When the chartered Alitalia jet known as “Shepherd One” touches down in Maryland this week, Pope Francis will become just the fourth leader of the Roman Catholic Church to visit the United States. As the only pontiff in history born in the Western Hemisphere, he has often been called the first American pope, though until now he has not crossed the borders such a title usually implies.
In this paradox—the American pope who has never been to the United States of America—he is perhaps better suited than any of his predecessors to contend with the contradictions of his faith in a country once considered so theologically suspect it had a heresy named after it. A little over 100 years ago, “Americanism” was a term applied within the Vatican to a litany of doctrinal lapses—including, in the words of Pope Leo XIII, “the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases”—to which many Americans would plead guilty as charged.
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