Pope Leo XIV’s election has put a rare legal question in focus: whether an American who becomes head of a foreign government can remain a U.S. citizen without running afoul of U.S. citizenship rules. The pope, born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, leads both the Holy See and Vatican City, which the Vatican and Italy treaty established as an independent state in 1929, according to background outlined in Associated Press reporting. He has held dual citizenship in the United States and Peru, after spending years as a missionary and bishop before his election as pope.
In Washington, the issue turns on how the United States treats Americans who serve at the highest levels of foreign government. The U.S. State Department’s website says it may “actively review” the citizenship status of Americans who “serve as a foreign head of state, foreign head of government, or foreign minister,” and it describes those cases as raising “complex questions of international law,” including questions tied to immunity from U.S. jurisdiction. A State Department spokesperson, the AP reported, declined to comment on the pope’s citizenship status and said the department does not discuss the citizenship of individuals.
Legal experts told the AP that the central conflict is between broad immunity that can attach to foreign leaders and the constitutional principle that no U.S. citizen should be above U.S. law. Peter Spiro, a Temple University law professor who specializes in citizenship law, said in an interview that such immunity clashes with that principle. But he said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1980 decision that Americans can’t be stripped of citizenship unless they intentionally renounce it, and he said it would be difficult to argue that Leo, by becoming pope, demonstrated the intent required for termination.
Spiro also said the State Department “never assumes that you intend to lose your citizenship unless you specifically say so through the renunciation process.” In his view, “I think it’s highly unlikely that the U.S. moves to terminate the pope’s citizenship,” and he said it is “highly unlikely” the necessary intent exists based on the pope’s role alone.
The citizenship question also extends to Leo’s second nationality. Jorge Puch, deputy director of registry archives at Peru’s National Registry of Identification and Civil Status, told the AP that Peruvian law has no conflict with Pope Leo remaining a Peruvian citizen. Puch said Leo was granted Peruvian citizenship in August 2015, the month before Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Chiclayo in northern Peru, and that the naturalization required Leo to live in Peru for at least two years and pass a civics test. Puch’s remarks were paired with what the AP described as a broader requirement for voting eligibility in Peru: all adult Peruvians, including naturalized citizens, must vote through age 69.
Peru’s elections schedule also matters for what the pope might be obligated to do as a Peruvian citizen. The AP reported that voting in Peru’s presidential election next April won’t be mandatory for Leo because he turns 70 in September.
The AP also noted that it is not clear what happened to the citizenship status of previous popes from their home countries once they became pope, because the Vatican does not disclose that information. It reported that Pope Francis renewed his passport in Argentina in 2014, the year after he became pope, and that German-born Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II, a native of Poland, never publicly relinquished citizenship in their home countries. It added that John Paul was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.
Beyond Leo, the question of Americans serving as leaders of foreign governments is not purely theoretical. The AP cited examples including former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was born in New York to British parents and renounced U.S. citizenship in 2016 while serving as the U.K.’s foreign secretary before becoming prime minister three years later. It also cited Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who was an American citizen when elected president of Somalia in 2017, and whose reported choice later included giving up U.S. citizenship two years into his presidency. Another example in the AP report was Valdas Adamkus, a Lithuanian president who, after becoming a U.S. citizen and later returning to win Lithuania’s presidency in 1998, relinquished U.S. citizenship after being elected.
In addition to the legal analysis, the AP included a view about what the pope’s public communication could signal. 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 said the pope was sending a message in his first speech by delivering it in Italian and Spanish without using English. She said, “I think he wants to stress that he is the pope of the universal Catholic Church,” and “and not an American holding that position.”