Pope Leo XIV, who was unveiled at the Vatican on Thursday evening after being chosen to become the first American to lead the Roman Catholic Church, previously voted in a string of Republican primaries, records show, offering a hint at his opinion of President Donald Trump.
Shortly after white smoke was seen billowing from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney to indicate that the conclave of cardinals had chosen their new leader after just two days in session, Chicago-born Robert Prevost, 69, was announced as the 267th pope, succeeding the late Pope Francis.
Trump warmly welcomed the news, days after joking that he should get the job himself.
“Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just named Pope,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
“It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
The Washington Free Beacon subsequently reported that His Holiness, who spent much of his life serving as a missionary in Peru, returned to his hometown to vote in Republican primaries in 2012, 2014, and 2016 and in general elections in 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2024.
The records, obtained by the conservative data science firm Pulse Decision Science, do not indicate how the then-Cardinal Prevost cast his vote or suggest that he was a registered Republican, as voters are prohibited from registering with a political party under Illinois state law.
Similarly, the Federal Election Commission and Illinois State Board of Elections databases do not record him making donations to particular political campaigns.
But what they do reveal is that Prevost has not voted in any GOP primary since 2016, the year Trump first began to dominate Republican politics, nor the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections in which he ran.
“The fact that he hasn’t voted in a Republican primary since 2016 and, in fact, didn’t vote in the general in ‘16 – and his public statements – if I had to guess, he certainly would fit the profile of a former or Never Trump-type ex-Republican,” said Mark Knee, Pulse Decision Science’s chief data officer.
If that assessment feels speculative, it is backed up by Prevost’s social media presence, which contains several posts critical of Trump and his Vice President, JD Vance.
Prevost shared another cardinal’s op-ed in 2016 entitled “Why Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is so problematic” and, more recently, declared that Vance, a recent Catholic convert, was “wrong” to attempt to offer a Christian justification for the administration’s hardline anti-immigration policies, which have seen it launch a significant mass deportation effort to remove undocumented migrants from the United States.
The new pope’s supposed anti-Trump leanings have already led MAGA activist Laura Loomer to bemoan his ascension.
“He is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis,” she wrote on X.
“Catholics don’t have anything good to look forward to. Just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.”
Having trawled through his old posts, Loomer also attacked the pontiff for retweeting an appeal for prayers for George Floyd in 2020, for supporting the children of undocumented migrants to the U.S. known as “Dreamers,” and for expressing disapproval at Trump’s use of the phrase “bad hombres” to deride Mexicans.
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