It isn’t just the ritual and the pageantry and the history that are bringing in the crowds.
It isn’t just the ritual and the pageantry and the history that are bringing in the crowds.
B arely two weeks after Pope Leo XIV’s election, my daughter checked the mail and brought back two magazines. Leo was the cover story on both Time and The Week Junior. That same day, I received a text from a friend telling me that her priest joked in his homily that “Catholicism is so hot right now.” If you’re like me, by which I mean you’re one of the only practicing Catholics under 60 that a lot of your friends know, your DMs have been flooded with videos, memes, and viral news items about all things papal. My brother, looking at the breathless media speculation over the potential messages in everything from the pope’s sartorial choices to the sequencing of his meetings with world leaders, asked whether this was what it was like to care about celebrity gossip.
I could answer with an emphatic yes.
American Catholics suddenly find themselves in an unfamiliar position. We’re used to being the main characters in high profile religious liberty cases and horror movies, or stereotypes in culture clash comedies. But it feels like Catholicism is suddenly . . . cool? At least, the papacy is. Breathless conclave coverage on both traditional and social media began almost immediately after the Vatican announced Pope Francis’s passing on Easter Monday. Ever since the surprise election of a dark horse American papabile, everywhere you look, the office of Summus Pontifex Ecclesiae Universalis is, as they say, the moment. So how did it start? And what should American Catholics do with this latest 15 minutes?
After all, Catholic chic pops up from time to time. It’s not always reverent. Madonna in the 1980s could probably be considered the grandmother of this phenomenon. In the ’90s, Gregorian chant was really popular (or did I dream that?). In 2018, the Met Gala theme was “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” which treated us to the spectacle of Rihanna wearing a bejeweled miter and miniskirt ensemble.
Most recently, the 2024 movie Conclave attracted something of a cult status after its initial release, spawning meme social media accounts and live celebrity table readings of the script. Streaming services reported huge jumps in viewers of both Conclave and 2019’s Two Popes after Pope Francis passed away on April 19. Pope Crave, a Conclave fan social media account (the name is a spin on celebrity gossip social media account Pop Crave), even rose to prominence during the IRL conclave as an actual source of information for bandwagoning papal politics stans.
During this recent conclave, (very) secular influencers made videos explaining how conclaves work and getting their followers up to speed on the various cardinals’ bios. Papalmania was already primed to go stratospheric when the new pope turned out to be an American with a digital footprint and two relatable brothers. By the time of Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural Mass, Oprah was posting Instagram photos from St. Peter’s Square with Maria Shriver and longtime bestie Gayle King.
Of course, part of the reason for all this is a flattened mediascape where the lines between showbiz and geopolitics are blurred. The Obamas have their post-presidential media empire. Donald Trump is, well, Donald Trump. And leaders all over the world are increasingly conscious of their social media personae. It often seems like historically significant events are only digestible now after they’ve been condensed, commoditized, and meme-ified.
The pope craze could also be yet another sign of man’s eternal search for the transcendent. “Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee,” as Augustine wrote. I’ll go with the Catholic both/and here, and acknowledge that both realities are helping drive American pop culture’s Pontiff Era.
But is there something else at work here?
As I write this, the packed churches and scores of baptisms at Easter are only a few weeks past. But amid the celebration, we must not forget that the Catholic Church in the United States is still losing more members than it is bringing in. Even as they bask in the bobbleheads and sports memorabilia honoring the first American pope, church leadership in the U.S. would do well to remember what we owe the curious, the newly arrived, and those heading for the exits (or already departed).
I’m reminded of a bold assertion, made by my Tablet colleague Liel Liebovitz, on America magazine’s Jesuitical podcast: “The [Catholic] Church is the only — the last — remaining bulwark for human dignity and freedom in this world. It’s our last line of defense. We have no other.” Liel, I should mention, is Jewish. Even if he were the only non-Catholic in all of human history to say this of the Catholic Church, should we not be profoundly humbled and take such enormous trust with the utmost seriousness?
People everywhere are looking for someone, something they can trust, and they are continually disappointed by the media, government, and yes, the Catholic Church. There is an ongoing struggle for accountability as dioceses confront the knock-on effects of the sexual abuse scandals: bankruptcy declarations, canon law controversies between laity and bishops over church closures, and lawsuits from abuse survivors. There is also the issue of financial accountability. Local news stories of priests embezzling pop up with alarming frequency. A 2023 article in the Journal of Forensic and Investigative Accounting that began with an internet search for the phrases “Catholic priest financial fraud,” “Catholic priest embezzlement, “Catholic priest theft” resulted in 95 (!) cases for consideration between 1963 and 2020 here in the United States. The researchers found that 64 of these priests received criminal convictions, with 20 later returned to active ministry. Even at the global level, Catholic outlet The Pillar reports that Pope Leo XIV has inherited stalled-out corruption reforms from his predecessor, and a Vatican on the brink of insolvency.
I quoted Liel back in March when I was on a panel about the Catholic response to rising antisemitism. The panel was part of a conference put on by Philos Catholic, an organization that aims to build bridges with the Jewish community and combat antisemitism. If the church is going to be seen as a moral authority on antisemitism, I said, it needs to act like one on everything else.
In a sense, the people who find themselves suddenly fascinated by the Catholic Church and the papacy are really rooting for institutionalism. Kind of like Delta House in Animal House, the papal office and the Catholic Church both have a long history of existence. In an era of declining institutional trust, that really does count for something. The underlying sentiment driving many of the TikTok videos and Instagram reels often seems to be, “Hey, look! An actual institution!” Let’s not squander the enthusiasm.
“There is only one thing worse than being talked about,” wrote deathbed Catholic convert Oscar Wilde, “and that is not being talked about.” While they have the world’s positive attention, the Catholic Church and its leadership have an opportunity to demonstrate that they are serious about being an institution deserving of their trust.
The honeymoon can’t last. The Catholic Church famously measures time in centuries. Historically and almost definitionally, it is not trendy. Pope Crave was quickly disappointed when they discovered the pope’s past remarks on homosexuality, for example. All the same, Catholics would do well to contemplate the meaning behind all of the apparent goodwill and sincere interest in their church that Pope Francis’s death and mourning inaugurated, and which continues up to now. It isn’t just the ritual and the pageantry and the history that are bringing in the crowds.