Published May 13, 2025
After an Intense Month in Rome
by George Weigel
⇒ The Name
I was very happy with the new pope’s choice of regnal name. As I suggested in The Irony of Modern Catholic History and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II, Pope Leo XIII created the modern papacy and the Catholic grand strategy of engaging the modern world in order to convert it. Leo XIII also took the Church in the United States seriously as something new in the Catholic experience: a flourishing local Church that was institutionally separated from the state and sought only to be allowed to be itself. Here was something to think about, and that thinking eventually bore fruit in Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom Dignitatis Humanae—which in turn made possible the transformation of the Catholic Church into what Oxford historian Sir Michael Howard once described as the world’s greatest institutional defender of basic human rights.
By creating John Henry Newman a cardinal, Leo XIII made clear that there was no one-size-fits-all template for doing theology in an authentically Catholic key. And by giving a papal seal of approval to Newman’s work, Leo XIII underscored Newman’s brilliant method of distinguishing between genuine developments of doctrine, on the one hand, and ruptures with settled truth masquerading as “paradigm shifts” (to use a term prevalent in the past twelve years) on the other.
Then there was Leo’s devotion to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, whom he brought back to the center of Catholic intellectual life. In doing so, he reaffirmed the Catholic conviction that faith and reason are, as Pope John Paul II would put it a century later, the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth. And, of course, Leo XIII was the father of modern Catholic social doctrine, the classical line of which runs from his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum through John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus in 1991.
But let’s not forget Pope St. Leo I, “Leo the Great.” A master homilist and the man who settled matters at the crucial Council of Chalcedon by providing the formula by which the Church could understand the two natures (human and divine) in the one person of Christ, Leo was also a courageous defender of his people against those invading “barbarian” ancestors of mine known as the Huns. In that, he set a model of papal intervention in “the world” that would be deployed to good effect in the centuries to follow
There is, then, a noble, “Leonine” legacy that the new pope has taken to himself by his choice of regnal name.
⇒ Papal Haberdashery
The amount of ink (and pixels) expended on Pope Leo XIV’s vesture when he presented himself to the Church and the world immediately after his election was striking. Rather than focusing on his beautiful, biblically-based greeting and his Christ-centered message, there was an inordinate amount of attention focused on the mozzetta, stole, and pectoral cross he wore.
What did all that mean? Permit me a simple answer: It means we have a pope who grasps the nature of the Petrine Office—and who understands that the office should not be bent to personal idiosyncrasies.
⇒ But Where Does He Stand?
It was a sign of the deep anxieties surrounding this papal interregnum and conclave—anxieties created in part by the ambiguities of the previous pontificate—that Catholics of a certain disposition were immediately ringing alarm bells last Thursday night, while the media scrum tried to pin the new pope down, or spin him, on a variety of controversial matters. The indefatigable William Doino Jr., one of the Church’s great researchers, helpfully circulated a florilegium of texts on which the 267th bishop of Rome had spoken about some of those matters in his pre-papal days. With gratitude to Bill, I am happy to share them here:
Robert Prevost on the inherently countercultural aspects of the New Evangelization:
1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WttXvZt3m6k
2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLkGBu0y1pQ
Prevost on the right to life at all stages and in all conditions:
Marcha por la vida en Chiclayo. ¡Defendamos la vida humana en todo momento! pic.twitter.com/L5rUMYF3Kt— Robert Prevost (@drprevost) March 21, 2015
Prevost on the clericalization of women in debates over ordination
Prevost on euthanasia, reposting this news story.
As this New York Post story suggests, the new pope does not fit easily into the usual ideological boxes.
As his comments on evangelically serious Catholics being necessarily countercultural suggest, however, I think it’s fair to say that Pope Leo knows that the bottom-line civilizational crisis of the moment is the anthropological crisis: the crisis in the very idea of the human person. Are we cosmic accidents or creations? Are there truths built into the world and into us, truths that, acknowledged, lead to human flourishing, personal happiness, and social solidarity—or is meaning something we impose on reality by acts of will? Is our destiny oblivion or glory?
⇒ Repairing the Machinery
At his meeting with the cardinals last Saturday, the new pope was told—at one moment very dramatically—that the dysfunctionality and vindictiveness that had characterized too much of Vatican and Roman life in recent years had to be addressed because it was destroying lives. Pope Leo must have known about some of that nastiness from his years as a dicasterial head. But when a senior cardinal tearfully pleads with the new bishop of Rome to get to grips with all this, the problems become inescapable.
As ever, personnel is policy, and the new pope will tell us a lot about his vision of the future by how he reconfigures the senior leadership of the Church in Rome. At the same time, the cardinals made it clear during the pre-conclave General Congregations that it is past time to complete the reform of Vatican finance, before the current annual deficits lead to disaster and the unfunded pension liability becomes even worse—a potential future default on obligations that will be felt most heavily by the Vatican’s little people.
A Pauline pope who is a great evangelist and public witness is a bonus. The essence of the Office of Peter is not, however, Pauline. It is Petrine, and not just as a matter of nomenclature. In Acts 15, Paul comes to Peter for a decision. Orderly, considerate, careful, and law-governed decision-making after appropriate consultation is what Peter is for. And effecting badly needed repairs in the machinery that is supposed to support Petrine decision-making—which in several cases necessitates changes in personnel—will help determine the success of this new pontificate.
⇒ A Remarkable Comeback . . .
During the NBC broadcast on the evening of the new pope’s election, I remarked that the extraordinary global attention being paid to this papal transition marked a great historical comeback.
When the last rump of the Papal States was absorbed into the new Kingdom of Italy in 1870 and Pope Pius IX disappeared behind the Leonine Wall as the self-described “Prisoner of the Vatican,” more than a few among the European great and good declared the papacy a spent historical force. Yet here we were, 155 years later; the British, French, German, Russian, Japanese, and Austro-Hungarian empires are no more; and the world’s attention was riveted on a jury-rigged chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, awaiting the identity of Pius IX’s twelfth successor, who would lead the world’s largest Christian community. No other election—real, as in the democracies, or fake, as in Russia and China—could draw such global attention.
Anyone predicting this in 1870 would have been dismissed as a romantic, a fantasist, or both.
⇒ . . . But Too Tight a Focus?
The downside to the media tsunami here in Rome for the past three weeks is that it reinforces the false notion that the pope is the only thing happening in the Catholic Church, or at least the only thing to which attention should be paid—and that just isn’t true. In a meeting with some six thousand media people yesterday, Pope Leo gently suggested that they widen the lens of perception, look around the world Church, and tell stories other than Vatican stories.
This narrowing of focus is not just a media problem, however. Too many Catholics are too obsessed with what goes on in Rome—or what they think is going on in Rome, filtered and distorted as that is by media and internet bias. This is my third conclave, and I am more convinced than ever that Vatican reality and mainstream media reality are most often not the same; and things are far worse online and in social media, two instruments that remind us why God created editors.
The aforementioned Pius IX, who reigned from 1846 to 1878, was the first pope whose picture Catholics displayed in their homes; prior to that, most Catholics had no idea who the bishop of Rome was or what, if any role, he played in their lives. As Matthew Franck ably wrote in these Letters, we could use a pope we don’t have to think about every day: pray for every day, to be sure; but not obsessed with every day. In the American context, we already have enough of that from the White House, the tight focus on which tends to distort the rest of what’s going on in the country.
So perhaps a media-downsized papacy is in order?
⇒ I Giornali Italiani Strike Out Again
In August 1978, Italian newspapers were declaring Cardinal Sergio Pignedoli the next pope, if they weren’t doing the same for Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio; neither got any significant support in the conclave that elected Albino Luciani.
In the second 1978 conclave, Cardinals Giovanni Benelli or Giuseppe Siri were pre-elected; both lost, and Karol Wojtyła won.
It was Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini’s turn to be pre-elected by the Italian media in 2005; the landslide victor was Joseph Ratzinger.
Cardinal Angelo Scola was “elected” by the Italian papers in 2013; Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected by the real electors.
And this year, the Italian press elected Cardinal Pietro Parolin before Pope Francis was even buried.
There would seem to be something resembling an iron law of papal psephology at work here.
⇒ Catholic Leadership of the Future
Amidst everything else that was going on here in Rome these past three weeks, the Church of the future was coming into clearer focus, as cardinals from the new churches of Africa and Asia made their presence and insights felt. So was the future of Catholic leadership. Among the “peripherals” making a strong impression were Cardinal William Goh of Singapore, Cardinal Virgilio do Carmo da Silva of East Timor, and Cardinal Peter Okpaleke of Nigeria. These are all men of dynamic orthodoxy, committed to the New Evangelization, and capable of eloquently presenting the case for clarity in the Church’s doctrinal and moral teaching.
They should, and will, continue to be heard from.
⇒ Wisdom from Trondheim
I had expected to be spending Easter Week and a few days beyond with Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, when the death of Pope Francis and various other pre-existing obligations sent me immediately to Rome. Bishop Varden was kind enough to go ahead with an event at which he helped present the Norwegian edition of my Vatican II book, To Sanctify the World. He then doubled down on his kindness by sending to Rome with an American seminarian who was in Trondheim for Holy Week and Easter a gift of Aquavit—although I’ll confess that I deferred my introduction to Scandinavian firewater until after things had settled down a bit in the Eternal City!
In any event, it was no surprise to me that the author of the indispensable blog Coram Fratribus should have produced a most thoughtful reflection on a conclave and a papal election in an interview with Luke Coppen. I borrowed some themes from it on NBC on “election night,” but I would like to close these reflections by citing the entire text here:
The thing is: here it is not a matter of anyone winning. Do we think of the weight that will be placed on the future pope’s shoulders from the moment of his acceptance? Do we consider the account he will one day have to render to the Judge of all?
If you read Dante, or consider any number of medieval paintings of the Last Judgment, you will see no shortage of mitered heads in the nether realms. This is something I, as a bishop, consider with trembling. The stakes are vast.
The fortitude and faith required of the Roman Pontiff defy imagination: that poor man must be at once very strong and very pliable; he must be intensely present in this world’s affairs yet live an utterly supernatural life; he must practise dispossession to a heroic degree, with not a moment’s respite; he must consent from the depth of his heart to the Petrine call: “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18). Who can live up to this?
Instead of considering the college of cardinals as a stable of horses, and queuing at the betting shop, I think we should think and pray in these terms: Right now Providence is preparing a man of God’s choosing to assume a supremely privileged share in Christ’s Paschal oblation, to live out this intimate charge until death, in the scrutiny of a prying world whose attitude is fickle, which, in a moment, will turn from shouting “Hosanna!” to hissing, “Crucify!”
Habemus papam! Oremus pro eo ferventer ac vehementer.
Click here to continue reading the rest of this letter.
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
