There were seagulls loitering by the tin chimney at the Vatican as it billowed white smoke heralding the election of Pope Leo XIV the first all-American pope, evocative of land ahoy that seagulls used to bring seafarers as they crossed the Atlantic to the Americas in the early days of its discovery by Europeans.

The election of Robert Prevost was a very astute choice by the Papal Conclave. He is a quiet American with a sweet shy smile to counterbalance the angry, loud American in the White House and his loose-tongued deputy. The world needs this quiet American at the helm of a billion Catholics lest we forget that most Americans one meets abroad are really nice people.

The pope’s election coincided with the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) week of celebrations in Britain, France and Russia, about which I began writing on Thursday until I saw the white smoke at the Vatican on TV followed by the Habemus Papam – we have a pope – and that it was the American Peruvian Cardinal Robert Prevostof French Italian descent.

A natural born American pope as head of the universal Catholic Church so shortly after the election of the imperious and isolationist President Donald Trump was too momentous politically to ignore even in an article about VE Day and its aftermath.

The architect of VE Day was of course British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who unlike Pope Leo XIV was neither sweet nor shy but who like the pope was modest – or capable of modesty in the form of insightful outbursts laced with wit. 

For example once in reply to a tribute of his war time leadership he heaped praise on the British people’s fighting spirit and mocked himself in the process saying that “it was the British people who had the lion’s heart. I had the good luck to be called upon to provide the roar.”

Like every good compliment, his modest quip had a grain of truth in it because it was his use of the English language delivered in his familiar whiskey voice that inspired the British to stand alone against the might of Nazi Germany. Churchill and the Brits gave the two-finger salute – V for victory and up yours rolled in one – rather than the Nazi salute to the mighty Germany, when they stood alone after the fall of France in 1940 until the Americans and the Russians joined in the war in 1941.

As King Charles III acknowledged in his speech on VE Day, allied victory was the result of the unity of nations, races, religions and ideologies fighting back against the existential threat to humanity of tyrants. That unity of nations and peoples was called the united nations alliance that evolved into the United Nations Organisation (UNO) that we know and love – its current impotence notwithstanding.

It was actually President Roosevelt who coined the name in a eureka moment as early as 1942. I don’t know if this is true but apparently Winston Churchill was having a bath in the White House when Roosevelt was wheeled in exclaiming eureka! eureka! United Nations! He then apologised for catching Churchill starkers to which Churchill is said to have replied “the prime minister of Great Britain has nothing to hide from the president of the United States,” which has the ring of truth as it sounds Churchillian.

So it was as early as 1942 that the two leaders agreed to form an alliance not only to defeat the Nazis and Fascists and the imperial Japanese but also to preserve the peace and security in a rules-based world order after the war. 

Churchill who had a keen eye on how to mobilise the English language liked the name united nations and told Roosevelt that its first use was by Lord Byron in a stanza about the battle of Waterloo: “Here, where the sword united nations drew.” 

The self deprecating Churchillian witticism I like best, however, was when he compared himself to a little donkey in an insightful remark that marked the passing of the world super power baton from Britain to America – a sidewind in 1945 but a hurricane in 2025 when America has seemingly gone rogue on the rules-based order it pioneered under presidents Roosevelt and Truman in the 1940s even though they too were taken in by Russia.

Then as now whenever America and Russia agree, everyone else has to toe the line. It was 1943 and the three war-time leaders Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met in Tehran in Iran to plan for victory in Europe. Stalin wanted the US and Britain to open a second front against Germany in the west and Roosevelt didn’t see any problem – Churchill was not so sure but was forced to agree.

“There I sat with the great Russian bear on one side of me with paws outstretched, and on the other side the great American buffalo. Between the two sat the little English donkey, who was the only one who knew the right way home” was how Churchill described Britain’s diminished status as a world power.

The climbdown from British lion to little donkey was poetic licence but what on earth did he mean that he was the only one who knew the right way home? The way home as a metaphor for the home-run to victory is the most plausible and what he seemed to be saying was that there was a right way and wrong way to victory and that the Americans were taken in by nice Mr Stalin, “paws outstretched”, to go the wrong way because that way the Soviet Union took control of Eastern Europe must be what he meant.

In the end a second front was opened in the West across France and Nazi Germany was defeated, and Churchill lamented Soviet control of East Europe in the only way he knew how, the English language: “from the Baltic to the Adriatic an Iron curtain has descended across the continent of Europe” he told an American audience after the war.

VE Day in London and Paris was on May 8 and in Moscow on May 9, 1945. For Americans victory in Japan (VJ Day) is more important and that was achieved three months later when they nuked Japan into submission in August.

One of the new pope’s missions as an American is to mellow Trump’s America if he can and restore its faith in the UN that was after all originally an American idea for a military alliance against tyranny.