Is Pope Leo ‘Americanizing' Vatican fundraising?

As has now been widely reported, Pope Leo XIV attended a dinner with wealthy donors, primarily from the United States and Italy, on July 29, which included a private concert by Andrea Bocelli. The dinner was co-organized by the Vatican's Laudato Si' Center for Higher Education and the Andrea Bocelli Foundation, and followed a public event called the 'Canticle for Peace' that combined moments of prayer with a performance by Bocelli and an international children's choir. Organizers have kept details of the dinner and private concert that followed tightly under wraps; neither the Vatican communications department nor the Andrea Bocelli Foundation returned requests for comment for this story. The Borgo Laudato Si's Center for Higher Education declined to comment or provide information 'out of respect for the private nature of the gathering and for the individuals who attended.' However, America has independently confirmed details of the event with an attendee and reviewed photos of the event. Alex Capecelatro is an American A.I. founder who attended the event with his husband and wrote about meeting the pope for Outreach, an L.G.B.T. Catholic ministry that operates under the auspices of America Media. (He and his husband are donors to Outreach.) He estimated that about half of the guests at the private concert and dinner came through the Laudato Si' Center and were primarily American; the other half were mostly Italian guests of the Andrea Bocelli Foundation. Among the American participants was the former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Laudato Si' Center guests were invited by Father Manuel 'Manny' Dorantes, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago who is now the administrative management director of the center. Father Dorantes, who has a background in media, was also reportedly the organizer of NBC's and Telemundo's exclusive interviews with Pope Leo, given at Borgo Laudato Si' the same day as the concert for peace. Both events have been interpreted by Vatican-watchers as evidence of the 'Americanization' of the Vatican under the first U.S.-born pope—which some see as a negative development, allowing donors to seemingly pay for access to the pope. Others believe more American-style fundraising could help solve the Holy See's financial problems, as some cardinals expressed hope for around the time of Pope Leo XIV's election. An American pope, the thinking went, could draw in American donors, including some who had stepped back during the Pope Francis years. The 2025 conclave coincided with what is informally known as 'America Week,' a week of fundraisers drawing American donors to Rome. At a 2025 America Week gathering hosted by the Papal Foundation—a U.S.-based foundation whose members donate at least one million dollars to support Vatican initiatives in, the foundation says, 'developing countries and places of great suffering'—an anonymous V.I.P. told The Times that the donors in the room 'could raise a billion' for the church, 'so long as we have the right pope.' America's senior Vatican correspondent Gerard O'Connell and Elisabetta Piqué reported in their book The Election of Pope Leo XIV: The Last Surprise of Pope Francis (Orbis 2026) that that according to Ludwig Ring-Eifel, editor in chief of the German Catholic news agency (KNA), Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the coordinator of the Vatican's Council for the Economy, actively backed Cardinal Robert Prevost in the lead-up to the 2025 conclave, in part, because Marx was 'deeply concerned' about the Holy See's financial situation and 'believes it cannot recover without substantial aid from Catholic donors in the United States. Furthermore, he believes an American pope would be more likely to address this problem adequately.' According to CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb's book The Outsider: Pope Francis and His Battle to Reform the Church (Orbis 2020), wealthy donors were often able to access Pope John Paul II by being invited to his morning Masses in the apostolic palace, but that line of access was closed under Francis. 'No one can buy their way into one of Francis's Masses,' Mr. Lamb wrote. 'You are more likely to hear [a private] Mass celebrated by the pope if you are a Vatican gardener than if you have donated to a church building.' Still, narratives that say 'Francis ate with the poor; Leo eats with the rich' are oversimplifying, according to the hosts of the Spanish-language Vatican podcast 'Descifrando a Léon.' One of the show's hosts, veteran Vatican journalist Inés San Martín, said in a recent episode, 'It's naïve, very naïve, to think that Francis—perhaps they weren't dinners—but that Francis didn't do this,' adding that she knew someone who had 'gone to the Vatican to give the Holy Father a check for $250,000 and ended up in a private audience alone with Francis' in the Vatican's Sala Clementina. At the end of August, Pope Leo met with Europe's richest man, Bernard Arnault, the chairman and C.E.O. of luxury brand LVMH (formed from the merger of Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy), who had donated more than 200 million euros (over $233 million) to the restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Mr. Capacelatro said that invitees to the 'Canticle for Peace' concert knew that they would have a chance to shake hands with the pope afterward, and photos of these greetings were published by Vatican Media, as is standard for public papal events. The private concert and dinner afterwards were not included in the Vatican Media coverage nor listed on the pope's public schedule. Still, the presence of major American donors and the fact that they were treated to meet-and-greets with the pope and a private concert have been taken as signs of the Vatican adopting an 'American' style of fundraising that involves courting and 'pampering' donors. While one Spanish outlet speculated that the Vatican was working to increase American donations as a way to decrease its financial dependence on Germany, others raised the question of what sort of influence or access these donors might expect in return for their gifts. On 'Descifrando a Léon,' Ms. San Martín, who is now the communications director for the Pontifical Mission Societies USA, wrote that while seeking out major donors is normal for American organizations, certain fundraising information should also be disclosed publicly: 'We don't need the names [of donors]. But we do need [to know] when, how much, and how it was invested.' The most-asked question around the event, though, is why the donation-driven elements of the 'Canticle for Peace' event were not made public and were only reported by a non-Vatican media outlet three weeks later. Part of the answer seems to be that the event was independently organized by Borgo Laudato Si', and that the Vatican's communications operation reportedly did not know it was happening. But the fact that NBC and Telemundo were also given exclusive access, beyond just the broadcasting rights, to the 'Canticle for Peace' event has raised questions about the appearance of preferential treatment for American media outlets, echoing concerns first raised when Leo gave his first major interview to Elise Allen of Crux. The Borgo Laudato Si', as is evident from this event, operates with a certain degree of independence from the rest of the Vatican both in terms of fundraising and communications, apparently with the support of Pope Leo. One question is whether these fundraising and communications practices will be picked up more widely, especially as an American, Maria Montserrat 'Montse' Alvarado, is set to become the head of Vatican communications in November. Related