When the Catholic cardinals enter the conclave to elect the next pope, MAGA faithful will be hoping a conservative tribune emerges victorious.
The "fight for the soul of the Catholic Church" is happening, and it's between those leaders who saw promise in the modernising changes Pope Francis made and those "who hated him for it", according to religious scholars.
When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was introduced to the world as the next pope in 2013, he took the name Francis — a name no pope had ever taken.
Saint Francis of Assisi represented the poor, the humble and was the patron saint of ecology.
Pope Francis would come to make his papacy in that image.
He was not a perfect progressive ally and, for many, his promises of change remain just that, but for an institution that measures time in centuries, Pope Francis represented a new, much more open era.
For many Catholics, it was extraordinary to hear a pontiff talk about his own sins and to hear him say: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"
Pope Francis offered the 1.4 billion followers of the Catholic faith across the world a voice of modern morality — he sought to care for them, and was concerned more with how the church could improve their lives than theological doctrine.
But for his critics, Pope Francis veered too far from the religion's rules, and threatened to change them.
In particular, as he made statements about climate change, immigration and same-sex marriage, Pope Francis clashed with an ideological force taking over the Republican Party in the United States.
Now, data shows American Catholics are split unlike any other major religion.
Because for decades, the architects of the so-called religious right in the United States have been building a coalition of church-going voters.
These Americans can be relied upon to show up on election day and to vote for the candidate who promises to uphold the idea of traditional Christian family values.
Their politics and their faith are fused.
There have been some obvious galvanising causes — the movement is against access to abortion, it is for the homeschooling of children. It holds very traditional views for the role of women and it does not want the United States to be multicultural.
Mormons as well as Southern Baptists and followers of a list of other Protestant evangelical faiths are now the most likely to vote Republican and, according to religious scholars, hold the most socially conservative views.
Against this backdrop, there was a risk the Catholic Church led by Pope Francis could be seen as a more liberal faith in the United States.
Joe Biden, after all, is a proud Catholic.
But then so is Steve Bannon, and like other MAGA players, he wants Catholicism to be reclaimed for conservatives.
A US cardinal has never been pope, reportedly because the Vatican has viewed the nation has having too much influence over the church.
There are reports conservative American Catholics are in Rome right now, lobbying for an outcome in their favour.
So the stage is set. MAGA followers want the next pope to bring Catholicism back to its roots, but part of the legacy of Francis is that he had long been preparing to stop them.
Pope Francis vs MAGA
Once upon a time, JD Vance called himself an atheist and a "never Trumper". Now, he's Donald Trump's vice president and the poster boy for a new era of American Catholicism.
Vance's path to personal and political redemption led him to sit opposite Pope Francis just hours before the pontiff died.
It was a moment religious scholars have reflected on as one of great symbolism because it was a meeting of two very different movements — Pope Francis as the church's truth itself, and Vance, someone who represents the outlier US traditionalism has become.
The issue that helps explain the diverging of Pope Francis and MAGA most clearly perhaps is immigration and the treatment of migrants.
The Trump administration has taken a hardline approach on immigration and is planning the mass deportation of migrants, while it forcibly detains and deports some who are in the country legally.
Francis called Trump's immigration plans a "disgrace" and criticised his cuts to foreign aid and domestic welfare programs.
In 2016, Pope Francis went so far as to say Trump was "not Christian" — again over his approach to immigration and the building of his border wall.
Pope Francis was a man who washed the feet of prisoners — who believed the people of the world were equalised by their very humanity.
He was the son of Italian immigrants himself and placed the plight of migrants and refugees at the heart of his moral agenda during his 12-year papacy.
A few months ago, JD Vance attempted to use a theological concept to justify the Trump administration's mass deportation plan and Pope Francis promptly corrected him.
On Fox News, Vance spoke about the order of love.
"There's this old school — and I think it's a very Christian — concept by the way, that you love your family, and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world," he said.
Less than a fortnight later, Pope Francis penned a rare open letter to all US Catholic bishops, once again slamming Trump's immigration policy and directly refuting Vance's interpretation of the concept of ordo amoris, or order of love.
"Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups," he wrote.
"The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the 'Good Samaritan' ... by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception."
Professor of religion at Dartmouth College Randall Balmer told the ABC Pope Francis took issue with Vance's suggestion love could be prioritised.
"Vance was trying to use that as a justification for Trump's immigration policies and turning people away from US borders and Francis was having none of it," he said.
"Vance has been trying to cloak his policies, and by extension, cloak Trump's policies in Catholic doctrine and Catholic social teaching, but Francis was pretty quick to disavow that connection."
Conservatives were unhappy with Pope Francis from the start because of his informal style, his aversion to pomp and his decision to allow women and people of the Muslim faith to take part in a Holy Thursday ritual that previously had been restricted to Catholic men.
They baulked at his approval of conditional blessings for same-sex couples and Pope Francis's repeated clampdowns on the use of Latin Mass.
"Certainly traditionalists thought he was making bold changes, and they hated him for it, and they continue to hate him because of it," Dr Balmer said.
MAGA firebrand, self-styled media mogul, and former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon has been a vocal critic of Pope Francis, and after the pontiff's death, has been all over YouTube talking about his work to drag the church backwards.
He believes that is what a rising tide of American Catholics want.
"This is another massive institution that means so much about turning our world around. The Catholic Church has been taken over by these globalists and it's not good, really not good," he said on his War Room program.
He told Piers Morgan: "I think a lot of people, particularly the rising part of the church in America would at least like to see a pope that is accessible to traditional teachings and gets the Catholic Church back on an orthodox pattern."
"I have been very open. I've worked for years with more of the conservative, traditionalist cardinals and people at the Vatican ... it's been a very tough and vicious fight and this will continue on."
Taking a look at the data, there are some clear trends that help explain just how divided the Catholic Church is in the United States and how Donald Trump arrived at just the right time.
Religious support for Trump
Pope Francis was just a few years into his papacy when Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States in 2015.
Americans of faith had been trending Republican, and were then presented with a candidate who very loudly promised to answer their call.
"There's some sort of visceral way that people in the religious right, white evangelicals and I would add, traditionalist Catholics, see themselves as being victims in this multicultural society," Dr Balmer said.
"They see themselves somehow as being kicked to the sidelines. And [think] 'we need to fight back', 'we need to resist that in some way', and Trump speaks that language, I think, very, very fluently'."
He tells his base "we have to somehow vanquish our enemies or deport them … in order to reassert that hegemonic hold on society", Dr Balmer said.
He would eventually build some of the wall he promised.
And deliver the US Supreme Court and its overturning of Roe v Wade — the case that served as a lightning rod for religious conservatives.
Donald Trump has long been able to rely on his loyal evangelical base and in his 2024 general election win, Trump did as well among that group as he did in his 2020 loss.
But Trump is winning more of the Catholic vote, while Democrats are losing their grip on it, according to AP Vote Cast.
[Votecast Datawrapper]And according to the latest survey by Pew Research Centre, 53 per cent of American Catholics now identify or lean Republican. In 2014, that number was 37 per cent.
There are other trends too.
American Catholics are also split on racial lines and, in recent years, on their opinion of Pope Francis.
Senior associate director at Pew Research Gregory Smith said in the early years of his papacy, Pope Francis was viewed favourably by American Catholics across the political spectrum.
"But the share of Catholic Republicans who had a favourable view of Francis began to trend downward, and so you saw this gap open up between Catholic Democrats and Republicans," he said.
"So there's a high degree of political polarisation within the American Catholic Church, for sure. I think it would be fair to say the Catholic population is is fairly unique in that regard."
At the far-right end of that spectrum is a group of American Catholics who want more than their man at the head of the church, but for the United States itself to become more religious.
'A fight for the soul of the Catholic Church'
The conservative swing inside the Catholic Church in America echoes the rise of the right across the world, according to professor of religious studies at the University of Florida and scholar of the religious right Julie Ingersol.
"The rise of this very conservative form of Catholicism is, in some ways, a reaction to the kinds of things that Pope Francis did and supported," she said.
"He stepped away from focus on the culture war divisions, and tried to focus more just on people, recognising that people had all kinds of differences."
Dr Ingersol studies Christian nationalism and said the Catholic thread in American conservatism ultimately wants to see "more of a union of the church and the state".
"There's always been a thread in American Catholicism that is deeply conservative, and it parallels some of the developments in Protestantism that are working for a theocracy," she said.
In JD Vance they see "one of their own" and "their version of Catholicism near the top of American power", Dr Ingersol said.
Just as traditionalist Catholics have ascended to those heights in the United States, there is an opening at the top of the Vatican and a chance to own the church's next era too.
"We're looking at a fight for the soul of the Catholic Church, I think with the selection of the new pope," Dr Balmer said.
Pope Francis knew he faced fierce opposition inside the Vatican and while he largely ignored it while he was alive, he prepared for the fight that would happen after his death.
Late Australian cardinal George Pell once penned a memo declaring his papacy "a catastrophe".
US cardinal and dominant figure among traditionalist American Catholics Raymond Burke once said the church under Francis was "a ship without a rudder".
Pope Francis would later strip Burke of some of his Vatican privileges. He also stood down a deeply conservative, social media-loving, Trump-supporting bishop in Texas who took issue with his statements on the LGBTQIA+ community.
Of the cardinals who will vote to elect his successor, Pope Francis stacked the house and appointed 80 per cent of them, so the maths isn't in his critics' favour.
But as in politics, the vote can always swing.
No matter who is elected the next pope, they will have to contend with a US arm of the Catholic Church that is split.
Beyond the culture wars that Donald Trump so easily stokes, Dr Balmer believes "the real battleground" could become the issue of Latin Mass.
"They may want to agitate to continue their use of the Latin Mass and maybe expand it beyond what he wanted. At certain certain point, you have to ask: ... is this a church going in two different directions?" he said.
"If there's a division over that, then in some sense, you're not talking about a single church any longer."
