Trump Plugs a Dark-Horse American Candidate for Pope

President Donald Trump has some thoughts on who should be the next Pope—that is, if it can’t be himself.

“I’d like to be Pope. That would be my number one choice,” he joked to reporters on Tuesday, a prospect that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Sc) posted (hopefully facetiously) would have “many upsides.” It would certainly be a dramatic shift from the world’s first Latin American and first Jesuit Pope, who often sparred with Trump on issues of immigration, climate change and religion, to the first American, billionaire, and, critically, non-Catholic to serve as Pope—and concurrently with being President at that.

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But Trump did plug another dark-horse candidate who would also make history as the first American Pope. While he said he has no preference for who should replace the late Francis, he added, “I must say we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who’s very good, so we’ll see what happens.”

That cardinal is Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York. The 75-year-old is not on most lists of papabili—most likely to be elected Pope at the conclave that begins next week—although, as history has shown, the next Pope isn’t always who the media and the public expects. 

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Ordained as a priest in 1976, Dolan was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Louis by Pope John Paul II, then as Archbishop of Milwaukee in 2002. In Milwaukee, he took on the role of rebuilding trust after a decades-long sexual abuse scandal wracked the church. He removed several accused priests and informed the Vatican of cases of abuse in 2003 to which the Vatican was slow to respond. But he was also found through bankruptcy filings in 2012 to have overseen payments of up to $20,000 to accused priests to incentivize them to agree to being laicized (the process of having their priestly status and powers removed), relocated some accused priests rather than removing them, and requested to transfer millions of dollars into a cemetery trust to shield church funds from lawsuits brought by victims.

He nevertheless rose the ecclesiastical ranks to become Archbishop of New York in 2009, overseeing roughly 2.5 million Catholics—the second-largest diocese in the U.S.—and was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.

Still, experts say it’s unlikely that Trump’s backing will carry much weight.

“The short answer is that it doesn’t seem very likely that Timothy Dolan will be elected pope,” Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church at Oxford University, tells TIME. “It’s very doubtful that any cardinals will view President Trump’s endorsement favourably.”

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Dolan has come to be known as a “favorite cardinal” of Trump, delivering the traditional prayer at both the President’s first-term and second-term inaugurations. Dolan was part of an April 2020 conference call with Trump and other Catholic leaders, in which Trump called Dolan a “great gentleman” and “a great friend of mine,” to which Dolan responded that it was “mutual.” That year, Dolan said of Trump, “I really salute his leadership” during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that Trump is “particularly sensitive to the, what shall I say, to the feelings of the religious community.”

These comments drew criticism from other faith leaders. John Gehring, Catholic program director for Faith in Public Life, said: “There is a difference between dialogue and a kind of deferential coziness with a president who, frankly, has used cruelty as a political weapon and who abuses power. That’s what the concern was here. It was not that there was an engagement with this president.” More than 1,500 faith leaders signed onto an open letter to Dolan, calling on him to “Please speak truth to power and refrain from giving even the appearance that bishops have their hands on the scales in this [2020] election.”

Earlier this year, Dolan said that Trump “takes his Christian faith seriously.” He’s also criticized the Democratic Party’s support for abortion rights.

“I’m a pastor, not a politician, and I’ve certainly had spats and disappointments with politicians from both of America’s leading parties,” Dolan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed slamming Democrats in 2018. “But it saddens me, and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish, when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.”

Still, Dolan has at times also criticized the anti-immigration rhetoric from both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, claimed in January that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to the White House’s mass deportation policy was motivated by financial interests as USCCB receives public funding through federal partnerships to provide services to asylum seekers—funding that was cut by the Trump Administration. Dolan called Vance’s comments “vulgar” and “very mean.”

While generally considered orthodox, some of Dolan’s more controversial actions have departed from traditional conservatism. He said in 2018 that he “didn’t see anything really sacrilegious” about that year’s Met Gala theme, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,’ and joked that he lent Rihanna a bejeweled mitre for her outfit. He also congratulated football player Michael Sam for coming out as gay in 2014, saying “Bravo,” “God bless ya,” and “good for him,” adding that the Bible teaches us “not to judge people.”

Last year, however, following the funeral service for trans activist Cecilia Gentili at his cathedral, St. Patrick’s in Midtown Manhattan, Dolan said the priests “knew nothing” about Gentili’s background, and praised officiants for cutting it short.

Some have insinuated that the next Pope is likely to be someone who shared Francis’ progressive values, because of the large number of cardinals that he appointed during his papacy—around 80% of the voting cardinals. Pattenden previously told TIME that that’s a misreading of Vatican politics: “It’s very simplistic to say cardinals just vote along ideological lines as though they’re part of political parties.”

What does make this conclave different from previous ones, though, is that it will be the most geographically diverse in the church’s history—something Francis made a point of when appointing cardinals. That is likely to diminish the chances of an American Pope, particularly as there’s already reportedly concern that doing so would upset the global balance of power.

“The general opinion within the upper ranks of the Catholic Church over the past 50 years has also been that America is powerful enough anyway without the Americans also winning the papacy,” Pattenden says.

But, Pattenden adds, “there might be some advantages to an American pope which the cardinals may consider.” Specifically, that an American Pope can communicate well in English, “the global language,” which Francis could not.

Ultimately, experts say cardinals aren’t typically overly influenced by public sentiment, whether that’s from Trump or social media posts of people’s favorite picks.

“The College of Cardinals will not pay much attention—if any—to what he or any other head of state suggests,” says Carlos Eire, a professor of history and religious studies at Yale University, of Trump’s promotion of Dolan. “The church is their main concern, and they tend to view the election from that perspective. World politics might concern them to some extent, but not the opinions of lay people, much less the opinions of lay people who aren’t Catholic.”