Pope Leo XIV and the Ghost of Americanism: A Reflection on Religious Liberty in a Historic Papal Moment

By Pastor Anslem Paul

HISTORY WAS MADE TODAY.

For the first time, an American from the United States has been elected pope. There’s excitement, celebration, and electricity in the air. From the Plaza in Rome to the University of Villanova, to the south side of Chicago to news pundits around the globe, the energy is palpable, and the atmosphere seems to be both hopeful and festive. But it’s his chosen name, Leo XIV, that raises more than eyebrows. It raises historical memory. And for those who see the intersection of faith, power, and prophecy as more than academic, it raises spiritual questions too.

The name Leo XIV is a direct reference to Pope Leo XIII, the 19th-century pontiff best known for his social teachings (Rerum Novarum) and for his sharp rebuke of “Americanism,” a set of theological and cultural trends he considered dangerous to the integrity of the Catholic Church.

Pope Leo XIII feared a Church that bent too easily to democratic ideals, individualism, and national identity. But what concerned him most was the threat posed by America’s radical embrace of liberty of conscience, a principle enshrined in its Constitution, celebrated in its culture, and increasingly embraced by segments of the Catholic Church on U.S. soil.

In Leo’s mind, liberty of conscience was not merely a civil ideal. It was a spiritual danger. He saw in it the seeds of disobedience to ecclesiastical authority, the erosion of doctrinal certainty, and the elevation of personal judgment above the magisterium of the Church. At a time when Europe was still recovering from the Reformation, the tremors of Enlightenment thinking, and revolutionary secularism, Leo XIII was determined to reassert the supremacy of the Church’s authority not just over believers, but over society at large.

His response was not subtle. He leaned hard into restoring what he considered the rightful order of things:

In many ways, Leo XIII wanted to… Make Catholicism Great Again, not by adapting to the ideals of freedom, but by reasserting the Church’s role as arbiter of truth and guardian of civilization. His condemnation of Americanism was part of that broader effort to hold the line. To Leo XIII, any concession to American ideals, particularly those regarding freedom of religion, separation of church and state, or lay empowerment risked opening the door to chaos, relativism, and the disintegration of Catholic identity.

For Christians who interpret prophecy through the lens of Revelation 13 and the warnings of works like Ellen White’s The Great Controversy, moments like this often trigger a reflexive fear response. Any hint of increased Catholic influence, especially when tied to American political or religious identity, gets read as a sign that the end is near. This instinct isn’t baseless.

Revelation 13 describes a union between two powers symbolized by a beast from the sea, interpreted historically as the papacy, and a beast from the earth, interpreted as the United States, that will enforce worship, violate conscience, and persecute dissent. So when an American pope is elected and takes the name of the very man who condemned America’s spiritual influence and growing independence from papal authority, it’s understandable that some Adventists will start blowing the prophetic trumpet.

But we must also be careful not to confuse reaction with revelation. Every major development isn’t necessarily the development. The danger of crying wolf too often is real. Very real. But so much more so is the danger of silence when the wolf actually comes.

The irony is thick. Once suspect, the American spirit has now been enthroned at the Vatican under the banner of the very pope who once warned against it. Some will see this as a sign of healing. Others, as a sign of compromise. But for Adventists, the moment should be viewed with both humility and vigilance.

The timing is sobering. This election comes amid rising Christian nationalism in the United States, growing calls for religious influence over civil policy, and escalating polarization in both church and state. When you add a globally influential papacy with American roots into that mix, the convergence is hard to ignore.

We are witnessing not just the Catholicization of America, but perhaps the Americanization of Catholicism. And either path has implications for liberty of conscience.

o understand why Adventists see moments like this as more than symbolic, we need to revisit 1888. No, not just the infamous General Conference session in Minneapolis, but we need to ask what was happening in Washington, D.C., and in Rome.

In 1888, Senator Henry Blair introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress to establish a national Sunday law, which would have mandated Sunday observance as a day of rest across the country. This was not an isolated cultural moment. It was backed by major Protestant groups seeking to legislate morality under the guise of national reform. It was a moment when religious leaders sought to influence civil government to enforce religious practice. This was a direct fulfillment, in embryonic form, of Revelation 13’s prediction that religious powers would influence the state to enforce worship.

In response, Adventist leaders Alonzo T. Jones and Ellet J. Waggoner stood before Congress and delivered what has become one of the most powerful defenses of religious liberty in American history. They argued that any law enforcing a religious practice, even one as benign-seeming as a day of rest, violates liberty of conscience and undermines the constitutional separation of church and state. And what was Leo XIII doing at the same time?

He was preparing his own ideological offensive. In 1891, just a few years after the Sunday law attempt, Leo issued Rerum Novarum, launching modern Catholic social teaching, but also calling for state cooperation with the Church in shaping moral life. This, combined with his 1899 condemnation of Americanism, reveals a strategic move by the papacy to reassert religious authority in a world drifting toward democracy and secularism.

The United States and the Vatican were moving in parallel but coordinated ways. Protestant America was testing the waters of Sunday enforcement, and Catholic Rome reestablishing its ideological footing to shape social and spiritual norms. It’s no wonder Ellen White warned that Protestant America would one day “stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power.”

What seemed impossible then, Rome and Washington collaborating in the moral governance of the world, is beginning to look extremely plausible now.

What once was feared by Leo XIII, a Church losing influence to American ideals, is now being reversed. We are witnessing an America willing to sacrifice its constitutional ideals in the name of religious power and political control.

And the warning signs are not abstract. We are seeing, in real time, this nation’s growing willingness to abandon long-cherished civil liberties, including:

These changes reflect a deep ideological shift, one that prioritizes national identity, religious conformity, and political loyalty over constitutional protections and human dignity. And history teaches us that once civil liberties fall, religious liberty and liberty of conscience are usually not far behind. When governments normalize the suppression of one kind of freedom, others quickly follow. When dissent is framed as disloyalty and diversity as deviance, the ground is laid for coercion in matters of faith.

These changes are not random. They reflect a deep ideological shift, one that prioritizes national identity, religious conformity, and political loyalty over constitutional protections and human dignity. And history teaches us that once civil liberties fall, religious liberty and liberty of conscience are usually not far behind. When governments normalize the suppression of one kind of freedom, others quickly follow. When dissent is framed as disloyalty and diversity as deviance, the ground is laid for coercion in matters of faith.

The wall of separation between church and state is not just being questioned—it is being quietly dismantled. The election of a pope from the United States, under the name Leo XIV, may appear symbolic, but it happens in a moment when the world is ripe for synthesis. The currents of Catholic ambition, Christian nationalism, and American exceptionalism are not running in parallel. They are beginning to converge.

At the same time, efforts like Project 2025, a political blueprint with deep Catholic influence, are working to reshape government through religiously informed authoritarianism. Catholic integralist voices are helping set the agenda, calling for a moral state that reflects traditional religious values. And at the presidential level, we now hear open calls to “restore religion” to public life, not in pluralistic terms, but in ways that recast America as a covenant nation with a divinely ordained identity.

The White House has created a Religious Liberty Council, appointed a faith liaison, and signaled its support for religion in public life. But when paired with efforts to tear down the wall of separation between church and state, and when placed within the broader movement to centralize religious power in political hands, these developments must be read with caution.

And now, at this precise moment, the Vatican has selected an American pope, one who has chosen the name Leo XIV. This is not just symbolic. It is structural. It is spiritual. It is political. And it is prophetic.

When Leo XIII warned the Church about Americanism, he feared a faith that had become too friendly with freedom. And today, the world may face a more dangerous remix: freedom becoming too friendly with faith. The political, institutional kind of cultish faith that demands loyalty and punishes dissent.

Leo XIV now carries the name of a pope who once fought to protect the Church from the freedom culture of America. The question now is whether he will protect the conscience of Americans from the power of the Church.

And whether we, as a people of prophecy, will be ready if he doesn’t.

- Pastor Anslem Paul (pcap)