Pope Leo XIV greeted by crowd of 120,000 in Cameroon as he attacks uneven distribution of wealth

with a hefty bag full of bread crusts.

No, I think you’re getting it largely backwards: JP II’s election was partially *because* of a backlash from the conservatives within the College of Cardinals against Vatican 2: the popes preceding JP II - John XXIII, Paul VI, and JP I - were far more progressive and in favor of Vatican 2 than JP II ever was, and I sometimes wonder what kind of pope JP I would have been had he lived. JP II’s election got through past any progressives in the College because he was seen as a voice against communism from behind the Iron Curtain, largely seen as working in concert with Lech Walesa at the time; the church always hated the Soviet Union, and to a related extent the Warsaw Pact, not because of any humanitarian, political, or even theological reasons, but because they were anti-church, so it was a matter of self-interest, their influence in Warsaw Pact nations was severely curtailed, especially compared to what it had been since before the Soviet Revolution. And it didn’t help that usually, the College begins “lining up” who likely successors will be as the pope begins getting old, frail, or sickly, and JP I was quite healthy and died suddenly after only a month; the college was caught flat-footed, and JP II was an almost panic reaction by the College. Much like Walesa, he was very *very* conservative, he was just anti-communist, both were at least as far to the right, and likely farther, than most any leading Republican in the US that were their contemporaries. That’s why they had such a strong following / appeal in the US, since they held the same views as Reagan and his supporters, and a little later Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. If anything, JP II hindered the advancements and changes that Vatican 2 had been trying to implement by decades, because he just didn’t understand modern ‘Western’ life and thus had no context for it.