You’ve heard about Taylor Swift swaying the 2024 election, but what about the other figure with a cult-like following, namely, Pope Francis? Everyone knows that the separation of church and state is of vital importance in the modern world…but they seldom go without affecting one another. Since the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis steered the Catholic Church in a new direction, both necessary and concurrent with the generally progressive state of the world. The American Catholic Church has mixed reviews on this shift, and their vote may have significant implications for the upcoming election. Could Pope Francis’s pivot in attitude turn American Catholics in a more progressive direction?

The Roman Catholic Church has far-reaching political, economic and social power and has historically adapted to a multitude of changes. It’s over two thousand years old, making it the oldest institution in the Western world [1]. Additionally, Christianity is the largest religion in the world, with 2.4 billion members; more than half are Catholics. This makes the pope morally in charge of almost twenty percent of the world’s population, so his actions have tangible consequences.

As of 2010, about a quarter of United States adults identify as Catholic (24%), making it the second-largest religion in the country, behind Protestantism (34%). [2] Despite there being no shortage of criticisms towards the Catholic Church, including its handling of sexual misconduct among its clergy, traditionalist views on gender and sexual orientation, and issues surrounding reproductive freedom, the Church persevered through modernity. Based on historical precedent, namely two thousand years of adaptation and modernization, the twenty-first century will not be the demise of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church’s growth has been unwavering for centuries and its survival depends on being viewed as a dynamic, inviting institution that can keep up with a rapidly changing world. This continuous process of catch-up with the rest of the world ensures that there will always be a bitter, traditionalist faction of the Catholic Church fighting to bring back previous “ideals”, but these voices are perpetually drowned out by the rushing tides of historical progress.

Pope Francis guided the Catholic Church in the necessary direction; his actions made him a radically forward-thinking pope. Pope Francis rejected the conventionally “bourgeois” papacy and exemplified humility and openness, widely earning him the title of a pope of the people [3]. When he began his role in 2014, he turned heads by relinquishing the Apostolic palace residence in exchange for a guest house at the Vatican and taking his meals in a common room among his constituents. He recently caused turmoil by formally allowing priests to bless same-sex couples on December 18, 2023, which was followed by a mix of both widespread support and criticism. While his announcement shocked some, it was preceded by his 2013 comment to reporters, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” when asked if there was a gay lobby in the Vatican [4]. These statements were in stark contrast to the Catholic stance of the past. Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis’s predecessor, was a staunch critic of LGBTQ inclusion in the Church. The Vatican’s announcement of blessings for same-sex marriages wasn’t the first time LGBTQ+ priorities had come to his attention. Just a few months earlier, Francis gathered the world’s attention when he announced that transgender people could be baptized and become godparents in October 2023 [5]. These announcements relentlessly shift the public view of the Church; it is undoubtedly modernizing with the rest of the world. 

Pope Francis made headlines for his blistering criticism of laissez-faire capitalism and steady environmentalism. In a 2015 speech in Bolivia, he called out the harm to the environment, which he said was the product of the "dung of the devil, the unfettered pursuit of money” [6]. He continued with, "Once capital becomes an idol and guides people's decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socio-economic system, it ruins society, it sets people against one another, it even puts at risk our common home, our sister mother Earth," seeming to identify what he deemed as unacceptable values. Francis’s stance on materialism and climate change pushes further than his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who promoted renewable energy but lacked the same passion for change as Francis. His attacks on late-stage capitalism have caused vocal opposition across the Atlantic, specifically in the United States.

The Catholic Church is one of the few global institutions where U.S. interests are of arguably low priority; Americans are not calling any shots in this world power. The United States is home to about 7% of the Catholic Church’s followers, just a fraction of believers worldwide. Unlike in areas like Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, where the religion continues to spread roots and blossom into deeply Catholic communities, Catholicism has steadily declined in the United States for decades [7]. “In fact, one-in-ten adults in the United States is a former Catholic,” meaning a great number of followers turned away in this generation. The most striking decline in Catholicism came between 2010 and 2021, when the previously stable percentage went from twenty-five to twenty-one percent. Pope Francis lacks many notables to impress within the country and acts accordingly.

Despite the United States’ relative insignificance in the Church, Pope Francis does not ignore his outspoken conservative critics within the country. He denounced conservative Catholics within the U.S., and after years of leniency with American criticism of his papacy, even took action to punish those who impaired his progressive teachings. In November 2023, Pope Francis fired Bishop Joseph Strickland, an ultra-conservative Texas Bishop, following a Vatican investigation into his leadership. Strickland refused to retire after Francis identified a long history of what the Vatican saw as blatant disrespect to Francis’s papacy, which ended in Strickland’s removal. The Pope drew more attention after reports surfaced in November 2023 of his intent to throw Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American conservative bishop, out of his position at the Vatican, after a forum in which Burke condemned the plans of “an assembly that has the ‘harmful goal’ of reshaping the hierarchy of the Church with radical, secular and modern ideas that included inclusivity of LGBTQ people” [8]. Pope Francis’s growing resistance to American conservatives and their scathing pushback to his progressive principles “has nurtured a deep wariness of his leadership among conservatives in the Church, who exist at all levels of Catholic life in America” [9]. The Pope enforces his way with his U.S. constituents, which sends a message to the Catholic community that he expects them to follow his way as well. Pope Francis has no problem shutting down what he deems as anti-Catholic rhetoric in the country, and takes substantial measures to deem hateful speech and behavior unacceptable. 

Religious identification is a large voting factor in the United States, so Pope Francis’s teachings and general reforms in the Catholic Church will meaningfully impact the upcoming 2024 election. Republican presidential candidates have received the significant majority of white evangelical Protestants' votes for many election cycles, but the Catholic vote has more or less split. The Edison exit polls after the 2020 election gave 76% of White Evangelical votes to Donald Trump and 24% to Joe Biden, showing that Republican votes were strongly associated with Evangelical faith [10]. In contrast, Catholics tend to politically diverge between the Republican and Democrat parties. In the 2016 election, 44% of Catholic voters backed Hillary Clinton, while 52% backed Donald Trump. The margin got much closer in 2020, when 49% of Catholics voted for Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic, and 50% voted for Trump, a nondenominational Christian [11]. Gallup offered an argument “that a small shift in Catholic votes in 2020 could have cost Trump in the Midwestern swing states with significant Catholic populations -- Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, in particular. These states, won by Trump by very small margins in 2016, flipped to Biden by very small margins in 2020,” which could have been the final shove for Democrats in 2020. The Catholic vote was significant in the last elections, swinging back and forth more than their evangelical counterparts, indicating meaningful implications in the upcoming election. Joe Biden’s relationship with the Catholic vote is complicated, as he supports issues like reproductive freedom, but Pope Francis’s shift of the global Catholic Church in a new direction may have a direct effect of stoking the fire on Biden’s Catholic base. 

The question arises: will Pope Francis shift American Catholics in a progressive direction? Pope Francis is critical of American conservative evangelicalism, seeming unimpressed with Trump-era white Christian nationalism. During a 2016 visit to Mexico, Francis famously prayed at the U.S. border for Mexican migrants who died trying to reach the United States. On the flight back to Rome, he was asked about then U.S.presidential candidate Donald Trump's promise to build a wall along the border. The pope replied, "A person who thinks only about building walls–wherever they may be— and not building bridges, is not Christian" [12]. This was met with backlash from the then-Republican nominee himself, who called Pope Francis’s assertion “disgraceful." 

And this was not the first tiff. When the Pope advocated for allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion, conservative clergy members caused an uproar in the media. During Trump’s presidency in 2019, the Pope famously said, “For me, it is an honor that Americans attack me,” asserting that American criticism did not bother him nor shift how he proceeded in his papacy [13]. A private meeting in Lisbon in August 2023 was publicized after Pope Francis made comments about American Conservative Catholics who criticized him, remarking that there was “a very strong, organized, reactionary attitude” in the U.S. branch of his Church [14]. This suggested he wanted nothing to do with the traditionalist “culture war” within the United States. He said, “I want to remind these people that backwardness is useless, and they must understand that there’s a correct evolution in the understanding of questions of faith and morals,” advocating for a dynamic, evolving understanding of the development of Church doctrines. The Pope continues to conflict with conservative U.S.-based members of his Church, but projects the overall message that if one does not hop on the train, they get left at the station. He draws a fine line in the sand about where official doctrine is headed.

Will Pope Francis’s progressiveness within the global Catholic Church turn the tide for American Catholics, possibly changing their votes more towards progressive policies and altering the 2024 election? Pope Francis’s popularity among U.S. Catholics laid between 70 and 80 percent approval for the vast majority of his ten-plus years as Pope, even throughout the progressive steps he’s taken. The December blessing of same-sex marriage did not drastically affect his popularity, as a Gallup poll conducted after the announcement showed that 77% of U.S. Catholics favored the pope [15]. The Pope’s strong condemnation of conservative Catholics and Donald Trump’s policies may steer the American Catholic Church in a new direction. While Catholics are a small percent of voters, the pope’s pivots in attitude, which are decidedly contrary to white evangelical nationalism, could make a difference in an election that will come down to a razor-thin margin in a few key states. A Swiftie-Catholic alliance could emerge as a formidable force, poised to sway the political landscape.