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- Tide of Consensus Swept Quiet American to Papacy
Tide of Consensus Swept Quiet American to Papacy
Cardinals at Conclave Describe How a Man Many Didn't Know Grew in Favor
Matt Davis
May 12, 2025
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Today’s from page story by four reporters is a behind-the-scenes report from the Vatican about how Pope Leo XIV became Pope Leo XIV. Amazingly it doesn’t feature Ralph Feinnes or Stanley Tucci or even Isabella Rosselini. But the paper has done its best to imbue the piece with the smell of incense and intrigue, and good for them.
Here’s the opening graf:
The cardinals electing a new pope to lead the Roman Catholic Church left the Sistine Chapel exhausted and hungry.
It’s like the Da Vinci Code! The piece is based on “Interviews with more than a dozen cardinals, who could divulge only so much because of secrecy rules that carry the penalty of excommunication, and accounts from Vatican insiders”.
Holy sh*t! It sounds exciting!
Before we dive in, China and the U.S. just agreed to pause the tariffs for 90 days, sending stock futures up 3% as I type, so we know what we’ll be reading about tomorrow. It’s good news, obviously, even if the falling of the stocks in the first place, thanks to the tariffs, was totally preventable. But whatever. Let’s take it one day at a time, shall we? Back to the newspaper…
There were three main contenders for the Papacy by last Wednesday night: Cardinal Pietro Parolin, 70, the Italian who ran the Vatican under Pope Francis; Cardinal Peter Erdo of Hungary, 72, backed by a coalition of conservatives that included some African supporters, and Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69 — “a quiet American dark horse who had, surprisingly, emerged in the evening’s vote — as a source of particular interest.”
Reading between the lines: There was a leftist, but who wasn’t sufficiently outspoken about being leftist, which led even the left to mistrust him, and a Nazi, who was only going to appeal to the Nazis. Then there was Bob from Chicago. It’s always the quiet American dark horses, don’t you find?
A missionary turned religious order leader, turned Peruvian bishop, turned Vatican power player, he checked many of the boxes that a broad range of cardinals hoped to fill. His seeming ability to be from two places at once — North and South America — pleased cardinals on two continents. As the prelates sounded out the Latin American cardinals who knew him well, they liked what they heard.
During the dinner, Cardinal Prevost avoided any obvious politicking or machinations, cardinals said. By the next morning, he had transformed into an unsuspecting juggernaut who ultimately left little room for rival candidacies and ideological camps.
“You begin to see the direction and say, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m not going to use my five days’ worth of clothes,’” joked Cardinal Pablo Virgilio Siongco David of the Philippines. “It’s going to be resolved very fast.”
I love that he avoided “obvious politicking or machinations.” That’s classy. And that quote from Cardinal Pablo Virgilio Singco David of the Philippines is amazing: “I’m not going to use my five days’ worth of clothes" is something many of us could have said at historic moments, although as a religious leader I’m not sure he’ll be delighted to see that in the paper this morning? But then again, who knows? If he’s my kind of religious leader he’ll be fine with it!
Having only been a cardinal for two years, Bob from Chicago lacked name recognition and “moved under the radar,” the story recounts.
But Cardinal Prevost was not a complete unknown. As the former leader of the Order of St. Augustine, which operates around the globe, and as the head of the Vatican office overseeing the world’s bishops, he had developed powerful connections and backers. First among them had been Francis, who put his career on the fast track. And his decades in Peru, fluent Spanish and leadership of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America gave him deep, and decisive, relationships on the continent.
“We almost all know him. He’s one of us,” said Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo of Venezuela, who has known him for decades.
That’s something you want to hear when you’re running for a leadership position, isn’t it? That you’re “one of us” and that “we almost all know him.” Like, that’s genuine leadership.
The Quiet American, incidentally, is the title of a Graham Greene novel. Greene, who was both bipolar and Catholic (he converted at University after falling in love with a Catholic woman), and also, a spy, frequently explored Catholic themes in his novels. The Times’s little nod to Greene’s novel in its headline this morning is the sort of nice little human touch you get in the print newspaper, and again, I love that they did it. The American in that novel turns out to be a mischievous danger to all concerned, actually, and is played by Brendan Fraser in the film version, opposite Michael Caine. I’d recommend the film and the novel along with four other Greene works if this sort of thing floats your boat: Brighton Rock, about the Catholic conscience of a hardened criminal, Our Man in Havana, about a vacuum-cleaner salesman who somehow gets conned into working for the secret service and makes everything up, in what essentially is a precursor to John Le Carre’s also excellent book The Taylor of Panama, and Travels with My Aunt, about a banker whose “aunt” is, in fact, his mother, and also, a prostitute, although he doesn’t realize it, because he works for a bank (it’s a novel of middle class manners, written by and for the English, but that’s what’s so incredible about it for an American audience, if you ask me), and Ways of Escape, a volume of autobiography by the writer which Tony Bourdain, of all people, recommended to the New York Times seven months before he died in a very un-Catholic way — at his own hand. Poor man. I often think he was hinting at his way of escape for years before he did it.
Greene explores exhaustion and cynicism, especially among men in exotic locales, which I’d say are my two favorite themes among novelists of the 20th century, along with moral angst and the role of religiosity and of course, perhaps unwittingly, mental illness, in shaping all our lives. Plus: Spies! He’s not my favorite writer but I’ve read everything he wrote, including his terrible Dream Diary, and I would say that he was definitely a great shining beacon of light along the way for me. Hallelujah!
But…yeah. Catholics.
In the weeks before the conclave, the cardinals participated in a series of private meetings to discuss their concerns about the future of the church. During those meetings, Bob from Chicago’s remarks “did not stand out”, but people did get to know him “on the sidelines.”
Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco of France, the archbishop of Algiers, also could not recall what the American had said, but he got to talk to him on the sidelines of the meetings — which was important, he said, because he was increasingly being talked about as a candidate based on his “incredible” résumé, fluent Italian, reputation as a moderate and connection to Francis. The cardinal started asking around to people who had worked with the American to vet him, and learned that he listened and worked well in groups. “I did my job,” Cardinal Vesco said. “I have to vote. I have to know the person.”
Apparently he engaged well in small group discussions, which I see as a key method of building power and influence in any organization — often more important than your public remarks, actually, and evidently in this case.
Those more intimate settings played to Cardinal Prevost’s strengths, as he had gained a reputation around Rome as a studiously prepared, collegial and organized collaborator, especially as a top Vatican department head.
“I just admire the way he runs a meeting,” Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago, his hometown, said. “I mean, that’s hard to do, when you’ve got people of different language groups and cultures, and you’re trying to advise a pope on who should be a bishop, and you’re listening to all those people.”
Imagine being admired, in this day and age, for the way you run a meeting. Honestly that quote warms my heart. Towards the end of his career my dad was chair of a charitable trust and talked to me about how important it was to come into meetings giving everyone a sense that their concerns would be heard, even if the likely outcome wasn’t in their interests. It’s an “art, not a science,” he said, and I really took that to heart.
Donald Trump’s cabinet meetings are just hours-long sycophancy sessions.
Even a conservative cardinal warmed to Bob:
Cardinal Müller of Germany, a prominent conservative critic of Francis whom the late pope had fired from his position as the church’s top doctrinal official, said he talked to the Latin Americans about Cardinal Prevost and was told that he was “not divisive.”
…
Cardinal Müller sat behind the American front-runner in the Sistine Chapel and noticed that he seemed calm. Cardinal Tagle, who sat next to Cardinal Prevost, noticed him taking deep breaths as votes amassed in his favor.
“I asked him, ‘Do you want a candy?’ and he said ‘Yes,’” Cardinal Tagle said.
That’s incredible reporting, there, to have that level of detail from somebody so important. It really is mindblowingly good and I’m so grateful to be reading the newspaper this morning. There’s more incredible stuff here:
“I took a look at Bob,” Cardinal Tobin of New Jersey said, “and he had his head in his hands.”
Later in the afternoon, they voted again, then counted the ballots one by one. When Cardinal Prevost reached 89 votes, the two-thirds majority threshold needed to become pope, the room erupted in a standing ovation. “And he remained seated!” Cardinal David said. “Somebody had to pull him up. We were all teary-eyed.”
As the counting continued and the votes for Cardinal Prevost neared triple digits, Cardinal Parolin had to ask them to sit down so they could finish.
“He obtained a very, very large majority of votes,” Cardinal Désiré Tsarahazana of Madagascar said.
And that’s that. The machinations of the highest level of the Catholic church reported in-depth for us this morning by the New York Times which, at this point, practically has the status of a holy institution in my eyes.
Thanks, sincerely, for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to. And sorry I digressed so much into 20th century fiction there. I hope you got some reading recommendations out of it, at least?
Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?
Oh, sure. Read this story about gauging the art market 👇🏻.
Six bellwether works in the spring auctions may provide some indication of whether a recovery seems to be in the cards, after a few years of declining profits and high rollers. One of them is a Pierre Mondrian piece that might fetch $50 million at Christie’s. It reminds me of an excellent documentary called The $50million Art Swindle, about a French-born con-artist who talked New Yorkers out of at least that much money over the years. Sinful!
Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.
Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”