Americans greeted Pope St. John Paul II with open arms during his seven visits to the United States. Pundits often said he received a rockstar welcome, but perhaps only the Beatles in 1964 were met with greater adulation than the Polish pontiff. 

Pope Francis received a more tepid response during his lone visit to America in 2015, perhaps because we had grown accustomed to papal visits. But perhaps it was the Argentine pope’s subtle, and sometimes overt, disdain for the U.S., its wealth, influence, and ever-increasing embrace of traditional Catholicism.

Or it could be that Francis viewed himself not only as a priest, pastor, and pope but also as a politician.

Here are just a few examples.

In 2016, Francis challenged President Donald Trump’s policy of securing the U.S.-Mexico border by celebrating Mass, which drew 200,000 people, in the border city of Ciudad Juárez. 

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” he said aboard the papal plane hours later when a reporter asked about Trump’s policies. 

The pope heightened that rhetoric a few months ago in a letter to American bishops, criticizing Trump’s treatment of migrants and claiming that deportations violate the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families.”

The pope’s letter essentially told people that they are obligated to allow migrants to cross their borders with impunity as long as they weren’t violent criminals. These politically minded statements from the pope did not do much to endear him to many devout Catholics in the U.S.

By contrast, John Paul II used his visits to the U.S. not to scold or lecture people but to challenge them to live up to our founders’ high........

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