The new Pope plays Wordle, the Scrabble-like mobile game Words With Friends, and watched the movie Conclave shortly before entering the real-life meeting that would elevate him to the Catholic Church’s highest office.

We know all of this thanks to an interview with Pope Leo XIV’s brother in Chicago, Illinois, after he became the world’s first American pontiff. But we also know one more thing about the new Pope: he has been an opinionated user of social media. 

In previous ages, interpreting the political messaging of the pope was an art in itself, left to Vatican watchers with decades of experience in deciphering the subtle meanings of particular forms of words, the taking of a particular papal name, or the symbology of using or rejecting particular vestments.

With Pope Leo XIV, who before his elevation was Cardinal Robert Prevost, there is little need to resort to such measures. Through what he has shared on X, the Elon Musk-owned social network formerly known as Twitter, we have a direct idea of his views on US politics, and the policies of Donald Trump’s administration.

As a cardinal, Prevost shared articles critical of Trump’s policy of family separation and detaining children at the border during his first term. More recently, he shared an article rebuking the President over his meeting with El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, who is administrating the overseas prisons to which Trump was unlawfully deporting migrants.

The posts are perhaps most embarrassing of all to Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 and who has publicly made much of his faith. Vance’s visit to the Vatican was widely interpreted as a snub from Pope Francis, who initially passed off the substantive meeting to his deputy, before very briefly meeting Vance on Easter Sunday, just hours before his death.

Vance has publicly offered a theological, Catholic, justification for Trumpism and its “America First” policies – citing a principle of “ordo amoris”, or “order of love”, essentially claiming Christianity teaches us to put our families first, then others around us, in concentric circles eventually ending with strangers.

Pope Francis publicly rejected that understanding of Catholicism, and in his previous social media posts, Pope Leo XIV did the same. Catholic doctrine holds that the pope is infallible when it comes to matters of theology (though not on broader political issues). JD Vance, a Catholic convert, has now been publicly contradicted by not one, but two, popes. To most Catholics, this would be an absolutely unendurable humiliation.

Magaworld, though, is somewhat divided on how to handle the first American Pope. Donald Trump clearly wants to claim Leo XIV’s elevation as a win, and has hailed it as such – and it is a bold man in Trump world who snatches a victory away from him.

But though Maga is more often associated with evangelical Christianity, it is surprisingly Catholic: five of the six conservative Supreme Court justices are Catholic, as is Steve Bannon, though the thrice-divorced architect of Trump’s first victory referred to Francis as a “false pope”. Maga Catholicism is increasingly divorced from the economically Left-wing global Catholic Church – and its influencers are already trying to dismiss Leo XIV as a “woke pope” (per influencer Laura Loomer, who claims she convinced Trump to sack several senior intelligence chiefs) or even as a plot against Trump or Magaworld.

All of this creates headaches for JD Vance more than anyone else within Maga. Vance has made his faith part of his political identity as he gears up for a run at the presidency in 2028. Parts of the Maga Catholic faithful are more loyal to Trump than to the Pope, but Francis remained popular among US Catholics, even Republicans, right until his death.

Vance is left, then, required to pay great heed and great attention to the words of the first American Pope – who will surely garner more attention in the US than his predecessor, thanks to his national origin – while having good reason to be sure that he won’t like whatever Leo XIV has to say.

In Leo XIV, the Catholic Church has elevated an American citizen to the papacy, but not one that is from America’s relatively conservative Catholic Church (Prevost hasn’t worked from the US in decades). It is difficult to think of another pick that could have caused more trouble for Maga.

God famously works in mysterious ways. So, too, it seems, do the cardinals of the Catholic Church.