Last Wednesday evening, with an Italian cellist playing in the background, a well-dressed group of about 120 wealthy American Catholic philanthropists and business leaders attended a drinks reception in the Ritz Ballroom of the St Regis Hotel in Rome.
The event, hosted by an influential US-based Catholic organisation, the Papal Foundation, began with a speech by its chairman, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a charismatic conservative-leaning prelate from New York. Dolan, 75, joked that the ballroom, with its chandeliers, columns and ceiling frescoes, was pleasant enough “but not as nice as the Sistine Chapel”, where he will be sequestered from Wednesday with 132 other cardinals for the conclave to select the next pope.
The previous day, President Trump had appeared to nominate Dolan as his preferred candidate. Joking with reporters outside the White House, Trump had initially suggested himself for the job of pontiff, before saying: “We have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who’s very good, so we’ll see what happens.”
Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as the Pope on Truth Social
In reality, the chances of an American cardinal who has received Trump’s blessing being chosen as pope are close to zero, not least because Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday, stacked the College of Cardinals with liberal prelates. America is also a religious battleground whose 277 Catholic bishops are more conservative than its ten cardinal electors.
Nevertheless, conservative American Catholics are still trying to play an influential role in shaping the future of the church at a time when it is bitterly divided and facing deep financial woes.
The real papal lobbying does not take place during the conclave, but in the run-up, during the nine days of mourning known as Novemdiales. This solemn period is marked by a series of ancient rituals, prayers and formal “general congregations” that all cardinals attend. It is also when gossip and discussions play out at restaurants and clubs and the tone for conclave is set.
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The current Novemdiales has coincided with an annual American-led fundraising week for the Catholic church known as “America Week” — also known in the Eternal City as “Money Week” according to one Vatican watcher. Every year, after Easter, American VIPs from the Papal Foundation and other groups make a “Rome pilgrimage” to deliver their annual financial pledge to the Vatican. The foundation joining fee, to become a “Steward of St Peter”, is $1 million. Last year they gave away $14.7 million in grants, scholarships, and humanitarian aid.
Since 1988, the organisation has given more than $250 million to causes identified by the Vatican. But that is nothing compared with their plans for the coming years.
The audience at the St Regis Hotel was told that the foundation has plans to increase grants to $30 million annually and to raise up to another $750 million from American philanthropists in the future. “This room could raise a billion to help the church,” one VIP guest told me. “So long as we have the right pope.”
At Peru cafe opposite the Venerable English College, a seminary founded in 1579 for the training of Elizabethan priests in England and Wales, I meet Father Gerry Murray, a leading American Conservative priest pundit, who is wearing a Panama hat to shelter him from the Roman sun.
Father Gerry Murray
JOE MCCLANE
“This week is very important because most of the Cardinals haven’t met each other,” he says, pointing out that there were only two meetings of the College of Cardinals during Francis’s papacy. “So it’s a chance to meet and then a chance to realistically arrive at who would be a good candidate, and who would be someone that could appeal to people that don’t know him.”
I hear that cardinals have been spotted at Camponeschi, a smart restaurant on Piazza Farnese, across the River Tiber from the Vatican, which serves €32 pasta dishes such as linguine with mullet roe and julienned courgettes.
“The cardinals are out and about,” says Thomas Williams, a former priest turned Vatican analyst for American TV networks, over pizza and wine at Bar Penitenzieri, a famed priestly watering hole in a side street off St Peter’s. “They are eating out in Vatican restaurants. So those who really have vested interests and really care can make their voices heard right now. This is honestly more important than the conclave itself. In the last conclave in 2013, according to everybody I’ve talked to, they basically made up their minds before they went in. And I think that it’s going to be like that this time. I think they will have narrowed things down”.
Only cardinals who were under the age of 80 when Francis died are eligible to vote and of these, 108 — 80 per cent — were appointed by Francis himself. But the Novemdiales gatherings give older cardinals a chance to weigh in.
“This conclave has a disproportionate number of older cardinals who are not going to participate, who want their voices heard in these general congregations,” Williams says. “Everyone’s allowed to speak and most of them are more conservative — these are mostly not Francis appointees in the large. They also are very concerned about the future of the church.”
Younger cardinals come looking for guidance from more elderly statesmen. In the conservative camp this will mean listening to old hands such as Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 93-year-old former Bishop of Hong Kong, the Italian cardinal Camillo Ruini, 94, the US cardinal Raymond Burke, 76, and the German cardinal Gerhard Mueller, 77.
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Burke and Mueller are good friends with the German artist, socialite and former punk, Princess Gloria Thurn und Taxis, whose palazzo near the Spanish Steps has been operating as a spiritual and social embassy for more Conservative-leaning prelates.
Mueller has said that if a non-orthodox pope is elected, the Catholic church may “schism”, adding last week that the Church needed to stand up to the “gay lobby” as well as make a stand “on doctrine”. He is an active supporter of the traditional Latin Mass, something that Francis wanted to end (it was given a stay of execution). The next pope’s views of the ancient mass will be an important litmus test of the direction of the papacy.
I heard there has been a “constant stream of visitors” in recent days to Mueller’s top-floor Vatican apartment near St Peter’s. Meanwhile, George Weigel, the conservative American Vatican expert and biographer of John Paul II, has set up a salon of his own in the house of some religious sisters near the Vatican.
Dolan, like a senior Roman senator, has been playing a critical role in bringing the younger “rookie” cardinals — especially from non-European countries — under his wing, as the conservative Cardinal Pell used to.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, 75
ZUMAPRESS.COM/THE MEGA AGENCY
Cardinal Joseph Zen, 93
KIN CHEUNG/AP
In his speech on Wednesday, he likened the patronage of the Papal Foundation to that which members of the “early church” had given to support St Peter, adding that the church had been going through some challenging and “rocky times” lately.
The Vatican’s perilous finances are the “elephant in the room of this conclave”, Williams tells me. The church is facing an existential financial crisis, thanks to a serious pension fund deficit that Francis flagged as a serious concern not long before his death.
Indeed, Vatican finances became a focus of the seventh general congregation meeting last Wednesday, according to a Holy See press release. The Vatican had an annual operating deficit of more than $90 million in 2023.
Cardinals attend the Pope’s funeral and, below, a Mass for Vatican workers
DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
ALKIS KONSTANTINIDIS/REUTERS
The situation has not been helped by a series of financial scandals, such as Cardinal Becciu — who has withdrawn from voting in the conclave — overspending on a Knightsbridge property development that lost the Vatican about £100 million, and news of Vatican investments in unlikely film projects such as the Elton John biopic Rocketman.
Nobody in Rome is suggesting that wealthy American Catholic leaders are trying to buy a seat at the conclave. Yet the presence of so many wealthy Americans in town — attending a merry-go round of fundraising dinners and receptions — must have also worked as a reminder that the Vatican may need American philanthropy. With that comes the possibility of some “soft” influence on the future of the church.
Among the glitzy events was a reception at the Kolbe Hotel on Monday hosted by the New York-based Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) with a dinner organised by the formidably well-connected Amanda Bowman, former chairwoman of the Catholic Herald Institute. She has lived in New York for many decades after coming to the US in the 1970s to help set up The Economist’s New York office after leaving Cambridge University.
Amanda Bowman, former chairwoman of the Catholic Herald Institute
PRESLEY ANN/PATRICK MCMULLAN/GETTY IMAGES
Bowman has been an important part of the New York-Vatican Catholic philanthropy axis for years and is co-chairwoman of CNEWA’s Gala of Hope annual charity gala dinner in New York that two years ago raised $550,000 in a night. Last year, the gala dinner honoured 78-year-old Gayle Benson, the Catholic owner of the New Orleans Saints NFL team and the city’s New Orleans Pelicans basketball team. Benson, who is worth more than $7 billion, has no children and has said all her money will go to charity, of which Catholic causes are her priority.
Benson was in Rome last year, flying over in her jet to attend the Rector’s Dinner of the North American Pontifical College — the highlight of America Week, which raises funds (with seminarians serving at the wealthy donor tables) to train America’s top Catholic priests. At the reception before dinner you can sip Campari or bourbon, and talk to about half of the Vatican Curia who are dressed up in scarlet, all with huge rings given to them by the pope.
Last year’s guests included the Chicago-based financier Jim Perry, a longstanding Papal Foundation member and one of America’s leading philanthropists, who along with his wife, were patrons of a “Cardinal’s Table” which meant they sat with the highest level prelates in the Vatican.
This year he was raising funds for a $20 million restoration of the early-Christian Basilica di San Clemente near the Colosseum. He hosted a dinner there on Tuesday night — by some miracle the filet de boeuf in herb crust was perfectly cooked despite there being no kitchen in the early Christian church — to make a push for the final $12.5 million needed, having already raised $7.5 million.
The Basilica di San Clemente
ALAMY
I heard from a highly placed source that the Vatican had begun to set up a new benefactor fund in America — separate from the Papal Foundation — specially to help pay its bills. “Curia” cardinals, those who have positions of power within what is in effect the Vatican state civil service, will be aware of this, although many will resent any American role.
Most Italian Curia cardinals have little regard for Trump and his circle of Catholic friends — notably Brian Burch, Trump’s nominee to be the next ambassador to the Holy See, whose CatholicVote organisation helped return the president to the White House, partly from collecting geodata from churchgoers’ phones. Burch’s political strategist, Steve Cortes, a former senior Trump adviser, told me in Rome: “Both America and the Church have profound missions in the world. The US is the most powerful political entity on earth, and the Catholic Church is the most significant spiritual institution. As such, there is cause for real optimism about a closer alliance with the transition to a new pope as Trump begins his new term in office.”
Brian Burch, Trump’s nominee to be the next ambassador to the Holy See
AP/JACQUELYN MARTIN
Yet the American church is bitterly divided over doctrine and politics.
Many liberal Catholics voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 but 59 per cent of America’s 60 million Catholics backed Trump, including, critically, a large number of traditionally minded Hispanics who supported him for the first time in 2024.
Some conservative Americans, such as the lawyer, winemaker and Catholic influencer Tim Busch, founder of the influential Napa Institute, are now trying to heal these rifts while also expanding their own “thought leadership” operations internationally.
Busch and his wife Steph have hosted a series of private “conciliatory” dinners in their New York apartment — complete with private chapel where Mass is celebrated before dinner — bringing together influential Catholics from both sides of the US divide to broker peace over wine from Busch’s Trinitas Cellars estate in Napa Valley. The food is “Mediterranean-inspired”, with a top French chef brought in, all served with a Cabernet labelled as “Francis”. Busch donated cases to the late Pope’s apartment in the Vatican.
Even so, having described the Trump administration as the “most Christian I’ve ever seen”, he is likely to favour a successor who is less critical of the president than Francis was. Someone such as the Hungarian Peter Erdo would fit the mould, but for all his wealth Busch will have no actual say in the matter.
Like everyone else in the Catholic world, other than 133 cardinals, he will spend this week waiting for a puff of white smoke.
William Cash is the former editor of The Catholic Herald