The choice of Pope Leo XIV as the first US -born leader of the Catholic Church raised him to the extremely rare and legitimate thorny, the position of an American citizen, who is now a foreign head of state.
Born in Chicago as Robert Pressee in 1955, the new pope of the past decade conducted dual citizenship in the United States and Peru, where he spent time as a missionary and bishop.
As a pope, Leo serves as a leader of both the Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and the Vatican City, an independent state.
Can the Pope remain a US citizen while leading a foreign government? Here are things you need to know about Leo’s citizenship.
Is the Vatican considered a sovereign nation?
In addition to being a spiritual leader for what the church says, it is approximately 1.4 billion Catholics around the world, Leo is also the leader of what is recognized as the smallest nation in the world.
Vatican City covers only 0.17 square miles (0.44 square kilometers) and has a population of several hundred people. It became an independent state in 1929 under a contract between Italy and the Holy See.
Can Leo be deprived of his US citizenship?
Americans working for foreign governments are not at risk of losing their citizenship in the United States.
But the US Department of State tells its website that it can “actively review the citizenship status of Americans who” serve as a foreign head of state, foreign government leader or foreign minister. “
“Such cases raise complex issues of international law, including issues related to the level of immunity from the US jurisdiction that it serves, which serves, can be secured,” said politics.
The State Department declined to comment on the status of the Pope. A spokesman said the department did not discuss the citizenship of people.
The main question is whether foreign leaders should possess US citizenship when they also enjoy wide immunity from US laws, said Peter Spiro, Professor of Law of the University of Temple and an expert in citizenship. Such immunity is confronted with the constitutional principle that no US citizen should be above law.
The US Supreme Court, however, in a 1980 decision, ruled that Americans could not be deprived of their citizenship unless they were deliberately refused.
“The State Department never accepts that you intend to lose your citizenship unless you say it specifically through the refusal process,” Spiro said.
He said it would be difficult to argue that Leo, by becoming a pope, demonstrated his intention to give up being a US citizen.
“I think it is very unlikely that the US will move to cross the Pope’s citizenship,” Spiro said.
Can the Pope remain a Peru citizen?
The Peruvian law has no conflict with Pope Leo, who remains a citizen, said Jorge Puch, deputy director of the register of register in the National Register of Identification and Civil Status of Peru.
Leo received Peruvian citizenship in August 2015, a month before Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Chicai in the northern region of the South American country. In order to qualify, he had to live in Peru for at least two years and pass a civil test.
“This is the most captured thing that our beloved supreme Pontiff could do: to want to have Peruan nationality without being Peruvian by birth,” Puch said.
All adult Peruvians, including naturalized citizens, are obliged to vote in elections up to 69 years of age. Voting in the Puru presidential election next April will not be obligatory for Leo. He turns 70 in September.
Have they preserved previous Papi citizenship in their home countries?
It is unclear what happened to the status of citizenship of Leo’s predecessors after becoming a pope. This is not the information that the Vatican reveals.
Pope Francis renewed his passport in his home country Argentina in 2014, the year after becoming Pope. German -born Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II, a native of Poland, never gives up publicly in citizenship in his home countries.
John Paul was the first Netalian Pope in 455 years.
Margaret Susan Thompson, a professor of history of the University of Syracuse and an expert in American Catholicism, said he doubted Leo to abandon his American citizenship. But she believes that the new pope sends a message when he delivered his first speech to Italian and Spanish without using English.
“I think he wants to emphasize that he is the Pope of the Universal Catholic Church,” said Thompson, “Not American who holds that position.”
Have other US citizens served as leaders of a foreign government?
Yes. Here are some remarkable examples.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was born in New York in 1964. He left the United States as a young boy and abandoned his US citizenship in 2016 while he was the UK Foreign Privacy. Johnson became Prime Minister three years later.
Mohammed Abdullahi Mohammed is an American citizen, when he was elected president of Somalia in 2017. Born in Somalia, he moved to the United States in 1985 and became a citizen in the 1990s. Mohammed gave up his citizenship in the United States for two years in his presidency.
Valdas Adamkus became a US citizen after his family escaped from Lithuania to escape from Soviet occupation. He returned to win the Presidency of Lithuania in 1998, years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He gave up his US citizenship after being elected.
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AP reporter Regina Garcia Kano in Mexico City has contributed to this story. Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.
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