Elise Ann Allen is a senior correspondent for Crux, an independently owned news outlet that covers the Vatican and the Catholic Church. Her book on Pope Leo XIV is the first biography in which the Pontiff participated. She has known the priest formerly known as Robert Prevost since December 2018 when he was a bishop and they met in Lima for an off-the-record interview about the sex scandals then roiling the Peruvian church. In recent months the Pope has had several disagreements with the policies of the current U.S. Administration, including, just last week, a public denunciation of the death penalty released on the same day that the President announced a loosening of restrictions around it. Fresh from a reporting trip with Pope Leo through several African nations, Allen talked to TIME about the current Catholic leader’s aims, his run-ins with the U.S.…