The most immediate striking thing about the election of the Chicago-born cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as pope is his choice of name, Leo XIV.
The 69-year-old Chicago-born cardinal - the first American pope to be elected in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church - has moved on from the ‘continuity’ Johns and Pauls harking back almost 70 years to the election of John XXIII in 1958, and the innovative choice of Francis by his immediate predecessor.
Combined with his lengthy missionary experience in Peru, his decision to pick the name Leo was an indicator of what he hopes, in these still early hours of his papacy, will be the themes likely to dominate his papacy.
The last Leo who was pope died in 1903, Leo XIII, by then the oldest pope in history, aged 93. That followed a papacy of 25 years, the fourth-longest in the church‘s history after Peter, Pius IX – Leo XIII’s immediate predecessor – and Pope John Paul II.
[ In pictures: The election of Pope LeoOpens in new window ]
But Leo XIII is not most remembered for any of those things, or for being the first pope to be filmed and to have his voice recorded.
He is most remembered for the then radical encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 that addressed late 19th century issues of gross social inequality and social justice, focusing on the rights and duties of capital as well as labour. Subtitled On the conditions of Labour, it addressed in particular the relief of “misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class”.
It supported the right to form unions, rejected socialism and unrestrained capitalism, while also affirming the right to private property.
It also introduced into Catholicism the idea of subsidiarity, a principle that political and social decisions should be taken at a local level rather than by a central authority. This principle was employed by Pope Francis when he initiated his synodal pathway in 2021, beginning by consulting Catholics worldwide, on the ground in their parishes.
Radical for its time, Rerum Novarum remains so today as does its argument that market forces must be tempered by moral considerations of the common good. It became the foundational document for all modern Catholic social teaching with later popes issuing ‘follow-up’ encyclicals, such as Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno in 1931, Pope John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra in 1961 and John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus in 1991. An Irishman keenly involved in helping prepare the latter was former archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, then working at the Vatican‘s Council for Justice and Peace.
The second encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, published in 2015, comes into this stream too, with its unequivocal criticisms of irresponsible economic development leading to global warming and destruction of the environment. Another Irishman, Fr Seán McDonagh, had a significant input into that encyclical. The Columban priest, now based at Dalgan Park near Navan, Co Meath, spent many years in the Philippines where he witnessed first hand the destruction brought about there by climate change.
Indicators of a strong social conscience on the part of Pope Leo XIV, shaped also by his missionary experience in Peru, are unlikely to warm the cockles of any “Maga” hearts in his native US. Then the new pope has already made clear his keen disagreement with Donald Trump’s administration and his “Make America Great Again” agenda on issues such as migration and climate.
Just last February on his social media account X as Robert Prevost, he reposted an article from the US National Catholic Reporter website with the headline: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
It was in response to the US vice-president’s statement on ‘ordo amoris‘, the order of love, suggesting that love should be prioritised starting with family, then neighbours, then community, then the nation, with the rest of the world last.
It was a concept, Vance argued – ironically, in the context – based on the teachings of St Augustine, and rejected by Robert Francis Prevost, an Augustinian priest. It was also rejected by Pope Francis, who pointed to the parable of the Good Samaritan as an illustration of the true order of Christian love which applies to everybody, including the injured stranger.
Last April, when Trump met El Salvador president Nayib Bukele to discuss using a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place to jail suspected gang members flown from the US, Cardinal Prevost reposted a comment that included: “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?”
[ Election of Pope Leo XIV: in picturesOpens in new window ]
That said, the new pope‘s first appearance on the balcony of St Peter’s last Thursday night in formal papal vestments will reassure more conservative traditional Catholics in the US as elsewhere. It is also likely he will take up residence in the Apostolic Palace, unlike his predecessor. An order has been restored to their world.
Such traditional-minded Catholics will be similarly reassured at his views on homosexuality, as expressed in 2012, when he lamented that popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel”, giving the homosexual lifestyle as an example, as well as “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children”.
Most troubling for the great majority of practising Catholics - women - is his opposition to female ordination, either as priests or deacons.
And when it comes to his dealings with clerical child sex abuse cases, he is not without his critics, though many say unfairly so. As a prelate of his years he too would have been caught between the Vatican‘s evolving stance on that fraught issue and a desire to do the right thing by abused people he has met and dealt with.
Survivors of clerical sexual abuse through the group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said they were “gravely concerned” at Prevost’s election as pope given his track record in handling abuse cases in the US and Peru.
As a man, according to those who know him, Prevost is not a “touchy feely” person like his predecessor nor as outgoing and, while liking the sheep, he is unlikely to smell of them, as recommended to his priests by Pope Francis.
Catholic Primate Archbishop Eamon Martin recalled on Thursday night how he and other Irish archbishops met Prevost at the end of February and said that “he came across as a humble and respectful listener, wanting to learn as much as possible about the church in Ireland”.
The Archbishop said that “he is a calm, affable and approachable person. He is a friend of Ireland and no doubt the Augustinian communities in Ireland will be delighted with the news.”
Prof Brandon Gallaher, lecturer in theology at the University of Exeter, has described Leo XIV as “a continuity candidate to institutionalise Francis’s legacy in terms of linking it to the tradition of Catholic social teaching.
“Leo XIV shares with Francis the desire to put the peripheries in the centre and care for migrants and those who are marginalised”.
He described the new pope as “relatively quiet on hot-button issues though there would seem to be some concern about the promotion of sexual diversity and alternative families departing from Catholic moral teaching and he critiqued the clericalisation of women at the recent Synod on the Synods so it is unlikely he will open the door on women‘s ordination.”
Leo XIV would, he felt, be “a Francis-like pontiff without the intense charisma of the late pope and with a better ability to unite the Catholic factions and give greater attention to the canonical details of his decisions and likely greater discipline in terms of public statements”.
Prof Gallaher also found it “notable that the new pontiff is American”. He felt that “at a time when the world is suffering from Trump‘s American populism, Leo XIV shows the possibility of another different American vision that supports the marginalised and is critical of rampant capitalism.”
Commentators noted how Leo XIV chose to speak in Italian and Spanish, and not English, the language of his American homeland, in his first remarks as pontiff from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica. He also referred warmly to his adopted homeland of Peru, referencing his home diocese of Chiclayo, suggesting a possible desire to be aligned more closely with South America and not the country of his birth.
The new pope has both US and Peruvian citizenship, spending almost two decades in the South American country over his years in the church. He is internationalist in his outlook; he is known to speak English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese.
Prevost’s ascent to the papacy as Leo XIV and the speed of his election indicates a move back to the centre by a Catholic Church anxious for unity above all. In doing so his cardinal electors have caught the zeitgeist of the moment with its move towards a more conservative position where social mores are concerned.
The new pope will, however, also encourage the church‘s commitment to issues of social justice, the environment and climate change.
Combined, he accurately reflects the Catholic Church‘s position in the developing world, where it is growing fastest.
