What The Hell America!

Cardinal Robert Barron, bishop of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester in Minnesota who traveled to Rome for the papal conclave, relayed the words of Cardinal Francis George, the former American prelate, to CBS News right after Leo’s election last week.

“Cardinal George of Chicago, of happy memory, was one of my great mentors, and he said: ‘Look, until America goes into political decline, there won’t be an American pope,’” Barron recounted.

“And his point was, if America is kind of running the world politically, culturally, economically, they don’t want America running the world religiously. So I think there’s some truth to that, that we’re such a superpower and so dominant, they don’t wanna give us, also, control over the church,” he added.