As soon as Cardinal Dominique Mamberti stepped onto the loggia of St Peter’s Basilica and declared, “I announce to you a great joy: We have a pope!” the just-elected Pope Leo XIV of Chicago was bathed in both joyous surprise and rank misinformation.
His past and present were mangled and fabricated online. You could even find what claimed to be a New York Times story about his being a founding member of an anarchist autonomous zone in Portland called CHAZ, writing for an anarchist magazine on how to fist-fight police.
