The ascension of Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV signals a Catholic Church whose leaders will live the Gospels and minister to the poor, refugees and migrants… but perhaps without the ebullience of Pope Francis.
The former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a priest for nearly 43 years, has studied in Rome and spent two decades ministering in Peru — he holds dual Peruvian and American citizenships — and lately at the Vatican vetting appointment of bishops. “I think he’s as much South American as North American and today he belongs to the world,” Fr. Michael Ryan, pastor of St. James Cathedral, told an O’.Dea High School audience on Thursday.
Wealthy conservative American Catholics, under auspices of such groups as CatholicVotes and the Napa Institute, had flocked to Rome hoping for a restoration of top-down discipline and dogma in the papacy. Instead, the first U.S.-born Pope appears more in keeping with cardinals elevated by Francis. Prevost had been a cardinal for less than two years.
By adopting the name Leo XIV, he evoked the ministry of Pope Leo XIII head of the church from 1878 to 1903. The previous Leo was a reformer who pushed back against the Gilded Age. Leo XIV believes in dialogue, the rights of workers, and opening the church to the world.
If he wishes to see the church’s problems in the Old World, Leo need only look to the neighborhood where he grew up. The south side Chicago parish of St. Mary of the Assumption has been shut and incorporated into another parish. The Sisters of Mercy, facing bankruptcy, sold the hospital where he was born to a technology firm four years ago.
Cardinal Prevost was/is close to Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago who previously dealt with priest sexual abuse and bankruptcy as Bishop of Spokane. Appearing before a crowd of 100,000 in St. Peter’s Square —a crowd size that would have sent Trump home happy — Leo XIV pledged “a church that builds bridges, dialogue, always open to receive, like this square, with open arms.”
The new Leo is active on new media. He has displayed no patience with either immigrant bashing, or the new nativism — a new Gilded Age — of his native country. A case in point came when U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, argued that Christians’ primary obligations are to family and they can refuse to accept immigrants and refugees.
Prevost responded with an “X” post, saying: “J.D. Vance is wrong, Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank love for others.” in the 1990’s, he served as bishop of a poor diocese in northern Peru.
There were signs that Francis was ready to push back on the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee policies of the Trump Administration. He had just named Cardinal Robert McElroy, Bishop of San Diego, as the new Archbishop of Washington, D.C.. McElroy is a champion of the poor and those fleeing poverty in Central America.
Leo XXIV was an altar boy in his youth, took a math degree from Villanova University — known for its champion basketball teams— joined the Augustan order and undertook parish work and teaching in Peru. He was to rise in the order and travel the world. He speaks five languages and can read two others.
Unlike Francis, who appeared on St Peter’s balcony in a simple white cassock, Leo XIV wore full papal regalia. He is the 267th pontiff to sit on the throne of Peter. He addressed the throng in Italian and Spanish, but not a word of English.
A long string of Italian popes was dramatically broken in 1978 when Cardinals elected Pope John Paul II, a Pole hardened by years of resistance to Nazi occupiers and communist governments. He was followed by Pope Benedict XVI, a German— and Hitler Youth as a teenager— who was succeeded by the Argentinian Francis. Leo XIV was reportedly a Cubs fan, but the Chicago White Sox are actually his team.
The election of Leo XIV is a legacy of Francis, who named 80 percent of the 133 cardinals who voted in his succession. The list included Americans Cupich, McElroy, Wilton Gregory and Joseph Tobin. Tobin was named Archbishop of Newark, where he has been a counterweight to New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a Trump toady. The dioceses of Philadelphia and Los Angeles, historic seats of cardinals, did not see their archbishops get red hats.
Leo XIV will be tested on such issues as same-sex marriage. He has opined that “the promotion of gender ideology is confusing because it seeks to create genders that do not exist.” He will also hear calls from Latin American bishops to ordain as priests married men in remote areas acutely impacted by the shortage of priests.
He has promised to “live the Gospel message in the midst of His people.” The message is more than a sound bite. Pope Pius XII forbade Vatican gardeners from addressing or looking at him when he walked grounds of the apostolic palace.
It is a message that the first “American pope” has carried far beyond his native land.
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