Nearly one year ago, Pope Leo XIV defied long-standing conventional wisdom that an American would never be elected to succeed St. Peter. But a leading Catholic commentator believes that the Chicago-born Pontiff may have been elected not despite his American background, but perhaps because of it.

Speaking to EWTN News on May 4, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat suggested that the election of an American Pope indicates that Church leadership now recognizes that the “American situation” — marked by pluralism, complexity and conflict but also a vibrant local Church — may be a model for the rest of the Catholic world going forward.

“That’s not some weird outlier, right?” said Douthat, an influential commentator on American politics, faith and culture. “That’s going to be the norm of the 21st century.”

Douthat said this recognition marks a shift from a prior dispensation, marked by Catholic strongholds in places like Poland, Italy and Ireland that sent out missionaries to the rest of the world and were buttressed by Catholicism’s influence in culture and society.

“Now, we’re in an environment where those kind of cultural fortresses for Catholicism have broken down just about everywhere,” said Douthat. “And whether you’re in Europe or Latin America, the Church is just in a competitive environment.”

Whether that competition comes in the form of Islam in Europe or Pentecostalism in South America, Douthat suggested that the Catholic experience in the United States, a historically Protestant nation, offers a compelling model for how to thrive amidst religious pluralism and without a backdrop of cultural Catholicism.

“The Church has all kinds of problems in America, all kinds of difficulties,” Douthat said. “But compared to Catholicism in other developed areas, not just Western Europe, but parts of Latin America, too, I think the Church in the U.S. looks like a model of flourishing under those conditions.”

There are some instances in which it seems like Catholics in other parts of the world are already following the Church in America’s cues. For instance, bishops in European countries such as France and Germany have recruited the American college evangelization group FOCUS to their campuses, while American evangelists like Father Mike Schmitz and Bishop Robert Barron have significant followings among Catholics in the remnants of Christendom.

And while the kind of evangelistic vibrancy in the United States recognized by Douthat hasn’t necessarily stopped the stem of disaffiliation — only 19% of Americans are Catholic, according to Pew Research Center, down from 23% in 2007 — the Church in America is nonetheless showing signs of recent vitality. Most notably, dioceses across the country reported a surge in the number of converts at the Easter vigil this year, a development that seems especially concentrated among young adults.

Of course, not everyone has been impressed with American Catholicism’s evangelistic efforts in recent years. While he was still the apostolic nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christoph Pierre suggested that America’s bishops “are all struggling” to evangelize and could learn more from the Latin American experience.

Douthat, himself a convert, believes Leo’s election helps present American Catholicism’s entrepreneurial spirit amid a historically Protestant and now increasingly secular country as a success story for the rest of the Catholic Church to consider.

“What American Catholicism has to offer the global Church, I think, is a sense of ‘how do you remain resiliently and faithfully Catholic while recognizing that you’re going to be arguing with and competing with other forces for some indefinite period of time,’” he said.

Douthat himself may be a sort of exemplar of this kind of winsome, evangelistic Catholicism within a pluralistic society. The columnist is known as a sort of “Catholic representative” to The New York Times, making the case for Catholic positions on faith and the sanctity of life to a predominantly secular, progressive readership.

In his conversation with EWTN News, Douthat also shared his impression of Pope Leo one year into the American’s pontificate. He said that while the Pope has been willing to speak out on geopolitical issues like the war in Iran, he has seemed to avoid “big internal controversies in the life of the Church” — a marked departure from his predecessor, even while Leo seems to continue some of Francis’ emphases, such as social justice and peace.

“I think, there, he has been just more careful and cautious and, being honest, sort of evenhanded than Pope Francis,” said Douthat, who wrote critically of Francis’ efforts to change the Church. As a result, the columnist believes that Leo has been able to foster a “spirit of reconciliation” with conservative and traditionalist Catholics who sometimes “felt alienated or put upon under Francis.”

“Francis had a great appetite for opening controversies and seeing where they led, like ‘Let’s have a debate about divorce and remarriage, and let’s have a debate about same-sex blessings,’” said Douthat, referring to Amoris Laetitia and Fiducia Supplicans, two controversial Francis-era Vatican documents. “And I think Leo is much more focused on unity. And I would say that’s a good thing, as someone who was maybe occasionally critical of the last pope.”

From the National Catholic Register