Is the pope Catholic?
Yes, it turns out he is. Meet the first American-born pope, Leo XIV, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost.
I am not Catholic. I could go on (and on, and on) about why not, and about all of the huge, substantial theological differences between my Baptist tradition and the Roman Catholic Church and why I think we’re right and they’re wrong. And my wife, who was raised Catholic, could go on much, much longer about all the reasons why she is emphatically no longer a part of that church.
But for all of that, we Baptists and Catholics still have a great deal in common and we’re still family — cousins if not quite siblings. A new leader for the largest global branch of Christianity is a big deal even for us Christians who aren’t a part of that tradition.
It’s a bit like the relationship between my Baptist alma mater, Eastern University, and its much-larger neighbor two stops away, Villanova.
That’s especially true in this specific case as it turns out that the new pope is a ‘Nova grad. That’s well before my time (he was class of ’77), but it’s still odd to think that the pope has spent time on the R5 and hung out at Minella’s Diner.
Prevost was born and raised in Chicago — a city that is rightfully claiming him today — but there’s a lot of Philly pride being celebrated too.
Most of Prevost’s ministry wasn’t here in America, but in Peru, where he served with the Augustinian Order for 30-some years. He is both an American and a Peruvian citizen. The NCR piece linked above discusses how his many years in South America shaped Prevost’s theology in a post-Liberation Theology, but still preferential-option-for-the-poor direction.
That’s promising. So, too, is Prevost’s choice of the name Leo XIV, apparently in honor of Leo XIII, the pope who wrote Rerum Novarum (or “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor”), launching modern Catholic social teaching on economics.
And, like many others, I’m encouraged to learn that while Prevost rarely spent much time on social media, his few tweets involved a smackdown of Vice President J.D. Vance’s bungled, ethno-nationalist misinterpretation of Catholic teaching — “JD Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” And criticism of mass-deportation.
That shouldn’t be surprising because, again, is the pope Catholic? Yes. That’s kind of his whole deal. And while the MAGA-right and the anti-immigrant white Christian nationalist crowd is spending much of today howling about our new “woke pope,” everything they’re criticizing as “woke” is really just basic Catholic — and also small-c catholic — Christian teaching.
Prevost/Leo XIV served as the head of the Augustinian Order for many years. The Augustinians are probably best known among us Protestants for being the order that Martin Luther belonged to. “Augustinian” theology is too vast and vague to tell us much of anything specific about the new pope’s particular beliefs, and I could again go on (and on) about all the many ways I disagree with various things St. Augustine taught (particularly wherever he was still a lot more Neo-Platonist than he realized). But generally speaking, I’ll take “Augustinian, but not in a Lutheran sense” as a positive.
My favorite remark from St. Augustine is his gloss on 1 Corinthians 13: “Anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them.”
If Leo XIV is that kind of Augustinian then, well, Go Wildcats!
(The title for this post comes from Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago.”)
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