Leo XIV, Francis 2.0, and the papal watch
The Friday Pillar Post
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Happy Friday friends,
We have a pope, thanks be to God.
Honestly, after all the politicking and speculation, and gaming out of the possible scenarios, it was impossible, for me at least, not to feel a small leap of the heart and the simple pronunciation of habemus papem.
And so it should be. Any Catholic might reasonably have had some cardinal or other they wanted, hoped, even prayed would emerge on the loggia. I did, and I was clear on Wednesday when they went into conclave where my heart lay.
But, as I mentioned in my final gut check, I wasn’t shocked by the announcement of the name Robert Francis Prevost — certainly not nearly as surprised as I was by his choice of regnal name, Leo XIV. That I hadn’t anticipated.
I have already made a point, amid the frenetic work that has followed, of taking a moment to pray a rosary for our new pope. And I’d ask that you do too, if you haven’t already. He needs our prayers. There is no human office more freighted with responsibility, no role more loaded with consequence, than to be the chief herald of the Gospel on earth.
And, in that function, I was edified by Leo’s first words — “Peace be with you all.” Peace is in short supply in our world just now. Perhaps it always is, and will always be so. But Leo’s first message as successor of Peter leant strongly into the first greeting of Christ to his disciples after the resurrection. And in this season of Easter, which has been entirely spent “at work” for me, it was a greeting I welcomed.
There’s a lot to unpack about what we might expect from the new Leonine pontificate, and we’ll get there in a moment.
But before we do, I want to offer a personal reflection, if I may, on seeing Leo XIV emerge on the balcony.
For me, one of the most difficult parts of the Francis pontificate was that I often felt that the pope didn’t know me, didn’t understand people like me, and at bottom didn’t like people like me — or even on occasion, I was given to understand, specifically me.
After St. John Paul II and Benedict, both of whom I felt a deep filial affection for, this was hard. Pope Leo, however, is already different.
Sure he is an American pope, but that’s not what I mean. If Leo XIV had been born in Manhattan I’d have felt no more instinctive kinship with him then if he were from Reykjavík or Tokyo.
But we are both men of Chicago and, as Pope Leo would tell you, that means something, no matter how far you travel from home. And it’s something you’re born, you can’t become — no matter what any carpetbagger from Detroit or Omaha might tell themselves.
I don’t know what will come over the years of his pontificate, I am sure there will be things he will do that will have me cheering and others that leave me confused, or even critical. But, at an instinctive level, I feel like he’d probably understand me, and I him, if we met.
And that means something to me.
Case in point, shortly after his emergence, the internet floated up a rumor that the new pope, despite being born on the South Side, was a Cubs fan.
You can imagine how excited that got me — the fortitude of character, the power of discernment it must surely have taken to make such a choice from such circumstances.
Alas it was not to be.
Shortly thereafter, the pope’s brother John gave an interview:
“He was never, ever, a Cubs fan. So I don’t know where that came from. He was always a Sox fan,” he said.
Fair enough, you can’t have everything.
But I would note this, too: a lot of people took note of Leo’s pointed reference to wanting to be “a synodal Church.” Sure, synodality has become something of a Rorschach test word in recent years. But Pope Leo’s mother was a Cubs fan, and his father was apparently a Cardinals fan, and he’s a Sox fan.
By any reasonable assessment that family should have fallen apart, violently. And yet it was happy enough to produce a vocation which led to the chair of Peter. That’s what I call synodality.
OK, let’s get on with things.
The News
There’s really only one news item on anyone’s mind this morning, and that is rightly the election of Leo XIV.
If you somehow missed our coverage of the moment itself, you can catch it again here. And you can read our pre-conclave profile of the man who became pope here.
We have, as you may have noticed, been working flat out out these last few weeks to bring you the best possible coverage of the papal interregnum, and for that JD and I have to thank our regular team of Luke, Edgar, Michelle, and Kate, but also and especially Susanna Pinto and Jason Baguia, who joined us for the general congregations and conclave and helped us be everywhere at once. I say this without a trace of hubris: I honestly think we offered coverage to beat anything you could read anywhere.
And also thanks to our paying subscribers, without whom we — none of us — would have been here in Rome these last few weeks. You made this happen.
And if you’re new to The Pillar family, welcome. I hope you like what you see. And if you’d like to see us keep this kind of pace up for the foreseeable future, there’s only one way to make it happen:
But in and amongst the discussion of our new pope, don’t miss some of the other important and just downright interesting things we’ve been publishing, like the Church in Germany’s very busy papal interregnum and how that is shaping up to be one of the first issues on Pope Leo’s desk.
And how a good conclave is a lot like the aircraft carrier USS George Washington.
And this look at the history of papal mottos, and those of the conclave big names — including of course Leo XIV.
And our most recent dispatch from Ukraine on the complicated legacy left there by Pope Francis.
And on Pope Francis’ legacy on abuse reform and what it will mean for his successor.
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Francis 2.0?
In my final gut check as the cardinals went into conclave, I noted that the momentum behind Cardinals Tagle and Prevost seemed to have stalled among the general congregations. But, I said, the numbers don’t lie.
This was always, and always going to be a conclave made up of mostly Pope Francis appointees, and so it was always there to happen that a pope in the mold of Francis would emerge.
We don’t yet know, but I am sure we’ll soon hear some version of how the ballots went, and get a sense of whether Pope Leo was elected by an obviously natural alliance between his own supporters and those of Cardinal Tagle’s, or if he was carried to the chair of Peter by more universal acclaim.
In any event, we can safely say that Pope Leo is a successor in line with Francis. And from there we can draw some conclusions, but not too many. And there are some really interesting and urgent unknowns worth considering.
So let’s get down to them.