Popes can alter the course of history through moral force, not military or political might. This week, the Vatican’s conclave chose Cardinal Robert Prevost to be Pope who, like predecessors, takes the world stage as a religious leader with 1.4 billion followers. He is the first American Pope, the first to study mathematics and science, and the first missionary to assume control of the global church. He pledged that “evil will not prevail” and that the church must “remain close to those who suffer.” He assumed power after Pope Francis, who publicly failed to condemn Russia for its evil war in Ukraine, unlike Pope John Paul II, who crusaded and helped tear down the Iron Curtain. Much depends on how a Pope leads. Hopefully, the new Pope musters courage and moral conviction to address the world’s problems and help defeat predators. British historian Timothy Garton Ash described John Paul’s enormous contribution: “Without the Pope, there would have been no Solidarity movement; without Solidarity, there would have been no Gorbachev; without Gorbachev, there would have been no 1989. The Pope was crucial at every stage.”
John Paul II’s dramatic gesture of humility and devotion and his crusade against Moscow’s human rights abuses helped demolish the Soviet Union, starkly contrasting centuries of Papal corruption, collaboration, wrongdoing, amorality, and geopolitical manipulation. For decades, John Paul II allowed Polish insurgents to meet, organize, and pass messages in Catholic churches as he spoke out eloquently against Soviet wrongdoing everywhere. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2003 and declined out of humility. He died in 2005 and was canonized in 2014.
Sadly, the late Pope Francis failed as a moral leader because he never directly condemned Vladimir Putin or Russia by name after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, where millions of Catholics live. Such moral equivocation was unforgivable and reminiscent of the Papacy’s tacit acceptance of Hitler and his Second World War. In 1939, Pope Pius XII never publicly condemned Hitler or Nazi atrocities. This moral lapse failed to mobilize nearly half of all Germans who were Catholic, possibly preventing World War II. British author and Catholic John Cornwell wrote “Hitler’s Pope” in 1999 and argued that the Pope did not do enough, or speak out enough, against the Third Reich of the Holocaust. He was a functionary, not a “street priest,” primarily concerned about protecting the church’s institutions.
This week's Papal appointment is historic and ignited speculation about his future tenure and influence. In his first address, he called for peace in Ukraine and Gaza. His past speeches and social media postings have been analyzed for clues as to his moral positioning concerning Putin’s war in Ukraine, Trump’s “America First” MAGA movement, the challenge of artificial intelligence, women’s equality, gay marriage, and global strife and poverty. He doesn’t mince words and recently wrote an article that stated: “It ought to be clear that Catholics cannot support a rhetoric that demonizes immigrants as dangerously criminal simply because they have crossed the border in search of a better life for themselves and their families.”
This Pope is conservative, but his choice of Pope Leo XIV as a name indicates he’s a left-of-center progressive, as was Leo XIII. He’s also a globalist who has lived outside the United States for decades to minister to Latin America’s poorest. Lastly, he is the first Augustinian to become a Pope, an order that requires sacrifice, obedience, charity, and a vow of poverty.
It’s also significant that he is the first Pope to study sciences. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics before entering the priesthood. This makes him uniquely able to address the moral questions raised due to Silicon Valley’s domination and digitization, such as Workers’ rights, the hazards of Artificial Intelligence, robotics, social engineering, genetic experimentation, and the use of neural enhancements by humans. In his first address as Pope, he appropriately identified “artificial intelligence as a main challenge for humanity.”
In social media posts, he has criticized American gun laws and the lack of mental health care. He also took on Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 after he said on Fox News in January: “There is a Christian concept that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.” The Pope, then Cardinal Prevost, tweeted, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
Regrettably, Pope Francis never publicly condemned Putin’s war and remained influenced by his friend, Moscow’s Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who is a confidante of Putin and has weaponized his Russian Orthodox Church. In 2022, Kirill issued a directive to Russian soldiers that “Your task is to wipe the Ukrainian nation off the face of the Earth.” Other Orthodox leaders and the World Council of Churches, representing more than 580 million Christians, condemned the war as well as Kirill’s "misuse of religious language and authority to justify" it. By contrast, Pope Francis tried negotiating truces behind the scenes and reportedly urged his friend Patriarch Kirill to stop being “Putin’s altar boy.”
Hopes are that this Pope will wade into and denounce Russia's campaign of globalized murder and mayhem, as he has concerning other moral matters. Father Ihor Yatsiv, a spokesperson for the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine, which falls under the Vatican’s leadership, said in an interview, “I am not aware of any statements or actions the current pope has made regarding the war in Ukraine. But [his namesake] Pope Leo XIII was a pope who paid attention to the socially vulnerable, a pope who stood on the side of the oppressed, a pope who stood for justice and, accordingly, spoke out against the powerful of this world. We identify Pope Leo XIV as a pope of hope for Ukraine.”
If Leo XIV doesn’t strongly support Ukrainians and the world’s other oppressed people, the Vatican will fail not only Eastern Europe’s Catholics but all of humanity.
For me prayers are most often statements of intention, and therefore aspirational. For a long time now I have believed that god, at least as I understand god, does not play favorites, nor is god something like a gumball machine that, if you drop a coin in the slot, spits out rewards. Any god that I could imagine would embody a generous love and regard for each any every element of creation--all humans, animals, plants, microbes, stars and whatever might inhabit realms we aren't even equipped to imagine. Representing such a god is something a pope must somehow manage to do, regardless of the impossibility of doing it adequately. It seems to me that Leo IV will wear those papal shoes and carry the papal shepherd's crook well, however. He is, as you state, educated in such a way as to appreciate many of the most pressing challenges of our time. He also bears the DNA of at least three of the differing peoples of the world, as well as front line experience in the ongoing battle for social and economic justice. I pray (aspirationally) that we don't demand perfection of him, because perfection is often the enemy of the good.
A life ring, a rope cast upon the waters here, Diane, in a sea of ships capsized and burning, their crew and souls adrift, seeing nothing but the vessels of their hopes and beliefs sent under by the rankest and most cruel manner of pirates- pirates whose only deity is Money and the power it brings. An epochal moment. To paraphrase Tolkien: "..because there is still some good in this world, Mr. Frodo..."