One year ago, the cardinal-electors at the papal conclave overwhelmingly defied the oft-repeated belief that there could never be a pope from the United States. The conventional wisdom was that a pope from a global superpower might give that country outsized influence in the church—a sort of mirror image of historical American fears that a Catholic president would take his or her orders from the Vatican. In 1894, Puck magazine ran a famous political cartoon that portrays the first papal envoy to the United States casting a menacing shadow across the country with the caption “The American Pope.” The suspicion ran both ways: Five years later, across the Atlantic, Pope Leo XIII condemned a number of heresies he lumped together under the label of “Americanism.”

And yet we now have an American pope—and the United States has had two Catholic presidents. Robert Prevost’s nationality, the U.S. electors insisted in a post-conclave press conference, was not something the cardinal-electors considered. Other electors suggested an American pope could serve as a needed counterpoint to U.S. President Donald Trump on the global stage and could even bring in donations from the United States that had dried up under Pope Francis, in hopes of solving the Vatican’s financial crisis. Some interpreters speculated that the cardinals were open to an American pope because, as Cardinal Francis George predicted, the United States had entered into political decline. 

In any case, because of his dual citizenship (the United States and Peru) and years as a missionary and world traveler, Cardinal Prevost was widely seen as “the least American of the Americans,” making the prospect of a Yankee pope an easier pill to swallow for those who may have been uneasy with the prospect of an American in the chair of Peter.

But those who hoped an American pope might use his bully pulpit for a showdown with Mr. Trump have thus far been mostly disappointed. Although the pontiff had retweeted articles critical of the Trump administration before his election and reportedly helped Pope Francis draft a letter to the U.S. bishops rebutting JD Vance’s interpretation of St. Augustine on the “order of loves,” Leo XIV has been measured and indirect in his criticisms of his home country. Vatican insiders say he has intentionally ceded the floor to local bishops; he has also relied on Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state and runner-up in the conclave, while Leo has experienced, as he told Crux, a “huge learning curve” in becoming a world leader overnight. Cardinal Parolin recently called on Mr. Trump directly to end the war in Iran, contravening the Vatican tradition of not calling out aggressors by name.

Stronger papal comments could be coming. As Christopher Lamb, a journalist who chronicled U.S. resistance to Pope Francis in his book The Outsider, has written, “Leo is a lion who knows when to roar.”

Leo’s less direct comments, though, have been frequent and notable. In the first half of his papacy thus far, he frequently had off-the-cuff conversations with journalists outside his vacation home in Castel Gandolfo, where he spends most Tuesdays. There, he said in October, “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.” 

Leo had stopped speaking to reporters at the end of the Jubilee Year; however, after the United States and Israel began strikes on Iran, the pope approached an American reporter at Castel Gandolfo, seemingly expecting to be asked about the war. He also urged “less hatred and more peace, and work for authentic dialogue,” echoing his frequent appeals for peace.

Following the U.S. military operation to capture the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, in January, the pope addressed the representatives of the 184 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See, lamenting that the “principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.” Instead, he said, “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”

Analyzing this speech in The New York Times, the journalist David Gibson wrote that rather than “one half of a mano-a-mano between pope and president,” Leo’s comments “may be better seen as the articulation of a post-Trump global order, one informed by universal values and institutional norms rather than tribal and individual self-interest.” He concludes, “Leo is not looking for a fight with Mr. Trump; he is looking past him.”

What might “looking past” the current administration entail for this first American pope? Primarily, it means looking past politics to the church, which has outlasted empires greater and more long-lived than our own. Leo is not only or even primarily a head of state; he is a pope, and a relatively young one at that. He will likely have a similar-sized impact on the U.S. church, particularly its episcopacy, to that of St. John Paul II. 

Leo’s early selections for the U.S. episcopacy show the direction of that impact. He has repeatedly appointed bishops who are vocal critics of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, including Bishop Michael Pham in San Diego, Archbishop Ronald Hicks in New York and Bishop Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez in Palm Beach; several of his appointments are of men who are immigrants themselves. Leo is shoring up a generation of bishops who will share his concern for migrants and advocate for them on the local level.

The pope’s most significant shift with regard to the U.S. bishops’ conference has not been his appointments, though; it has been his ability to push the U.S. bishops toward greater unity in their political voice. For the last few decades, it seemed that such unity could form only around the bishops’ opposition to abortion; now, however, the bishops speak frequently and boldly about migration and voted almost unanimously to approve a rare “special message,” stating their opposition to “indiscriminate mass deportation.”

When it comes to his home country, Pope Leo is playing the long game. He speaks out strongly but indirectly, leaving more direct criticisms to local bishops and the Vatican’s diplomatic operation. He realizes that President Trump has no interest in listening to him (indeed, the two have never spoken), so Leo instead appeals to the consciences of those in the administration who might. But above all, he looks beyond President Trump: temporally, geographically and politically. Leo knows his moral authority will be exercised after Mr. Trump is no longer president, that his message is heard beyond the United States and that it is appreciated by ordinary people around the world.

Perhaps that gives this American pope an even greater influence than the one so feared in the United States a century ago.