Reading Francis

Second Day Thoughts on Pope Leo XIV

1. When Grandpa dies, you don’t recast the role. I’m 100% onboard with Pope Leo XIV, but seeing a new guy in white makes the loss of Pope Francis real in a different way.
2. Kevin Farrell could have been the first American pope. You may have heard the name – Cardinal Farrell is the camerlengo, the guy designated to keep the Vatican running between popes – and while he was not a serious contender for the papacy, he wasn’t that much less likely than Cardinal Prevost. Before taking leadership roles in the Vatican, Farrell was the bishop of Dallas and before that an auxiliary bishop in Washington. We would absolutely have claimed him as ours. But he was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, his English has Irish brogue and not Texas drawl. By that math, if Farrell is American, Pope Leo XIV is at least as Peruvian as he is American.
3. That said, it is surreal to hear a pope speak in English that is unaccented to our American ears. The idea that a White Sox fan might one day celebrate mass as pope in Comiskey Park (or whatever they call it now) is mind-blowing. As exciting as it was for the US to welcome Pope Francis in 2015 (even if nobody could understand his English) or John Paul II back in the day, an American-born pope coming home is just mind-blowing. All of which makes me feel for the people of Argentina in a new way. They must have felt like this, dreaming of the day of Pope Francis’ homecoming. It never happened – if he had stayed healthy for a few more years, perhaps it would have. That’s a little heartbreaking in a way I didn’t recognize until just now.
4. Regardless, I suspect Pope Leo XIV will visit Peru before he visits the US. Francis set a tone (as did John Paul II) of going to the ends of the earth to connect with people, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a US visit remains low on the pope’s priority list for a while. We’ll see.
5. A friend asked if the cardinals chose an American pope to try to bring back American Catholics who have been alienated by the US Church’s politics, and I told her that I thought that very unlikely. Many cardinals said before the conclave that nationality really shouldn’t be a factor (mostly in response to questions about whether they would choose an Italian), and I think their choice bears that out, because an American pope is like the US winning the men’s World Cup: it’s just not fair that a country that has so much power and attention should be in the center of something that it doesn’t even care that much about. They decided that Prevost was the guy regardless.
6. I don’t think that Americans recognize how much our EWTN-driven trad Cath subculture is out of step with the global Church, and the US bishops as a whole reflect a culturally conservative bias and a willingness to thumb their nose at Rome that is well outside the norm. (You could argue by the way that the German bishops are a mirror to the Americans, staking out a more progressive path than Francis’ Vatican could tolerate.) That may change, especially if Pope Leo continues to sideline the more strident conservative voices, accepting their retirements at the earliest possible moment, and replacing them with new voices. Given that Cardinal Prevost ran the shop that did exactly this for Francis, it seems likely that the balance will keep shifting.
7. I think a lot of people assumed that the next pope would take the name Paul VII, because St. Paul VI followed St. John XXIII, who was very much like Francis. Paul VI completed and implemented the revolutionary Second Vatican Council that John XXIII started, and the thought is that Francis started some things with a reform of the Roman Curia and the introduction of a new concept of synodality that the next pope would need to flesh out. I take Leo XIV’s name as a sign that this pope plans to be an implementer, but also a creative force all his own.
8. I’m still going to write more about Pope Leo’s first speeches – his Urbi et Orbi and his first homily – later, but I have no doubt that it was very intentional that he spoke in Spanish from the loggia and saved his English for the next day. It was a subtle way to downplay his Americanness, honor his Peruvian home, and send a message of welcome and comfort to Spanish speakers who, given the current US position on immigration, might be worried about an English-speaking American pontiff.

More later.