In a wrenching Indianapolis speech, hours after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sen. Robert F. Kennedy called on listeners to tame the savagery of man and make gentle the life of this world. A similar message is now coming from a man raised in the Chicago South Side neighborhoods where Dr. King was stoned when he led a march for housing.
“Let us disarm communications of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism, and even hatred: Let us free it from aggression,” Pope Leo XIV told media in Rome after becoming the first American elevated to the papacy. It was a revealing pronouncement from one who entered the conclave bearing the reputation of a guarded, private man.
If Leo is to be a force for civility and reconciliation, evangelizing begins close to home.. Louis Prevost, 73, the pope’s older brother, had until recently a Facebook page that repeated slurs against ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic, and her husband. (Paul Pelosi was brutally beaten two years ago by a crank-intruder on the couples’ San Francisco home.)
On his Facebook page, Louis Prevost urged readers to “keep their powder dry” because there is “war right here at home, a war for our streets and neighborhoods.” The post has been taken down. Prevost told radio host Piers Morgan that he will “tone it down” and described Leo as a “much more liberal” member of the family. “But he knows I am what I am.”
Otherwise good folk can talk like that in a polarized country. The Gospels say we should be our brother’s keeper, but Christian nationalism decrees deportation if your brother (sister and children) are working in the U.S. without papers. And we have a president who does not turn the other cheek.
Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, turned obligations of faith into a pecking order in a Fox News appearance. Said he: “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that the rest of the world.” Then-Cardinal Prevost used a Tweet to post a critique of Vance.
Arriving in Rome for Leo’s inaugural mass, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared: “The papacy is not a political office. It is a spiritual office whose teachings align with the Gospel.”
What teachings, what Gospel lessons sustain Vance’s multi-tiered concept of Christian love? Already we have received a papal push back. At a meeting with the Vatican diplomatic corps, Leo declared: “No one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.”
Pope Francis engaged in politics both within the Church and in the public square. He elevated clergy who stressed pastoral duties, human rights, and social justice. Spokane Bishop Blase Cupich was made Archbishop of Chicago and elevated to Cardinal. Other new cardinals were named in places where Catholics are a small minority, from Sweden to Mongolia to South Korea. But heroes of the Catholic right, Archbishops Gomez in Los Angeles and Chaput in Philadelphia, did not receive red hats.
Francis had an eye on an American priest who had spent two decades as a pastor, missionary, and teacher in Peru. Fr. Prevost had risen to become prior General of the Order of St. Augustine. He became a world traveler, as the priestly Augustinian order has a presence in 50 countries, where they are educators also known for prison work.
Francis, who knew Prevost from his work in South America, would send him back to Peru as Bishop of Chiclayo. Nine years of pastoral work ended as he was brought back to Rome in 2023 to head the Vatican office that vets nominees for bishop.
The right wing of the American church has been at odds with the outreaching, pastoral church of Francis and Leo. U.S. bishops have focused on opposition to abortion as “our preeminent issue” in the public square. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has barred Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion due to her support for abortion rights.
Francis received the Pelosis at the Vatican. While reaffirming church teachings, he identified a vital agenda item for Christ’s church and addressed it with an encyclical about the earth that God has given us and the damage humankind has done to it. Francis spoke to consequences of that harm, and the gross inequality of this new Gilded Age. In Francis’ words, “Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”
Food for thought, particularly when Catholic conservatives gathers for the annual Napa Institute conference at a posh resort and winery in Northern California. The Latin mass limits evangelical work where the Church is growing in the Global South. Market economics has deepened social inequality. Francis specified and decried trickle-down economics.
Revered by Napa attendees and many American bishops are the two pre-Francis popes. The larger-than life papacy of John Paul II lasted 35 years, featured mass pilgrimages, and this Polish Pope was central to toppling Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. He was followed by Benedict XVI, who supported an opening to the world in the Second Vatican Council but later recoiled at what he saw as free-thinking excesses. Benedict’s correction to “errors” was a stress on dogma and discipline.
But Catholic laity refused to be docile, and the Church found itself rocked by the clergy sex abuse scandal, and by the relentless advance of secularism. Attendance at mass and vocations, measures of the flock, declined sharply in America,
Francis, the first Jesuit pope, made his church less regal, more compassionate, and more Gospel-focused. He decried “clericalism” and removed the often-princely lifestyle of some in its hierarchy. Women could not be priests, but were installed in senior administrative posts. The Jesuit pope even allowed blessing of same-sex unions.
Leo has been quick to define marriage as “a stable union between a man and a woman.” He supported the ministry of Francis, particularly “synodality,” the concept of a church that listens and puts more authority in the hands of bishops’ conferences.
The Archdiocese of Seattle, centered in a city of low church attendance, has reflected the faith of Francis and Leo. Controversies have arisen over forced resignations of gay and lesbian teachers in diocesan schools. But the diocese has consulted the laity, especially in a downsizing forced by a shortage of clergy.
The city’s faith community has joined in witness. Crowds have marched between its Episcopal and Catholic cathedrals to call for peace, support immigrant rights, and decry gun violence. A major lay protest greeted the Vatican’s bid to crack down on the largest order of American nuns. A Catholic governor, Christine Gregoire, informed the archbishop that she would support same-sex marriage.
In picking Francis’ successor, cardinals looked outward, seeking a pope with pastoral experience. They were inspired by or were guided by the Holy Spirit to one with a multitasking ministry who has journeyed far from Chicago’s South Side. Pope Leo XIV, “Bob” to his brothers, likes to drive. But the 267th successor to St. Peter will have little time for private pleasures.
This story also appears in Cascadia Advocate.
Discover more from Post Alley
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
One might ask if in the West, liberal Catholicism since Vatican 2 has done more to erode the church’s numbers than to bolster them. Ask the Anglicans how it is working for them.
Could be – and that, right there, puts the lie to the idea that our values are based on the moral teachings of the church. No one, from the cardinals on down, is going to be taught anything by the pope, am I right? They all know he’s just some guy elected to wear that costume. You’ll just go to the church that teaches you what you already believe. Thus has it ever been.
Well political parties reinforce what you already believe. But Donn, you are mostly correct. From scripture, tradition and local diocese the College of Cardinals discuss matters and give what they’ve discerned to the Pope and he makes a proclamation. It is not a top down institution. Isn’t it interesting all that dress up has stood the test of time and has more influence in the world than atheism? From school you are instructed in temporal knowledge. The church is more a student of eternal wisdom.
“Leo has been quick to define marriage as “a stable union between a man and a woman.” Oh well, one day, one day, in some centuries, perhaps, I will be seen by the Catholic popes and priests as a full human being.