Vatican City (kath.net). The conclave proceeded very harmoniously. Reality is always different from the movies.
God graciously employed the conscientiousness and competence of the Sacred College of Cardinals of the Roman Church to make His own choice of the Successor of Peter.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church of Christ. And we pray that the same Spirit of God will strengthen the newly elected Pope Leo XIV so as to unite the Church in professing “Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).
His predecessor by the same name, Leo I “the Great,” wrote a famous letter to the Council of Chalcedon (451) in which he emphasizes the inseparable unity without confusion of the distinct divine and human natures in the Person of the Son of God. This is the basis and foundation of the Catholic Faith.
Pope Leo XIII, with his Encyclical Rerum novarum (1891), laid the foundation for Catholic social teaching, which has been the cornerstone for a modern society of justice and freedom wherever it is authoritative. A confrere of the new Pope, Martin Luther, involuntarily helped to cause schism in the days of the bad popes in the Renaissance era (1521). This happened during the pontificate of Pope Leo X.
Let us hope that the new Pope with the same name, an Augustinian monk like Martin Luther 500 years later, will follow the good and saintly popes of the last 250 and contribute to overcoming the divisions in Christendom and the tensions in the world, so that all Christians may be united in Christ, the Son of the living God, and that, with the help of the moral authority of the papacy, the peace of God might enter the hearts of men, and hatred and war on earth might be overcome.
May all Christians and people of good will accompany Pope Leo XIV with their prayers that his pontificate will be a blessing for the Church and the world.
(Editor’s note: This commentary appeared originally, in German, on the kath.net site and is translated for CWR by Michael J. Miller.)
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