With the surprise election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as the first-ever American pope, the United States is witnessing what was long considered a historical impossibility. The ascension of an American bishop—so trusted by his predecessor, Pope Francis, as to leap over a host of more likely candidates—has stirred global fascination and sent viewership soaring for “Conclave,” this year’s Oscar-winner for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film dramatizes the Vatican’s secretive selection process and the centuries-old customs surrounding it.
Yet the wild card idea of an American ascending to lead 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide was, until recently, uncharted ground. Except that is in the forgotten masterpiece of Woodstock author Henry Morton Robinson, whose 1950 novel “The Cardinal”— which sold more than two million copies—uncannily forecast the spiritual arc finally attained by Prevost when he became Pope Leo XIV on May 8.
Robinson’s fictional hero, Stephen Fermoyle, never becomes pope. Rather, after receiving his ecclesiastical education in Rome, the gifted and compassionate American priest—much like Prevost—becomes indispensable to a long-reigning pontiff. Father Fermoyle best serves His Holiness by representing the Vatican in the United States, where he is elevated to bishop. Mysteriously summoned back to Rome, Bishop Fermoyle is astounded (and astounds his Vatican rivals) when an ailing, if ever-astute, pontiff appoints him cardinal. A distinction no American clergyman had yet achieved awaits him: the opportunity, against all odds and with a broken heart, to take part in the naming of a new pope.
Robinson, known colloquially as “Rondo,” spent years living in exalted poverty in the 1920s at The Maverick, an anarchistic arts colony established by the charismatic Hervey White in 1905. A tacitly LGBT+ writer and impresario in the mold of Walt Whitman, White’s bohemian enclave outwardly embraced radical modernism, while more secretly espousing a personal Christianity among a chosen few, all but unknown to previous history.
Through those years, Rondo was a struggling writer, largely a poet—until, legend holds, a representative from Reader’s Digest knocked on his cabin door one Christmas morning offering employment as a contributing editor with an annual salary of $30,000. For Rondo, entering this archly conservative world meant moving his family just outside The Maverick and commuting home weekends from the WASP stronghold of Reader’s Digest’s Manhattan office. Through it all, he maintained a unique relationship with the uncrowned king of Bohemia, Hervey White, who elsewhere shared confidences with Woodstock’s by now legendary, beloved, (and fully-closeted) priest, Father Francis.
An archbishop in a fringe sect of the Church of England, Father Francis—later immortalized in Bob Dylan’s “Father of Night”—shared with White a profound spiritual and personal intimacy. In an era when “different” sons of devout families often became priests, it’s hard not to wonder whether their conversations circled the unspoken tensions of homosexuality in the clergy.
Such themes remain absent from” The Cardinal,” and though Pope Francis clearly grappled with LGBTQ+ issues—particularly in his opening years as pope—tremendous backlash from within the Church caused him to back away from dramatic policy shifts. As for his protégé and successor, Pope Leo XIV: Catholic progressives have reasons to both despair and take comfort in the ambiguously positioned new pope. An adroit student of history might dismiss the possibility of such discussions surfacing at all within high-ranking Catholic circles.
Yet as cruel oligarchies leap upon the world stage, and a counterbalancing liberal pope becomes the hope of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, a familiar contradiction takes shape. Our new “Pope of the Americas” most certainly seems to personify a profound force of uplifting good while heading an institution steeped in a history of oppression.
Foremost in this list is the Vatican’s ongoing failure to fully reckon with the sexual abuse crisis. As Pope Leo steps into power, he does so as both a symbol of hope and, unless he changes course, steward of an institution still shielding its predators. A reckoning with identity—sexual, spiritual, and institutional—within the priesthood looms ever larger.
In 1950, the notion of an American bishop wielding power in Rome—let alone becoming pope—seemed the stuff of fiction. And it was: a fiction born on Maverick Road by an all but unknown writer from an Irish Catholic family, the eldest of eleven siblings, who interviewed dozens of priests, both famous and unknown.
Long before the world believed it possible, Henry Morton Robinson opened a door upon the unimaginable. And now, improbably, an American has crossed that threshold. Leading us to wonder: What other impossibilities made possible within the Catholic Church might lie in wait?
Tad Wise is a contributing reporter. Send correspondence to reporting@theoverlooknews.com.