Within a few hours of the election of Pope Leo XIV and his masterful presentation of himself to the Church and the world from the central loggia of the Vatican basilica, I received an email from an old friend, a member of a prominent Catholic family in Nicaragua:
Dear George: Praise God for Pope Leo XIV, Papa León! He [visited us several years ago.] There is a sense of renewed hope. May God bless him and bless us. I hope you are well. Sending much love — *****.
I can’t name my correspondent; doing so would put my friend’s family at greater risk from the odious Ortega/Murillo regime, which is viciously persecuting the Catholic Church in long-suffering Nicaragua. My friend is a realist who knows that popes in the twenty-first century lack power, as the world understands power. Thanks to the example of John Paul II, however, this devout Catholic and Nicaraguan patriot also knows that popes can wield immense moral power, summoning oppressed people to fearlessness and forming new coalitions of conscience to resist tyranny.
That is what my friend and many others hope for from Pope Leo—that and, I imagine, a more vigorous defense of the persecuted Nicaraguan Church and its people than was forthcoming from the Vatican over the past dozen years. Such a vocal, public defense of the persecuted may not produce immediate results, but it shines the light of international publicity on cruelties that tyrants would prefer to leave in the dark. And that illumination provides a measure of protection for those determined to defend religious freedom and other basic human rights. As a former missionary in some tough situations, Pope Leo knows that.
Nicaragua is not, of course, the only venue where the Vatican should step up its game in the face of persecution. There is Venezuela. There is Cuba. There is Nigeria. And there is China, where the Xi Jinping regime marked the death of Pope Francis with a blatant violation of the accord the late pope made in 2018, by “electing” and “installing” a new bishop without a papal mandate—there being no pope to issue such a mandate. There was less discussion of current Vatican China policy than I had expected in the General Congregations of cardinals preceding the conclave. But since it is now pluperfectly obvious that the policy is a failure, I wouldn’t be surprised if a complete reassessment of it were ordered up by the new pope. There certainly should be.
Despite a lot of silly media and internet speculations about the effects of a U.S.-born pope on the world political scene, Pope Leo XIV’s immediate priorities will likely be ecclesiastical rather than geopolitical. He has to get to grips, and quickly, with the Vatican’s eroding financial situation. Contributions to the Holy See from the United States have been declining in recent years, and that isn’t going to change significantly unless there is a massive overhaul of Vatican finance, including transparency in budgeting and accounting, fiscal and personnel reforms to deal with structural budget deficits, and a realistic plan for addressing a multibillion-euro unfunded pension liability. The United States can and will help, but only when major donors are confident that the current administrative chaos and financial sleaze have been addressed and corrected.
Just as urgent, though, is the need to strengthen the keel of the Barque of Peter by restoring clarity and stability in teaching and pastoral practice.
There was a lot of discussion of “synodality” in the cardinals’ pre-conclave General Congregations, but without that murky term being defined with any more precision. If “synodality” means that the newer local Churches are heard in Rome more than in the past, well and good. But on this 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, which settled the question of the divinity of Christ and gave us the Creed we still recite, Pope Leo will be very aware that “synodality” cannot mean that everything is up for grabs in a Church misconceived as an ongoing discussion group. There are settled matters of belief and practice in the Catholic Church. And those matters were—and are and will be—settled by the Church’s authoritative teachers, the bishops.
As the great Chesterton once noted, “An open mind, like an open mouth, should close on something.” Pope Leo is an experienced man of governance, so he knows that. And it is entirely reasonable to hope that he will govern in such a way that Catholics are reminded of a basic truth: solidity, not liquidity, is the hallmark of “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).
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Hopefully, the rancor of the past is passed.
Thank you George.
What a blessing to have a Pope again, a pastor of pastors, a Vicar of Christ. Hopefully, Pope Leo will not add to the epic mess left by Franciscus but heal the heteropraxy of the previous pontificate. If Pope Leo cannot address every wound, we pray that future pontificates will finish the restoration of the papacy.
As for obedience, who told us it would be easy? Our Lord, the only Way, had a hard time of it. Christ is risen after He was crucified.
I agree with Mr. Weigel, and I feel that we have reason to hope.
There appears to be at least one major difference between Pope Leo and his predecessor:
Leo seems bright.
Quite an unfounded jab at a man who successfully completed the strenuous intellectual training required of the Jesuits.
That’s fair but what of it? There was never a smarter creature than Satan, and the Blessed Mother likely had no intellectual training. God preserved her from a Jesuit education! Blah blah blah…💋
The salient issue is not the intelligence of Franciscus but how he used it to implement his ideological agendas.
Please, James Connor, the Jesuits of today are a mere shadow of the intellects in their past. The Jesuits suffer from terminable mission creep.
On a clear-skied mountain trail in coastal Oregon, I asked a Jesuit of an earlier mold (who was unambiguously Catholic) why so many priests seemed so lacking. His response: “three squares and a flop.”
So, from one of his many book reviews, an examination of Malachi Martin’s “The Jesuits” (1987):
“In 1965 [Jesuit General Pedro] Arrupe decided to do battle with Pope Paul VI, a kind and weak and tearful man who had made his initial mistake years earlier in listening to Jacques Maritain’s exhortation to work with the world. At General Council 31 [1964-5] the Jesuits decided to transform Paul VI’s commission to fight atheism into the socio-political struggle of the masses. The spiritual and supernatural element in Jesuit Catholicism had been excised [….] General Council 32 [1974-5] converted the Society of Jesus from an arm of the Church engaged in indispensable apostolic works to ‘faith in the service of justice,’ i.e., revolution against the socio-economic-political structure of the capitalist West [….] They succeeded in amalgamating nature with revelation.”
(Gerard Steckler SJ, 1927-2015, in the journal “Faith and Reason,” 1988; note that the mentioned Maritain reflected in his later “The Peasant of the Garonne” [1968] that Christians in general had become engaged in “a kind of kneeling before the world”.)
pf was pathetically uneducated
Unfounded? No, well directed towards the undisciplined mind of a narcissistic pope whose alleged “strenuous training,” where little actual testing in involved, could not even make the logical connection between the sex revolution and abortion. But then, it’s the same for many Jesuits.
Well said!
We must pray for this man, Pope Leo, who at retirement age must become all things to all men. May God help him!
Weigel identifies the key for Leo XIV, a Pope who openly favors Synodality, that “synodality cannot mean that everything is up for grabs in a Church misconceived as an ongoing discussion group” (G Weigel). In that vein:
“On the heated debate on doctrinal authority for national episcopal conferences during the final phase of the Synod on Synodality in 2024 he expressed himself moderately and cautiously: ‘Each episcopal conference needs to have a certain authority in terms of saying, How are we going to understand this [doctrine] in the concrete reality in which we are living?’ This is not to say that the episcopal conferences are going to be rejecting the teaching authority of the pope, but that they’re going to be applying it in the unique context in which they live” (Pope Leo XIV then Cdl Prevost prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops quoted by Rorate Caeli).
Application in the unique context in which we live is a loaded comment open to varied interpretations that time will tell. The concern is whether it opens doctrine to finessed variations from what the doctrine actually says. Nuance can leave matters unsettled, whereas clarity is what our Church requires especially in context of the former pontificate.
The source for my comments from Rorate Caeli is the article titled Who Got Played? in today’s Extra extra.
I think it’s best not to project our own wishes, desires, and perspectives on the new pope. It is probably wisest to wait and see, to listen carefully and watch closely, and then draw reasonable conclusions based on the best evidence we can discern at any given time.
Perhaps the needed “best evidence” is that the worst of the front runners were not elected.
Yes. Let’s hope for the best but remain vigilant. We can’t afford a Francis 2.0
Let us not make the Pope to carry our old baggages. Let us, instead, lessen his burdens by subscribing to his own ideals: continuity and community, the hallmarks of a Church that is Synodal.
And with such vagueness and taking refuge in platitudinous nouns comes the inevitable downplaying of sin and need for redemption and more suffering for the victims of sin.
The election of Pope Leo XIV has brought a wave of renewed hope to many within the Catholic Church, particularly after a period marked by perceived doctrinal ambiguity. The preceding pontificate, while striving for outreach and engagement, had inadvertently sown seeds of confusion among the faithful, with interpretations of certain pronouncements causing significant concern regarding their alignment with established Tradition. Therefore, the election of Pope Leo XIV, has been seen by many, as a moment of needed clarity.
Many of us are hopeful that Pope Leo XIV will guide the Church towards a period of renewed stability and fidelity to its enduring teachings. In a time where the world seems to be in constant change, we look to the church as a constant, or a rock. A quote that seems to be applicable at this time is from St. Augustine: “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.” It is my hope that Pope Leo XIV will help lead many to this great achievement.
Continuity and communion in obedience to The Word Made Flesh is the only necessary thing.
Contributions to the Holy See from the United States have been declining in recent years, and that isn’t going to change significantly unless there is a massive overhaul of Vatican finance…” Well, I don’t know how big money contributors look at the situation, but I can say that every conversation I have had with serious Catholics over the past decade concerning contributions to the Church has come down to this: “No more money until the perversion and heresy in the Vatican and the hierarchy are addressed, and effectively. No more money at all. Not to the diocese, the USCCB, Catholic Relief Services, or to Peter’s Pence.
Agreed. Pray, always. Obey, ministers obedient to Christ. Pay, for charities obedient to Christ.
We must follow Christ and fund His works in the Church. This does not mean that we must obey apostates or pay for corruption, cover-ups and other forms of incompetence and mismanagement. See Cardinal Müller, for instance: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/11/20/infallibility-and-the-limits-of-papal-power-an-interview-cardinal-gerhard-muller/
The Church rot is everywhere and easily pruned. One example, risk sinning against the environment and close the Dicastery for Integral Human Development. Cardinal Czerny, SJ, et al., can find a different tree to hug.
https://www.humandevelopment.va/en/il-dicastero/chi-siamo/personale.html
For the first time in 12 years, we have a Pope who doesn’t treat his own flock with contempt. I will offer him my support and prayers.
The glowing praise for Leo from most quarters at this time has truly only two sources…..firstly, he looks/acts/dresses as the benevolent monarch/pope, that is, in short, “not-Francis”…..secondly, vast amounts of wishful thinking/projection…
We will know what manner of pope he is only by his positive acts, and positive statements, and not by only benign generalities pleasing to all, uttered in a gentle popish manner, even though that already a radical departure from the previous papacy.
We shall see.
Thank you for your voice of reason. I too am “optimistic,” but the word itself means little. After the Bergoglian captivity of the Church, any slight, authentically Catholic gesture feels like a reprieve from the death penalty. It may all be an illusion. All we can do is pray.
What exactly can be our Hope, if those whose competence it is continue to allow the false magisterium to subsist within The One Body Of Christ, The One Bride Of Christ? The anti Christ church, that denies The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, The Perfect Eternal Divine Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Who Proceeds From Both The Father And The Son, and thus denies The Divinity Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity ?
From whence comes the erroneous notion that Christ Has Founded His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church in order to debate The Truth Of Love, And Not To Affirm Perfect Divine Eternal Salvational Love , For The Salvation Of Souls? Surely not from He Who Is Not A “ means between two extremes”; He Is Perfect Divine Eternal Truth And Love Incarnate.
in the past, those who denied The Deposit of Faith, would, like the Protestants, separate from The One Body Of Christ, and, in essence, deny The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, creating their own Religious Denomination. Today, in Salvational History, those Baptized Catholic, who deny that God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, in an obvious state of apostasy, thus denying their Baptismal Promise, through their denial of The Divinity Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, and thus, in essence, denying the essence of God, Who Is Perfect Divine Eternal Love, in what many have referred to as “the false spirit of Vatican II”, ipso facto, creating their own man made and thus counterfeit magisterium, are attempting to subsist within Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church. Why have they ipso facto, not been declared Charitably Anathema? And why, as we speak, has a Synod been created under a false ideology, grounded in a spirit of disunity , that denies Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and The Teaching Of The Magisterium, grounded in Sacred Tradition, And Sacred Scripture, The Deposit Of Faith, Christ Has Entrusted To His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, For The Salvation Of Souls?
“Penance, Penance, Penance.”
At this hour it is late, but not too late, for a validly elected True Successor of Peter who has both the ability and desire to affirm The Unity Of The Holy Of The Holy Ghost, and accept The “Forever” Office Of The MUNUS, and thus The Ministerial Office, and those Bishops in union with him, who, affirm their Baptismal Promises, and thus affirm that God, The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Eternal Divine Love, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque),Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, and charitably anathema the false magisterium that is attempting to eclipse The Light That Shines In The Darkness, The Light Of Perfect Divine Eternal Salvational Love Incarnate, Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ.
“They went out from us but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us: but that they may be manifest, that they are not all of us.” (1 John 2.19)
Dear Blessed Mother Mary, Mirror Of Justice And Destroyer Of All Heresy, Who Through Your Fiat, Affirmed The Filioque, and thus the fact that There Is Only One Son Of God, One Word Of God Made Flesh, One Lamb Of God Who Can Taketh Away The Sins Of The World, Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ, thus there can only be, One Spirit Of Perfect Complementary Love Between The Father And The Son, Who Must Proceed From Both The Father And The Son, In The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Complementary Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity (Filioque), hear our Prayer. 🙏✝️💕🌹 May Our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart Triumph soon, restoring Peace in Her Son’s One Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church. 🙏✝️💕🌹