New Pope just dropped.

J.D. Vance killed the old Pope and put an American in his place.

May 12, 2025

There’s not a lot of identifiably positive progress happening out there at the moment, but the emergence of the first-ever Ameripope does mark a short but nonetheless real step in the right direction. While it’s hard to say the broader world is doing much better now than it was two weeks ago, it is heartening to know that Chicago has won Conclave before they’ve won a second Super Bowl—or has gotten a Pope before a 4,000-yard passer. The Body of Christ will hit different with a Malort chaser. As America is now engaging in a spiritual war against the world in addition to its economic belligerence, it may have been unrealistic to expect red, white, and blue smoke to billow out of the Vatican, but it was a bit of a bummer to see a total lack of celebratory flyovers. An American Pope is monumental for a culture that is in desperate need of a total vibe refurbishment, so it is one of the few truly sunny-sided developments to have a Pope who may have eaten a Big Mac, who probably has a concealed carry license, and definitely has student loan debt. He’s going to eat a deep-dish pizza in the heart of the Vatican, thereby bringing about the rapture.

America getting a Pope before Ireland is a big L for the Emerald Isle, but American boomers remain undefeated. Everyone else in the church was hoping for the next Pope to be their mom, as she is the best Catholic they know. I thought the guy with “Pizza” in his name was the clear-cut choice, and it’s ridiculous how it was even up for discussion. Pierbattista Pizzaballa goes unbelievably hard, and together with Luigi Mangioni, the world could’ve been Italymaxxing this year. Regardless, it will be strange to hear the Pope speak English with an American accent.

But no news can be analyzed without talking about the absolute worst stuff online, and since J.D. Vance speaks and posts like it’s the rough draft of a howling dud of a tweet, he has naturally already been put on blast by the incoming Pope. Our veep has been slapped around by two successive Popes just for doing standard reply guy pseudo-intellectual shit like, “Well actually, there’s this Medieval Latin concept… Look it up!” These convert dweebs are thirstily trying to re-Talmudize/Hadithize Catholicism, but the Church moved away from that lame shit for a reason. But Vance keeps doing the “Every adult convert is like, ‘the Archon of Constantinople’s epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the Eucharist clearly states women shouldn’t have driver’s licenses’” tweet in real life. He’s about to begin his Sedevacantist arch. If he keeps getting owned like this, don’t be surprised if we see a headline like “BREAKING NEWS: 10% TARIFFS IMPOSED ON HEAVEN,” followed by Trump declaring, “The Pearly Gates just got 10 feet higher.”

Here’s to hoping that Pope Leo XIV will deal a death blow to American capitalism as Pope John Paul II did to Polish communism. Pray for him.

The real takeaway here is if you’re an American who’s been a good Catholic, you can a free ticket out of this dumpster fire and chill in Italy for the rest of your life. If that’s the case…