Is Catholicism ‘Cool’ Now?

Barely 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.

MP

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Maggie Phillips

Maggie Phillips authors the series “Religious Liberty in America” for Tablet.

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Pope Leo XIV

Barely 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.