Chris Cuomo Interprets New Pope’s ‘Leo’ Moniker Choice as a Significant Sign: ‘Very Good News’ | Video

Chris Cuomo, NewsNation anchor and lifelong Catholic, says Pope Leo XIV’s first decision as pontiff – choosing his namesake – has a deeply significant meaning that should be “very good news” for working class Americans.

Born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, Pope Leo XIV was elected on Thursday, the second day of the conclave, on the fourth ballot.

“We have a pope, and I have a very interesting detail about Leo the 14th,” the former CNN host teased on his namesake NewsNation show. “It happens to be true – as opposed to all the projections that are being put onto this man. And I have heard no one discuss it yet. Shocked me until I realized, yeah, of course not, because our obsession is division.”

Cuomo noted one such nitpick from the right – that Prevost showed compassion for migrants in old Tweets – was hardly some kind of gotcha: “What do you expect a Catholic priest to say, let alone a Pope? And it doesn’t matter what he trafficked in on Twitter before because like his predecessors, we can expect that the institution of the church will wind up influencing the pope more than the other way around.”

Cuomo went deep on a history lesson before he finally got into his revelation about Pope Leo’s moniker choice, calling it “very good news … even if you are a-religious. What should matter to all Americans in particular is that there is something about the Pope that matters very much to what’s happening in America right now. I would say the timing is almost divine.”

The last Pope Leo – Leo XIII, whose long papacy spanned from the late 1800s into the early 20th Century – wrote extensively on the relationship between workers and employers. Or as we call it today, income inequality.

“Really surprised that I haven’t heard anything about this,” Cuomo continued. “He picked the namesake that suggests real implications about what he will think about what’s happening in this country in this moment. … More specifically, the rights and duties of capital and labor is what he laid out. And the church teaching was on the importance of balancing economic interest of the moneyed few with the dignity of the majority working class.”

Cuomo said no matter what you think of Donald Trump’s trade policies, their aim of getting better outcomes for more Americans is aligned with the writings of Pope Leo XIII – and the new Pope Leo would seem to agree.

“If the corporate class is taking a beating in the markets, [Trump] doesn’t care if it means better outcomes and deals for workers in the majority,” Cuomo concluded. “So if you can criticize Trump’s apparent lack of strategy and blunt-force tactics with the tariffs, but — and we are yet to see whether they are helpful or hurtful — if you get a better deal because of them or despite them, whatever. The balance of economic benefits and burdens, and who gets access to the American consumer market on what terms, is huge. And it’s exactly what Leo XIII was talking about.”

Watch the entire monologue in the video above.

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