I can imagine that being a bureaucratic nightmare.

“It says here your name is Leo, but there’s no surname…?”

The pope is not unique in taking up a new name when taking office. Monks and nuns also get a new name when joining a monastic order and it’s not a unique Christian tradition either. Buddhist monks also take up new names. In both cases they don’t usually change their legal name so in official documents they will still show up as their original pre-monastic names. I assume this is the case for the Pope too, he is called Leo but I bet on his documents he is still Robert Francis Prevost.

Practically, sure.

But I imagine it’s a “do not concern yourself with earthly affairs” thing, which is why it’s noteworthy he’s still voting at all.

This is pretty huge, even tho he’s not saying it’s against trump, he’s been (relatively speaking) very vocal about American politics.

He should have basically became a new person when acsending to the papacy.

All property, inheritance, family name, prior loyalties, citizenships, everything wiped away. Focus only on leading the church and nothing else.

Changing legal names for a country you don’t live in and should no longer put above any others is kind of a moot point. But again, why it’s such a big deal he’s publicly voting.

JFK almost didn’t get elected because people on both sides of the aisle were afraid of this.

20% of America is Catholic, and at least half of them will just blindly do what the pope rolls down thru the church. The other half might need some convincing or at least handwaving, but theyve been primed to follow orders their whole lives.

In two years if the Pope says “Vote D”, that’s 67 million Catholics who are both likely to listen, and likely to not be voting D in the first place.

I don’t think it’ll come to that, but the way things are going it’s possible .