His critics brand his concern for migrants and the poor as ideology, but to him it is biography: the streets he walked, the families he visited, the languages he learned to speak. The Vatican insists his papacy will not be about American politics, yet America keeps dragging him back in. Between Trump’s cordial congratulations and the online rage machine, Leo XIV faces a brutal test: can a pope still talk about mercy without being claimed—or cancelled—by one side?
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