We Have a New Pope! Now What?

So, we have a new Pope.

The new Pope’s name is Leo XIV, an American, and everybody’s got an opinion about him. I do too. I was having fun teasing the MAGAs on social media a couple weeks ago after the conclave, because the new Pope seems to despise J. D. Vance. But I haven’t written much more about him, except for a few paragraphs on my other blog talking about how significant it is that he’s from the US this time.  Here, on the specifically Catholic blog, I’ve been hesitating to say much. That’s deliberate on my part. He hasn’t done anything for me to write about yet. I’m waiting to see what happens.

We’re in a period now where everybody in the Church squeals with excitement over Pope Leo, and tries to exclaim that the Pope’s notions about Catholicism are exactly like their own.

Leo wore a little more bling when he came out to the balcony to greet us than Francis did, and he’s moving back into the traditional papal apartments, therefore some traditionalists have decided he’s one of them. He retweeted perfectly normal run-of-the-mill Catholic doctrine about immigrants, and Republicans start denouncing him as a woke Marxist. Everything he does will be the subject of intense speculation like this for some time. And then, when the commentators have decided whether the Pope is sufficiently like them or not, they’ll start painting every single thing he does as either a sign of his sanctity or a sign that he’s the Antipope until he passes away. I’m holding out on giving much of an opinion, because Leo hasn’t actually done anything as Pope yet. If I find out tomorrow that he gave President Zelenskyy one of those little hard candies that looks like a strawberry during their private audience, and then chased J. D. Vance out of the Vatican while breaking a Baptismal candle, that will be worthy of a remark. So far, nothing like that has happened.

In addition to speculating, commentators have begun warning Pope Leo about things he’d better not do, and the Pope has been ignoring them.

For example, our old pal Raymond Arroyo has publicly announced that immigration, of all things, is “not the Pope’s job!” And I encourage you to read my friend Henry Matthew Alt’s whole takedown of that absurd statement, because I couldn’t possibly have done a better job. Of course, immigrants are the Pope’s business. Of course, the man whose job it is to lead the Catholic Church is going to have a lot to say about the way people ought to treat immigrants. It would be ridiculous to say otherwise. And I do appreciate what the Pope is saying so far. But he’s just being a Catholic. It’s not extraordinary in any way.

The Church has never been leftist or right-wing or Trad or progressive; it’s only ever been the Church.

And I know you’re already in the comment box typing why your particular Catholic clique is the true, authentic Catholicism and everyone else is going to hell, but the fact is, you’re wrong.

You see, American Catholics like you and I only make up 7% of the Church. And by that I mean the 1.4 billion members of the Church Militant who happen to be on earth just now; we’re a much tinier demographic of the Church throughout history. The political and cultural squabbles we attempt to project on Catholicism are our own. They’re very important to us, in our journey as Catholics. But they’re not the Catholic Church. Even now that the Pope is from the United States, that doesn’t make the Church American.  The Catholic Church, take it or leave it, is just the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church is a body of believers who live all over the world, try to live out the teachings in different ways, and are very different from one another, and usually get into fights about who’s right, and often hurt one another. The teachings of the Catholic Church are a body of teachings, some of which are indelible dogma and some of which evolve with time, and we trust that when we profess a dogma we profess a truth, and we hope that as the doctrine develops bit by bit it gets closer and closer to what the Holy Ghost was trying to tell us. The magisterium of the Catholic Church is a hierarchy of men who wear silly hats, and we trust Christ’s declaration that the gates of Hell will not prevail, sometimes because of and sometimes in spite of the magisterium’s best efforts.

And Pope Leo is the one who gets to be the boss of the Catholic Church for the next several years.

And my only remark, so far, is to be careful not to project your own notions of what that means onto somebody else. Let’s pray for him, and watch and see what he does. That’s all.

Well, that and I’m glad he seems to despise J. D. Vance.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.