For the first time ever, the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church hails from the United States. Many people thought this day would never come. Since about 40 percent of cardinal electors are from Europe, the common thought has been that the pope would never come from America, the global superpower. Yet on May 8, an hour after white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel chimney, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and addressed the world as Pope Leo xiv.

He spoke in Italian and Spanish, underscoring the church’s Roman home, his deep connection to the global south and his vision of a church that reaches beyond national identities. Interestingly, he chose not to speak a single word of English, even though he is an American with a Midwest accent.

United States President Donald Trump congratulated Prevost, saying, “It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American pope.” Many U.S. citizens share Trump’s enthusiasm. But Prevost’s citizenship does not mean he will govern as a pro-American pope.

What’s in a Name?

Leo xiv immediately signaled to the world that he intends to be a more traditional pontiff than Francis by his choice of apparel. In his first appearance on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, he wore a red shoulder cover and ornately decorated stole, a contrast from Francis’s white attire in 2013. This same outfit was worn by Pope John Paul ii and by Pope Benedict xvi. Pope Francis wore only a simple white frock to project an image of down-to-earth humility, while Leo’s shoulder cover and stole evoke the more princely tradition of the papacy.

His choice of the papal name “Leo xiv” also indicates a respect for Catholic tradition. Unlike Francis, who chose a brand-new papal name, Prevost selected a name used by 13 pontiffs before him, including Leo i (a.d. 440–461), who remade Catholic government structures in the image of the Roman Empire; Leo iii (a.d. 795–816), who crowned Charlemagne emperor; and Leo xiii (1878–1903), who wrote the definitive text on Catholic social and economic policy.

In a meeting with the College of Cardinals on May 10, the newly elected pontiff explained that Leo xiii was the primary inspiration for his papacy. “There are different reasons” the name he chose, he said, “but mainly because Pope Leo xiii in his historic encyclical, Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great Industrial Revolution. In our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”

This is an important clue to the aims of the pontificate of Leo xiv.

Grieved by what he saw as the twin evils of Protestant capitalism and atheistic socialism, Pope Leo xiii penned Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor) in 1891. This exhortation advocated an economic model that gained wide acceptance as a “Third Way.” In reality, however, this model wasn’t new. It was an updated version of the medieval feudal order.

That’s right! The first American pope wants to replace free-market principles with Old World feudalism. The premise of Catholic corporatism (as described in Rerum Novarum) is that the goal of equality is actually a cruel illusion: People are happiest when placed in a hierarchy guided by the Catholic Church. Competition is spiritually demeaning; therefore, business, labor and the state must work together in “corporations” that control quotas, prices, wages, individual behavior and the entire economy. And these corporations are controlled by Roman Catholic elites.

Leo xiv feels that “developments in the field of artificial intelligence” will unleash “another industrial revolution.” Therefore, the world economy needs the Catholic Church and the pope to guide it.

Yet people should be careful what they wish for, lest they get it. Catholic corporatism was the guiding economic force in Juan Perón’s Argentina, Engelbert Dollfuss’s Austria, Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, Ante Pavelić’s Croatia, Pierre Laval’s France, Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Benito Mussolini’s Italy and many other fascist states. Leo’s crusade against the twin evils of Protestant capitalism and atheistic socialism will likely result in him supporting a rising Holy Roman Empire—against his own country!

Economic Revolution

In some ways, Pope Leo is distancing himself from Pope Francis. He wore the traditional red shoulder cover instead of the white frock. He lives in the Apostolic Palace instead of Francis’s smaller guest room. He emphasized that homosexuality and transgenderism are sins.

But on economic and immigration issues, the two men are kindred spirits.

On Dec. 8, 2020, Francis established the Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican. Many people have said this real-life organization seems like a conspiracy-theory forum. It is led by the pope and Cardinal Peter Turkson, and includes numerous leaders from Fortune 500 companies with 200 million employees in 163 countries and $2.1 trillion in market capitalization—a sum approaching that of Italy’s gross domestic product. It is led by a group of 27 leaders called the Guardians for Inclusive Capitalism. They include the chairmen and chief executives of Allianz, Bank of America, BP, Dupont, Johnson & Johnson, Mastercard, Merck and Visa.

This is the type of economic initiative that Pope Leo xiv will likely build upon.

The goal of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican is “to build a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable economic foundation for the world.” Lynn Forester de Rothschild is the founder and managing partner for this group. She married the late Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild a year after she was introduced to him at a 1998 Bilderberg Conference. She is close friends with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Though not Catholic herself, she agrees with certain principles of Catholic social doctrine and wants to establish a “third way” between capitalism and communism.

This is a highly significant trend. Bible passages such as Revelation 17 and 18 reveal that an end-time religious entity will guide an economic powerhouse that intoxicates all nations with its wealth and splendor. Already, many people are calling on the Roman Catholic Church to step in and stop private businessmen from polluting the environment and taking advantage of the poor. Yet 1,200 years of medieval history prove that Roman Catholic bishops are no less vulnerable to the corrupting temptations of power than were Vladimir Lenin’s socialist central planners.

Institutions like the Council for Inclusive Capitalism will not actually create a “fairer, more inclusive and sustainable economic foundation for the world.” They will instead create a world where “no man might buy or sell” unless they agree to keep certain Roman Catholic doctrines (Revelation 13:17). Leo xiii updated medieval feudalism for the industrial age. Now Leo xiv is setting out to do the same for the information age.

The plan is for employees to play the role of serfs, corporate elites to play the role of lords, and the Catholic Church to play the same role it played in the Middle Ages. All that is missing is an emperor to enforce the new economic system—and the Bible prophesies that such an emperor will soon appear. In the meantime, the bishop of Rome is doing his best to turn as many people as possible against the free market in general and the U.S. in particular.

Weaponizing Immigration

A few astute Vaticanologists, such as Dr. Natalia Imperatori-Lee of Manhattan University, have already noted how ironic it is for the world’s first American pope to take the name Leo. Not only did Leo xiii adamantly oppose the type of free-market economics practiced in the U.S., he also condemned the idea that church and state should remain separate as a heresy called “Americanism.” So if Leo xiv wants to use Rerum Novarum to guide the world through “another industrial revolution,” he is highly likely to start trumpeting some very un-American views.

During his time as a cardinal, Prevost took a hard line against President Trump’s immigration policies. In particular, he criticized Vice President JD Vance’s statement that “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.” Earlier this year, Prevost shared an article titled “JD Vance Is Wrong: Jesus Doesn’t Ask Us to Rank Our Love for Others” and inferred that immigration officials should show the same concern for illegal aliens that they show to their own children.

Cardinal Prevost’s concern for illegal immigrants, however, may not be completely unselfish. San Diego bishop Robert McElroy stated in 2016 that mass deportations of illegal aliens could remove 10 percent of parishioners from U.S. churches. Without illegal immigration, the Catholic Church would be a shrinking, aging organization with diminishing influence in the U.S.

If Pope Leo xiv really views Protestant capitalism and atheistic socialism as twin evils, then he must help destroy its economic system. It took Polish Pope John Paul ii to convince Poland and other East European states to break away from the Soviet economic system. Will it take an American pope to bring down the traditional American economic system? Flooding the U.S. with immigrants from nations where Catholic social doctrine is practiced is certainly one way to bring down America’s free-market system. In fact, Archbishop José Horacio Gómez of Los Angeles has laid out a plan to fundamentally transform American culture.

“Immigration is a key to our American renewal,” he wrote for Angelus News in 2011. A little later in his article, he explained his rationale: “The American story that most of us know is set in New England. It’s the story of the pilgrims and the Mayflower, the first Thanksgiving and John Winthrop’s sermon about a ‘city upon a hill.’ It’s the story of great men like Washington, Jefferson and Madison. It’s the story of great documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. … But the story of the Founding Fathers and the truths they held to be self-evident is not the whole story about America. The rest of the story starts more than a century before the pilgrims. It starts in the 1520s in Florida and in the 1540s here in California. It is the story not of colonial settlement and political and economic opportunity. It’s the story of exploration and evangelization. This story is not Anglo-Protestant but Hispanic-Catholic. It is centered, not in New England but in Nueva España—New Spain—at opposite corners of the continent” (Aug. 10, 2011).

Like Gómez, Pope Leo xiv is not from Anglo-Protestant America. He is from Hispanic-Catholic America. Crux called Pope Leo xiv “the least American of the Americans” due to the years he spent as a bishop in Peru. Like Francis before him, the new pope will undoubtedly use Hispanic immigration to move America away from the traditional free-market principles it was founded on and toward the neo-feudalism of the Holy Roman Empire.

Strategic Disguise

One intriguing possibility is that Leo xiv’s American background could act as a smokescreen for the Vatican as it increases its power. Prevost spent most of his career in Peru, which was actually part of the Holy Roman Empire during the reign of Charles v. News analysts are trying to understand the significance of the first U.S. pope on the world, but in many ways, Leo xiv is moreso the second Latin American pope.

Shortly after Francis became the first Latin American pope, the late Trumpet writer Ron Fraser wrote, “Taking the papal throne under the watchful eye of Pope Emeritus Benedict xvi, Pope Francis looks set to begin the third and final act in Rome’s effort to draw the continent of Latin America under its influence and forge an intercontinental empire—in reality the biblically prophesied seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire” (Trumpet, May-June 2013).

The election of Pope Leo xiv continues this trend. The late Herbert W. Armstrong long prophesied that the alliance between Europe and South America would grow extremely strong. He expected Europe to use Latin America to economically besiege the United States. What better way to do this than with a U.S. pope with close ties to Latin America. It would be a mistake to think that the election of the first American pope is a sign that the Vatican is pro-America. It is far more likely that the election of the first American pope signals the Vatican’s desire to attack America’s economic system from the inside.

The Holy Roman Empire is flooding America with illegal immigrants while it gears up to besiege it economically. The election of a Peruvian-American bishop promising to defend Catholic economic teachings is an escalation of this trend.

Germany and the Vatican are building a transcontinental alliance that will ultimately include 10 European kings, a loyal network of Latin American vassal states and an anti-Iran, anti-Israel alliance of Arabic regimes. With its left arm, this Vatican-dominated conglomerate will reach down southward and eastward into the Middle East to conquer the Holy City Jerusalem. With its right arm, it will reach southward and westward across the Atlantic to take control of Latin America and besiege the United States. This is Rome’s real grand strategy.

It appears unlikely that Leo xiv is the last pope. Bible prophecies about the end-time pope moving his “tabernacle” from Rome to Jerusalem suggest a pope with a stronger connection to the Middle East (Daniel 11:44). One way or another, Leo xiv may not be pope for long. Nevertheless, even with a short reign he is well positioned to help unite Europe and Latin America against the Anglo-Protestant world.

Pope Francis probably did more than any pope in history to turn global sentiment against free-market capitalism and its primary proponent, the U.S. Yet his efforts may soon be eclipsed by his successor, Pope Leo xiv of Chicago. Bible prophecy forecast thousands of years ago that the bishop of Rome would wage war against the United States.

Lady of Kingdoms

Many Catholics don’t grasp that Vatican City is more than the headquarters of a religion: It is actually a nation-state participating in political machinations involving empires. As political economist Rodney Atkinson wrote to Ron Fraser in 2013, “Imperial politics rather than the religion of the Roman Catholic Church have been its critical characteristic.”

Bible prophecy describes a great end-time church that holds significant political influence over “the kings of the earth.” This church has extraordinary power over a union of 10 nations (or groups of nations) described symbolically as a “beast” (Revelation 17). This description can only apply to one church in modern history, a church that intervenes in the affairs of nations and considers itself mother of all, a church aligned with the Holy Roman Empire.

Pope Leo xiv may be from Chicago, but he is now the absolute monarch of a European nation: Vatican City.

Mr. Armstrong explained in his booklet Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast? (free upon request) that the 10 nations in Revelation 17 are 10 European nations tenuously bonded by the ideological glue of Roman Catholicism. The religious entity referred to in Revelation 17 is headquartered in the seven-hilled city of Rome.

Many prophecies reveal what this church will do in the time ahead. Revelation 18:3 says, “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” Notice, these merchants do business in all nations. This means that beyond exercising extraordinary power over a group of European nations, the economic influence of this great false church encircles the globe, from Asia to the Americas.

In Isaiah 47, God calls this church the “daughter of the Chaldeans” and the “lady of kingdoms.”

“Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms. I was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke” (verses 5-6).

God says He will deliver “my people”—the modern-day nations descended from ancient Israel, including the United States and Britain—over to this “lady of kingdoms” because of their many sins.

Pope Leo is not actually a pro-American pontiff. He is working to force America into the economic system of the Holy Roman Empire.

Bible prophecy forecast thousands of years ago that the pope would wage war against America, and the current pope’s crusade against free-market capitalism is rallying many nations against the U.S.

Yet Scripture also reveals that because this “daughter of Babylon” shows no mercy to the people under her control, God will personally take vengeance on her, laying her in the dust (verses 9-15).

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He asks, “[W]hy will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). Great calamities like natural disasters, disease pandemics and economic besiegement by foreign powers are a wake-up call from God, alerting people to the desperate need to repent of their many sins.