Author: Alessandro Sansoni – 02/11/2026
Leo XIV Votes in the US Midterm Elections: A Historic Turning Point
The Pope’s participation in the democratic life of the United States raises questions about the future of papal primacy and the identity of Catholicism.
By Alessandro Sansoni
When Romulus Augustulus was deposed in AD 476 by Odoacer, king of the Heruli, contemporaries did not realise that, by removing the son of Orestes from power and sending the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno as a sign of respect, the barbarian leader had brought the Roman Empire to an end. Life continued much as before. Ordinary people, and not only they, had no impression that imperial authority had ceased to exist in the West, and for a long time the prevailing perception was simply that there was a temporary vacatio, a vacancy that would soon be filled. And indeed it was, although more than three hundred years had to pass before Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, thereby restoring the Empire in the pars Occidentis, albeit in entirely different forms.
Only many centuries later would historians, looking back and examining the past, recognise in that episode — involving a fourteen-year-old boy who, by an irony of fate, bore the same name as the founder of Rome, followed by a distorted version of that of the first Roman emperor — a transformation so profound that they would conventionally identify it with nothing less than the end of Antiquity.
This has often been the case with great historical transformations brought about not by wars or civil conflicts, but rather by distinctly political circumstances connected to the cultural paradigm through which a society perceives itself as an ordered whole.
Something similar probably happened last Friday, when Pope Leo XIV mailed his ballot for the American midterm elections. How many people realised that this gesture marked an epoch-making change? To the overwhelming majority, although unprecedented, the gesture will have seemed a natural acknowledgement, perhaps even a long-overdue act: at last, a Pontiff has formally recognised the value of democracy.
Much as Zeno did when, by refraining from appointing a new imperial colleague in the West, he acknowledged, at least de facto, that it was no longer possible to exercise imperial authority over that part of the world.
Yet the revolutionary significance of this episode cannot be overlooked. It marks a turning point whose consequences will weigh heavily on the future of the Catholic Church.
Over its two thousand years of history, the Church has undergone profound transformations, adapting throughout the centuries to widely differing political circumstances. What has distinguished Catholicism from the other Christian Churches since the Eastern Schism of 1054, during the pontificate of Leo IX, however, is papal primacy.
This is a dogma of faith whose acceptance was by no means inevitable. Its codification began under Pope Gregory VII, a highly learned Benedictine monk who occupied the See of Peter from 1073 to 1085. It was he who transformed the papal chancery into the nerve centre of Catholic Christendom, a process subsequently perfected by his successors, culminating in the pontificate of Innocent III, who died in 1216.
Before these reforming popes, the appointment of bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, was the prerogative of the assembly of the faithful within the diocesan community and the subject of disputes with temporal authority, as anyone familiar with the fascinating struggles between popes and German emperors during the Investiture Controversy will recall.
In order to secure full autonomy, the papacy, besides asserting its supremacy over the other ecclesiastical hierarchies, was compelled to claim temporal power for itself and establish complete control over a territory capable of providing the financial resources necessary to avoid dependence on others.
It was in this way that the Papal States began to take shape, providing the foundation for papal primacy over the other episcopates. With the emergence of Protestantism, the Council of Trent reaffirmed that primacy, at the cost of another grave schism. Finally, on 18 July 1870, shortly before the definitive disappearance of the Papal States as a consequence of Italian unification, the First Vatican Council solemnly enshrined it as a dogma of faith.
The dogmatic constitution Pastor Aeternus, promulgated by Pius IX, established papal infallibility, the Pontiff’s status as successor to Peter (princeps apostolorum, Prince of the Apostles), and his supreme authority, endowed with full, supreme, universal, ordinary and immediate jurisdiction over the Catholic Church.
In short, any Christian who ascends the See of Peter, regardless of citizenship, social standing or ecclesiastical rank, becomes ipso facto, in the eyes of the Roman Church, an absolute monarch.
The principle of a “Free Church in a Free State” does not envisage the Pope’s subordination to the laws, institutions or political authority of the country of which he was originally a citizen. It was precisely to guarantee him full jurisdiction, comparable to that of a head of state, that Vatican City State was established in 1929, endowed with complete administrative, territorial, military and diplomatic autonomy, ensuring the total independence and freedom of the Holy See.
It is for this reason that no Pontiff, since the Lateran Pacts and the various concordats concluded with other European countries and countries throughout the world, has ever voted in an election. Until last Friday.
Could American democracy, then, be the new Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation? One thing is certain: a paradigm shift is taking place.
After all, Prevost, who ultimately has a political profile, makes no secret of his active interest in American politics, as demonstrated by his frequent clashes with Trump, even though the two express themselves in markedly different tones. One can hardly blame him: the centre of the Empire has long since moved to Washington, certainly no longer residing in Europe.
And the election of an American Pope could only diminish the distinctiveness of Roman Catholicism in relation to the other Christian Churches.
Not to mention, moreover, that names matter.
Originally published in Le Cronache on 2 November 2026. Vision & Global Trends wishes to thank the author, Alessandro Sansoni, for kindly granting permission to translate and publish this article in English.