Well.
The first American pope.
The first Augustinian pope.
The first pope whose native language is English since Adrian IV almost 700 years ago.
Who saw any of this coming?
One thing’s for sure: The election of Robert Prevost illustrates exactly why media predictions aren’t worth a hill of beans. Very few were talking about him as a papabile. All eyes were on the leading “conservative” and “progressive” candidates, as if Catholic doctrine should fit neatly into the modern left-right paradigm. It seems no one in the secular media bothered to wonder who the most Catholic candidate might be – the one most likely to uphold orthodox Catholic teaching. Cardinal Prevost may or may not be that person – time will tell – but to be elected on only the fourth ballot, in a conclave that everyone thought would go on for days or weeks, suggests that his fellow cardinals saw something in him that allowed them to trust that the church would be in good hands with him as its shepherd, for potentially as much as the next two decades. Prevost is just 69 years old, whereas Pope Francis was 76 and Pope Benedict XVI 78 when they were elected.
Anyway, the saying holds true: Whoever enters the conclave as the pope exits the conclave as a cardinal.
We don’t know why Prevost was the cardinals’ choice, and we may never know. My conspiratorial mind wants me to think that this was a direct rebuff of Trumpism: Where will American Catholics’ allegiances lie when Catholic doctrine conflicts with their president’s polemics? But that’s speculation on my part and nothing more.
Second: You can tell a lot about a pope from the name he chooses. Prevost’s choice of Leo XIV is very likely a nod to Pope Leo XIII, who was the architect of Rerum Novarum, one of the founding documents of Catholic social teaching. Central to Catholic social teaching is the inherent dignity of the human being, coupled with calls to build solidarity and systems of subsidiarity that attempt to solve problems and raise people up at the most local level possible – with their families, friends, and communities. In a sense, Catholic social teaching is a reminder that “pro-life” means all life – all those on the margins. Widows, orphans, refugees, the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the forgotten. Too often has the church, especially the American church, made itself appear to have only one specific meaning for “pro-life.” My sense is that Leo XIV will challenge that perception and encourage faithful Catholics to expand their meaning of the term and extend their compassion to all those in need.
In the same spirit, it should be noted that Rerum Novarum is also highly critical of both socialism and unrestrained capitalism, both of which lead to centralized ownership in the hands of a privileged few. Again, this is something not likely to sit well with some Catholics who have put worldly things before spiritual things and who have made an idol of their politics. People are going to be challenged, and hopefully those challenges will open hearts and bear good fruit.
In short, I’m hopeful that Leo XIV will be a champion of both human rights and human dignity.
Will he be a Francis clone, bringing more controversy and confusion to the church? My gut tells me no. From what little I’ve learned about him, Prevost appears to have a reputation for being balanced, temperate, kind, and a listener to all people and perspectives. And that could well be why he was chosen to be pope. The church needed someone balanced and willing to listen after the past dozen years of chaos, not another Francis with an agenda to ram through. We didn’t need a “conservative” pope or a “liberal” pope, and all the talk in that direction missed the point of what it is to be a good and effective leader of an institution. The only thing the secular media seemed to care about was the new pope’s position on abortion and homosexuality, not whether he’d be a good leader. After all, it should be no surprise that the pope’s position on these and other matters is going to be the unchangeable Catholic position, although the mixed signals, ambiguity, and outright confusion Francis sowed for so long perhaps makes it understandable that the press would be misled about the church and the immovability of its core articles of faith. When a legislator in Washington state proposed a bill to make priests break their seal of confession – a bill that is sadly now law, incidentally – and critics told her that to do so would violate church doctrine, her glib response was that the church should just change its doctrine. Well, it doesn’t work that way, and that’s clearly something the secular world just isn’t able to grasp. But, again, Francis unequivocally didn’t help in this regard, making church teaching appear malleable to the outside world. He did the church no favors, and the damage he did will take quite a bit of time to undo.
The thing is, being a pope isn’t about winning points or owning the opposition – and this is something that even the trads and Trumper Catholics lost sight of. It’s about being the vicar of Christ on Earth and defending the church and its teachings. Francis, by all accounts a deeply political person and a fearful dictator when the cameras were off, a petty and spiteful and thin-skinned little man who was quick to silence and excommunicate his critics while turning a blind eye to near occasions of heresy and schism, a man who handed over the faithful underground church in China to the Communist government, a man who reviled traditional Catholics, a man who foisted Fiducia Supplicans on us, a man who allowed Nancy Pelosi to receive communion at a Vatican Mass when her own archbishop refused to commune for her support of abortion, failed on almost every count in terms of being a good leader.
Just the fact that Prevost appeared in traditional papal garments when he addressed the crowd, when Francis didn’t at his election, is a likely signal that he’s not going to thumb his nose at tradition the way Francis so often did with his false humility. It may also be a positive sign that he’ll reverse the draconian restrictions Francis placed on the Traditional Latin Mass. No, I don't expect Prevost to be a hardline traditionalist, but I sense that he’ll at least listen to reason and be charitable enough to understand that some Catholics just prefer the old Mass, and that they should be allowed to celebrate it.
Now, could Prevost have come out in traditional papal garb to try to present himself as a reasonable moderate when he’s not, thus making traditionalists look extreme and unreasonable when they push back? Of course that’s a possibility. Being an American, Prevost is certainly very aware of how out of touch American leftism has become, and that if the left wants to win any more elections, it has to make itself look more centrist even if it isn’t, by adopting more mainstream talking points and downplaying its more radical stances before the public. In this sense, Prevost could well be ahead of the curve in terms of contemporary political trends, serving as a precursor for how leftists will try to regain power: “Hey, look, we’re occupying the reasonable middle here. It’s those crazy dangerous far-right extremists who’ve lost the plot.” After 12 years of Francis’ wild unpredictability, it would make sense for those who think like him to want to recast themselves so that they too don’t come off as loose cannons.
But all this is a worst-case scenario, and at least for now I remain hopeful that we aren’t being set up with a Trojan horse.
In any event, Catholic social teaching is one of the things that keeps me Catholic, and the fact that Cardinal Prevost chose a papal name with the probable intent of likening himself to the wonderful Leo XIII, the modern architect of Catholic social teaching, makes me very hopeful – more than I’ve been a long time as a Catholic.
I’ve felt like I’ve been in a dream ever since Protodeacon Mamberti came out to announce the identity of the new pope. When I heard “Prevost,” I turned to my daughter and asked, “Did he say Prevost? He’s an American! There's no way!” And yet there it was: An American cardinal as our new pope. The thing no one thought would ever happen. And he was probably the only one who could have ever had a realistic shot, given his high-level Vatican position as head of the Dicastery for Bishops since 2023. Cupich and Burke are both far too sectarian and polarizing – which, incidentally, is why cardinals like Zuppi, Tagle, and Sarah never had a realistic chance either. Among the American cardinals, Dolan, McElroy, O’Malley, Tobin, and Wuerl may have had a shot. But of the U.S. contingent, I’m encouraged that we got the one best suited for the job.
The image I can’t get out of my mind from today was how humbled Cardinal Prevost seemed when he came out to address the Catholic faithful. He looked almost overwhelmed, perhaps on the verge of tears. It must indeed be overwhelming to one day be living your life as a cardinal most people don’t know about, and then to suddenly get thrust into the role of spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, all of whom will have their eyes on you, looking up to you for guidance and inspiration, for the rest of your life. His expression and reaction, to me, spoke volumes about where his heart is. He looks like a kind and gracious man, and I sincerely hope that he is.
I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll see good things come out of this papacy. It certainly can’t be any worse than what we’ve endured over the past dozen years.
