiosity regarding his sporting allegiances.
En route to Spain earlier this year, the pope told journalists he would be rooting for the U.S. in the World Cup (played across North America from June 11—July 19).
Crux Now asked the pope specifically about his favorite Spanish big league soccer side.
“That’s easy,” Leo told Crux Now‘s Elise Ann Allen, “the pope is for all teams, but Prevost is Real Madrid.”
When it comes to the question, “Who is Prevost supporting in the U.S. midterm elections?” apparently, we are doing it now.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported last week that the pope had received a ballot by mail, setting off an entirely predictable frenzy of activity by both reporters on the Vatican beat and PR flacks for Church outfits from the Vatican to the USCCB.
“Pope Leo XIV has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen, whenever he was eligible to do so,” the Vatican said in a Friday statement on the matter.
“[The pope] has submitted his mail-in ballot in Chicago,” for this year’s midterm elections, the statement said.
The papal ballot-casting exercise is “in keeping with this long-standing practice of civic participation,” the statement also said.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gamely welcomed the news and echoed the Vatican line, saying the pope “sets the example that encourages each citizen to exercise their civic responsibility.”
That’s all fine, too, but the matter is not nearly so straightforward as all that. There are mechanical and legal issues raised by the pope’s decision, not least of which arise from the fact Illinois voters living abroad and unsure they’ll return usually get a federal ballot.
This year, that means a ballot for only the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Leo’s ballot reportedly went to his brother’s house, which is not the pope’s legal voting address. As Crux Now’s Charles Collins noted on social media, there’s nothing illegal or even irregular in that.
In fact, it is quite common, but the questions regarding which ballot he received and what he did with it remain, as does the question regarding how he submitted it: Did the pope mail his ballot, or did he send it with his brother who was in Rome for a visit recently?
How many people will have seen it – marked and punched – before all is said and done?
Before and beyond the mechanical questions, however, there’s another, bigger issue: For whom did the pope vote?
He doesn’t have to say, but it would be journalistic malpractice bordering on dereliction of duty for any reporter given half the chance not to ask him the question (and journalists will be with him on the plane to South America this week).
Even if nobody asks, it is all but inevitable that somebody will claim to “know” how the pope voted.
The only reasonable response will be, “No comment,” and that response will be inadequate.
One need not doubt or otherwise gainsay the official “good example” line in order to justify a measure of concern over the expediency – frankly, the prudence – of the pope’s decision.
Voices across the spectrum of opinion in the Church have done just that, wondering more-or-less explicitly and in words, whether it was a good idea.
There is a reason no pope to reign in the democratic era has ever voted in an election, and it isn’t only that the pope is supposed to be super partes – above the fray – though that is certainly the case.
It is also a very bad look for the pope to lose an election – even if it is only the pope’s guy who loses – and that’s one of the reasons the head of the Italian bishops’ conference is appointed, not elected.
In short, and crucially: Who cast the ballot?
Was it Pope Leo XIV, Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth (etc.)?
Or, was it Augustinian Fr. Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago?
The answer is: “Yes.”
That’s the problem.
