The election of an American pope, Leo XIV, is a fitting culmination of a conclave that had the feel of an American presidential election, except shrouded in secrecy and mercifully brief.

Conservatives and liberals rallied around their favorite candidates, dished dirt on the opposition and adopted slogans ("unity” and "diversity”) aimed at swing voters. And like a presidential contest, it fixated public attention — and people’s hope for the future — on the wrong target: a savior-like figure who can deliver us from, if not evil, the other side of the aisle.

One of underlying causes of political polarization in the U.S. — that all politics is now national instead of local — is afflicting Christianity, too. Among Catholics, it can be more common to talk about the pope’s politics than the parish’s food pantry, partly thanks to pundits more concerned with Vatican machinations than Gospel teachings. As a result, there’s more public interest in what’s happening with one bishop in Rome, Italy, than all the people in, say, Rome, New York. But what’s happening in Rome, New York — and so many places like it — reflects the need for a new spirit of localism, as opposed to clericalism, within the church.