By SIMON
By vocation and through life and pastoral experience, Pope Leo XIV possesses a missionary heart and zeal. In his first public greeting as pope, he remarked: “We must seek together how to be a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges (and) dialogue, always open to receive (people), like this square, with open arms – everyone, all those who need our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”
His words and his missionary spirt have been formed by his globalist cum cosmopolitan experience of pastoral ministry and his extensive travels. He has lived for extended periods in the United States, Peru and Europe. He has lived and ministered at the center and the periphery.
Pope Leo has served in various capacities including as: a young priest and more mature missionary in Peru; Provincial of the Chicago-based Midwest Province of the Augustinians; Prior General of the order; Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru; Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops; and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
The Order of Saint Augustine (OSA), is present in approximately 50 countries, including in Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The friars serve in cities and rural areas.
As worldwide head of the order for two six-year terms, Pope Leo came to better appreciate the challenges and gifts of the global commons, the global church, and the Global South. He has experienced the centres of economic, political and church power and lived among those on the periphery of power and influence.
A man of the Americas, North and South, he also experienced many of the realities and tensions of the American superpower as well as the entrenched poverty of those on the margins in America and globally.
As an American who grew up, and worked in Chicago as an older man, and as a priest and bishop in poorer parts of Peru, the new pontiff also has strong views on racism and the struggles of indigenous people.
Why did Robert Prevost choose the name Leo XIV? For a new pope, his name is filled with a plenitude of meaning and history. It may include certain resonances. It includes contrasts and comparisons.
While Leo will continue a number of the reforms of his predecessor, he is not Francis 2.0. Like Leo XIII, who was the father of modern Catholic Social Teaching, the new pope will address the great contemporary social questions and signs of the times.
But the times are not same as those of Leo XIII. The new times include the communications and technology revolutions; the rise of new political and economic state and non-state powers; the effects of the climate emergency; and dynamics of a global Roman Catholic community in the context of Vatican II and subsequent papacies.
As reported by Vatican News, in his first address to the College of Cardinals he invoked the legacies of Francis and Leo XII: “Pope Leo XIII, with the historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. Today, the Church offers to all her treasure of social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and the developments of artificial intelligence.”
In the 1891 Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”), Leo XIII rejected certain forms of socialism and unregulated capitalism. What ethical and theological insights, urgent appeals, and new language will the new pope bring to the Church’s social treasury?
Though born in the US, Pope Leo is not seen as the so-called typical overbearing American. Instead, his citizenship of both the United States and Peru, makes him a bridge builder between continents, peoples and worldviews.
Leo XIV has come to the papacy with likely more global experience and travel than any other pope, which may be among the reasons a globally diverse College of Cardinals elected him.
In the modern era, Pope Paul VI began the tradition of greater travel by the pope. John Paul II expanded this travel of pilgrimage dramatically.
Pope Francis journeyed to countries no pope had ever visited including, countries ravaged by war and conflict and countries with small Roman Catholic or Christian populations.
Pope Leo will also visit major metropolitan areas. But he may surprise with pastoral and missionary trips to more so-called peripheral areas of the world. His pastoral style and message, formed in the Augustinian tradition and in Canon law, will be honed as the successor to St Peter and Francis.
A moderate and centrist, Leo appears to combine traditional and progressive values and practices. He is neither left nor right, often a too easy categorisation loudly broadcast and debated by the global media and some elites. Rather than right or left, Leo is Christ-centred.
An institutionalist in the best sense, most of his ministry has not been at the Vatican, where he only served as head of a dicastery for two years before becoming pope. He appears not to have been “captured” by the bureaucracy.
Pope Leo’s words and choices thus far have been a measured blend. He will likely please and upset traditionalists and progressives at times depending on the matter.
Still, those of varying dispositions on a range of ethical and ecclesiological matters, collectively desire a pope who will speak to the ever-urgent demands of peace and justice.
Like Francis, he continues to be an advocate for peace in various war zones. He has offered the Vatican as a site to host peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
What will Pope Leo’s vocation as a missionary and evangelist look like in his new ministry as spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic communion?
The old image of the missionary as someone who goes to a foreign land to impose the will of a Church or the imperial conceits of colonial powers, has long been replaced by a sense of mission that is one of accompaniment, companionship and reciprocity.
What contemporary understanding of mission (missiology) and church (ecclesiology), rooted in the Scriptures and church teachings, including social teachings, will Leo XIV bring to his community of faith and the world?
After the recent conclave, Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon, Archbishop of Port of Spain and President of the Antilles Episcopal Conference, of which The Bahamas is a member, issued a press release entitled, “Walking Together with the Caribbean: Pope Leo XIV and Our Church in the Peripheries.”
He noted: “The election of Pope Leo XIV signals not just continuity but also a new tone of quiet strength and missionary fidelity—one that speaks directly to the heart of the Caribbean Church.
“His deep roots in the Global South, formed by decades of missionary service in Peru, ensure that he understands the realities of poverty, cultural hybridity, and resilient faith that shape our region.”
What missionary fidelity and concern for social justice and human development might this new pope of the Americas, bring to the aspirations of the peoples of the Caribbean, who are typically sidelined?
We are often lumped in with Central and South America. But we have our own vitality, and our specific challenges which need to be addressed in greater detail and frequency by global institutions and states including the Holy See. The Caribbean needs advocates like the Vatican in the corridors of power.
There are various peripheries including, geographic, existential and theological peripheries.
From the so-called peripheries of Peru and other areas served by the Augustinians, what pastoral insights and lessons will Pope Leo, undoubtedly converted by the “peripheries”, bring to enliven, and to reform where necessary, the global church?
At the periphery is where deep encounter and exchange occur, gifts which Robert Prevost found in other lands, and which he now brings to the centre, and may now amplify in service of the global Roman Catholic commons.
Comments
birdiestrachan 3 weeks, 4 days ago
Loved the pope right away . The holy spirit and my heart are in accord with pope leo
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