There were rumors that Leo XIV would travel to his home country this year, perhaps for a stop at the UN, among other places. But the U.S.-born pope will not be visiting the United States anytime soon, the Vatican recently confirmed. John Paul II and Benedict XVI visited their own native countries within a year of their elections (though Francis never went to Argentina). So far Leo has yet to travel in Europe, or even to other Italian cities, while his relationship with the city of Rome is still taking shape, with forthcoming visits to five parishes during Lent.
Among his many other tasks, Leo also finds himself having to navigate the shifting relationship between the United States and Europe, as well as the question of European identity, as Donald Trump dismantles the international order that has linked the continent to the U.S. for some seventy-five years. The United States simply isn’t the figurative “Europe outside Europe” that Europeans long liked to think it was. The shift was already detectable under Francis, but since the return of Trump and the election of Leo, the situation has become decidedly more complicated.
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