Pope Leo Votes by Post in Chicago, a First for a Sitting Pontiff

Pope Leo has voted in the United States midterm elections, submitting a mail-in ballot in his native Chicago, the Vatican said. CBS News reported that the Holy See presented the vote as Leo exercising his rights as a US citizen, cast ahead of next week's midterms. The Guardian, which reported the ballot on Friday, described it as the first time a sitting pontiff is known to have cast a ballot in any political election at any time in history.

The Guardian noted that Leo is a US citizen who has clashed with Donald Trump over several issues. That detail gives the ballot its weight: a head of state who is also a voter in another country's national contest, at a moment when he has publicly differed with its president.

Rome is where the papacy sits, and Vatican City, the sovereign state the pope heads, is enclosed within the Italian capital. The Lateran Treaty of 1929 created that state and settled the question of papal sovereignty. It did not settle what a pope does with a passport issued somewhere else.