Looking back, Pope Leo XIV had all of it going for him.
The brand new pope, whose election on the second day of the conclave shocked the Roman Catholic world, gave the impression to be from two locations directly. He was born and educated in the US, a rustic important to the church’s funds. However he was additionally a missionary, pastor and bishop in Peru who ran the Pontifical Fee for Latin America, part of the world the place the church is vibrant.
He had the nice papal housekeeping seal of approval from Pope Francis, his predecessor, who put him in one of many prime jobs within the Roman Catholic Church. There, as Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, he led the workplace that helped that pope select bishops and, thus, decide the way forward for the church.
He knew, and was one in all, the voting cardinals within the church’s highly effective forms, however he put liberals comfy together with his robust help for Francis’ arguably biggest change, which sought to make the church’s decision-making course of extra bottom-up and nearer to the devoted.
In unsure instances, he ran a worldwide spiritual group, the Order of St. Augustine, that required a classy understanding of the world. His deep theological formation could have put conservatives anxious about doctrine comfy. At age 69, the brand new pope is the best age for a papal candidate.
The foremost strike in opposition to him was his American nationality, a deal breaker in a long time previous as a result of it was seen as being too intently aligned with the world’s dominant tremendous energy. However in a world order that has modified considerably and in a church that more and more sees past nationality, that apparently turned out to not matter to the 133 cardinals voting within the Sistine Chapel.
“He checked all of the bins,” mentioned John Allen, a veteran Vatican analyst and writer of the ebook “Conclave.” He added, “Geography and nationality stopped being a voting situation.”
After a dozen years of Francis’ shaking up the church, the School of Cardinals apparently wished to maintain transferring in Francis’ route however with fewer detours and crashes. They selected a mild-mannered pastor, reasonable in tone however resolute in his protection of doctrine, one with deep Roman expertise and governing chops.
“We should search collectively the way to be a missionary church,” Pope Leo mentioned in Italian from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in his maiden handle on Thursday because the chief of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics. He mentioned the church wanted to work collectively “to construct bridges and to maintain our arms open, like this very piazza, welcoming.”
Solely hours after his election, it was unimaginable to know the way Leo would govern. However his first phrases, and the title he took, gave some clues. The Vatican mentioned his title echoed the earlier Leo, a pope within the late 1800s who helped set up the church’s Catholic social justice custom. He additionally name-checked Francis, saying, “Thanks, Pope Francis!” and prompting an outburst of applause from the group beneath.
He mentioned the phrase “synodality,” which implies little or nothing to secular ears however which contained in the church spoke volumes about his intention to hold out Francis’ imaginative and prescient for a church that guidelines much less from on excessive in Rome than by consulting its devoted, bringing bishops and lay individuals, together with girls, collectively to make the large selections.
And he spoke about peace and being near those that suffered, reflecting his pastoral sense, but additionally reverted to Vatican custom by showing on the balcony in a vestment that Francis had shed.
Whereas the Individuals within the crowd rejoiced on the naming of one in all their very own — “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” some chanted — and obtained congratulations from the Italians who appeared bewildered by the unfamiliar face on the balcony, supporters of Francis expressed a sigh of aid.
The front-runner to succeed Francis had been the church’s secretary of state, Pietro Parolin, who, whereas an skilled diplomat with an distinguished profession within the church, didn’t have pastoral expertise. Within the weeks and days main as much as the conclave, critics of Cardinal Parolin, together with Italian cardinals, spoke admiringly of different candidates, together with Cardinal Prevost, suggesting that Cardinal Parolin’s help was softer than anticipated.
However when the white smoke billowed from the chimney over the Sistine Chapel on the second day of voting, many liberals anxious that it meant the voters had coalesced round Cardinal Parolin, a bureaucrat they feared would suck out all of the recent air Francis had breathed into the church.
Cardinal Parolin did emerge on the balcony, however nonetheless cloaked in cardinal purple. He smiled simply, a background determine to a brand new pope who liberals believed would shield Francis’ legacy.
In October 2024, Cardinal Prevost sounded very similar to Francis when he advised Vatican Information {that a} “bishop is just not imagined to be a little bit prince sitting in his kingdom, however moderately known as authentically to be humble, to be near the individuals he serves, to stroll with them and to endure with them.”
Vatican analysts anticipate Leo to obviously stick up for migrants, the poor and people exploited by nice powers, although maybe much less provocatively than Francis did. He’s considered as pastoral, and so open to listening to the considerations of all kinds of Catholics. However, a minimum of for now, he’s seen as lower than more likely to make adjustments to church educating on points just like the ordination of ladies as deacons, contraception and the standing of homosexual males within the church.
Alberto Melloni, a church historian, mentioned that whereas Leo was clearly in Francis’ mould on his imaginative and prescient of a church transferring nearer to the individuals and being ruled extra from the bottom-up, on hot-button social points, “he stored his palms free.”
However as Francis confirmed, individuals change after they turn into pope: He was thought of a conservative cardinal in native Argentina.
In a 2023 interview with Catholic Information Service, Leo, then a cardinal, confused that clerics reply to issues of their parishes by reflecting on their oath to “dwell and work in communion with the Holy Father.”
That’s now him.
