It has long been an unwritten rule of the Catholic Church that no citizen of a world superpower can be pope. The informal logic is that such an arrangement would risk putting preeminent temporal and spiritual authority into the hands of the same clan.

Pope Leo XIV relaunched the official papal X account and quickly embarked on an impassioned tweet spree that saw him rail against war and plead for world peace. The American pope posted for the first time from his office’s X account,