Vatican Celebration Photos Spotlight Pope Leo's Challenge to Trump's America

A man waves a US flag on St Peter’s Square as the new pope is introduced at the Vatican, on May 8, 2025. Robert Francis Prevost was elected the first American pope, taking the name Leo XIV. (Photo by Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)

As American flags wave in St. Peter’s Square, a humble pontiff elevates a competing vision of patriotism and national identity.

By Michael Shaw

There’s something startlingly refreshing about seeing the American flag waved with unabashed enthusiasm in the images from St. Peter’s Square last week.

For years now, the stars and stripes have been so thoroughly co-opted by Trumpism—plastered on pickup trucks, wrapped around insurrectionists’ shoulders, emblazoned on red caps—that many Americans have developed an almost Pavlovian wince at its appearance. Once a shared national symbol, the flag has become visual shorthand for a brand of combative nationalism that claims exclusive ownership of patriotism.

Yet here, in the shadow of Bernini’s colonnades, we witness something unexpected: the American flag liberated from its recent captivity. As Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost ascends as Pope Leo XIV—the first American pontiff in history—these images present the flag in a context divorced from MAGA’s perpetual grievance machine.

Instead, it appears as a symbol of shared pride and historical achievement precisely when Trump’s momentum seems unstoppable and his claim on America’s moral compass is hard to shake loose. That this organic patriotism erupts on European soil—territory Trump has treated with contempt through tariff wars, gutted foreign aid programs, and NATO disparagement—makes the visual juxtaposition all the more jarring. The flag stands not as an emblem of nationalist aggression, but as a marker of collective accomplishment.

The second image—with nuns observing a faithful clutching the American flag—tells a more nuanced story of this reclamation.

The composure of the religious observers creates a compelling visual tension against the patriotic display. These women, representatives of a global church now led by an American, regard the flag with expressions that suggest neither endorsement nor rejection, but something more complex: acknowledgment of a shifting reality. Their presence reframes the American flag not as a partisan battle standard, but as an object worthy of contemplation within a tradition that transcends borders and spans millennia.

The third image takes it further by placing the flag directly in clerical hands. A priest, whose role typically transcends politics, gently cradles the object with evident pride. This visual merger of religious and national identities doesn’t just challenge Trump’s monopoly on patriotic symbolism—it explicitly connects American identity to values that starkly contrast with MAGA’s anger-fueled nationalism: humility, service to the marginalized, and moral leadership.

The newspaper front pages complete this counternarrative with striking efficiency.

These tabloid treatments—from the Chicago Sun’s loving colloquialism to the U.S.-centric headlines of the Irish Daily Mirror and The Sun of London—transform a Vatican ceremony into a pop-cultural moment where people embrace American symbolism without the defensive cringe that’s become reflexive in the Trump era.

Through these varied visual lenses, we witness the flag liberated from partisan capture, allowed to represent something beyond the narrow confines of a MAGA movement that has claimed exclusive ownership of patriotism itself.

However, perhaps the most telling indicator of this symbolic shift appears on the merchandise front—a domain Trump has thoroughly dominated as America’s carnival barker-in-chief.

The instant appearance of Pope Leo swag demonstrates an alternative vision of American identity. Where Trump’s merch empire has weaponized patriotism through dominance and strength, these papal-themed items align American symbolism with faith, hope, and unity.

Most striking are those examples directly co-opting Trump memes—visual evidence of a tug-of-war over not just religious values, but our country’s political iconography.

As Pope Leo XIV begins his papacy, these early images accomplish something more consequential than just documenting a Catholic milestone. They capture the American flag, reclaiming its fuller meaning on the world stage. Whether this Vatican moment represents a fleeting reminder of America’s wider possibilities or the beginning of a more significant reclamation remains to be seen. But in this singular moment, as stars and stripes anchor the Vatican celebration, we recognize the essence of the American project — a vision larger, more diverse, and more resilient than one man’s attempt to claim it as personal property.

Vatican Celebration Photos Spotlight Pope Leo’s Challenge to Trump’s America

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