The Vatican and the U.S. Catholic Church have had a special relationship since the beginning of the political and religious experiment called “American Catholicism.” But that relationship has become more complicated—and fraught—over the course of Francis’s papacy.
This was demonstrated most recently in late August when remarks the pope made in Portugal during the World Youth Day gathering were published by the Jesuit-run and Vatican-vetted Civiltà Cattolica.
“You have seen that in the United States the situation is not easy,” he told a Jesuit who’d spent a sabbatical year in the U.S. “There is a very strong reactionary attitude. It is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally. I would like to remind those people that indietrismo [being backward-looking] is useless and we need to understand that there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals.”
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