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National Post

The pontiff's passport: Can the U.S. strip Pope Leo XIV of his citizenship?

Article content 'The State Department never assumes that you intend to lose your citizenship unless you specifically say so through the renunciation process,' Spiro said. Article content He said it would be hard to argue that Leo, by becoming pope, demonstrated an intent to give up being a U.S. citizen. Article content 'I think it's highly unlikely that the U.S. moves to terminate the pope's citizenship,' Spiro said. Article content Peruvian law has no conflict with Pope Leo remaining a citizen, said Jorge Puch, deputy director of registry archives at Peru's National Registry of Identification and Civil Status. Article content Leo was granted Peruvian citizenship in August 2015, the month before Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Chiclayo in the South American country's northern region. To qualify, he had to live in Peru for at least two years and pass a civics test. Article content Article content 'It is the most praiseworthy thing our beloved supreme pontiff could have done: Wanting to have Peruvian nationality without having been Peruvian by birth,' Puch said. Article content Article content All adult Peruvians, including naturalized citizens, are required to vote in elections through age 69. Voting in Peru's presidential election next April won't be mandatory for Leo. He turns 70 in September. Article content It's not clear what happened to the citizenship status of Leo's predecessors once they became pope. That's not information the Vatican discloses. Article content Pope Francis renewed his passport in his home country of Argentina in 2014, the year after he became pope. German-born Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II, a native of Poland, never publicly relinquished citizenship in their home countries. Article content Article content Margaret Susan Thompson, a Syracuse University history professor and expert on American Catholicism, said she doubts Leo would renounce his U.S. citizenship. But she believes the new pope was sending a message when he delivered his first speech in Italian and Spanish without using English. Article content 'I think he wants to stress that he is the pope of the universal Catholic Church,' Thompson said, 'and not an American holding that position.' Article content Yes. Here are a few notable examples. Article content Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was born in New York to British parents in 1964. He left the U.S. as a young boy and renounced his American citizenship in 2016 while serving as the U.K.'s foreign secretary. Johnson became prime minister three years later. Article content Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed was an American citizen when he was elected president of Somalia in 2017. Born in Somalia, he moved to the U.S. in 1985 and became a citizen in the 1990s. Mohamed gave up his U.S. citizenship two years into his presidency. Article content Valdas Adamkus became a U.S. citizen after his family fled Lithuania to escape Soviet occupation. He returned to win Lithuania's presidency in 1998, years after the Soviet Union collapsed. He relinquished his American citizenship after being elected. Article content