A few days after Leo XIV's Pope, the new Pope began laying out his vision of how he would guide the Catholic Church.
Like his predecessor, he plans to embrace the poor and marginalized people. He wants to continue Francis' efforts to open the doors of the Vatican and hear many voices outside the church hierarchy. And in a clear indication that this is the Pope, who is keenly touched on the greatest test of modernity, he said the Church will address the challenges that artificial intelligence brings to “human dignity, justice and labor.”
As the leader of nearly 1.4 billion followers, a population equal to the size of China and India, Pope Leo's words are nearly one in six people in the world. He also has a powerful global pulpit, so the issues he chooses to focus can resonate well beyond his Catholic brothers.
Francis' energy, charisma and compassion reminded us that not only Catholics, but other Catholics in their faith and secular circles, the Pope becomes a public voice in their ethical life.
Francis took up the mantle of the poor and immigrants and the need to respond urgently to climate change. He was a man of powerful gestures, making his first official trip to Lampedusa, a small Mediterranean island where thousands of desperate asylum seekers and immigrants were about to enter Europe, or visiting prisoners to kiss the feet of prisoners. Just before he was admitted to hospital in February, he undertook President Trump's massive deportation policy, calling it a violation of “the dignity of many men and all his family.”
Leo takes over the Pope during a period of turbulent global issues. Wars are fought in several ways, with the political sphere of many countries being polarised, economic inequality increasing, and people struggle to make basic human connections through the oceans of disinformation and appropriation on social media.
“We are a moment when moral forces around the world and religious forces around the world are deeply responsible for saying that there's no need to do this,” said Rev. William J. Barber II, vice minister and founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.
All Popes use his global platform to highlight specific issues. John Paul II played a key role in the collapse of Soviet and European communism, planting the seeds of the Polish solidarity and labor movement. Millions of people came to listen to him speak and encouraged them to act independently of the communist government and to protest their authoritarian leaders.
Benedict XVI was a conservative scholar who tried to return the church to its basic doctrine, and emerged as a critic of the American war in Iraq and an advocate for environmental protection.
The Pope doesn't always represent moral forgiveness. In the most obvious example, the credibility of the Catholic Church is severely damaged by the widespread sexual abuse crisis, which survivors and critics say multiple popes are mistreating.
Scholars are debating whether Pope Pius XII during World War II knew about the Holocaust and did not stand up to Hitler, or whether he secretly arranged local Catholics to save local Catholics from the Nazis, so he remained silent publicly.
The Pope's global perception allows him to speak with a unique force. As someone who transcends national interests, he can bring together political leaders and act for the benefit of the collective.
For example, Francis wrote in 2015 the first environmentally focused pope, describing climate change as the threat of the poor with the greatest outcomes. That same year, 195 countries signed a landmark agreement in Paris, with at least 10 world leaders quoting the Pope during their speeches at the United Nations Climate Conference.
However, the Pope's upheaval is limited, subject to international politics, cultural warfare and the turbulent macroeconomic mercury changes. And one of the most basic Catholic doctrines for defending peace is often the most difficult goal to reach.
Francis explicitly appealed to the peace between Ukraine and Gaza, which Leo reverberated on Sunday, reverberated on Sunday, when he descended on his hands and knees to kiss the feet of the South Sudan government and its opposing war leaders.
As one voice at the world stage, the Pope's ability to coordinate changes depends on the global political context. Francis became pope when natural allies like former US President Barack Obama and former German Prime Minister Angela Merkel supported his immigration-friendly message. By the time Francis died, the world had moved to a more correct order, with President Trump of the United States, Victor Orban of Hungary, and Giorgia Meloni of Italy.
Pope Francis “missed an era where the issue of immigration was more complicated and trade-offs,” said Oxford historian Miles Pattenden, who studies the Catholic Church. The new Pope “is just saying that he'll continue doing what Francis did and become a remote area,” he added.
some The issue of culture war, activists on both sides may try to assert the new Pope as their own. The Liberal Party accepts his defense in return I was oppressed. Conservatives urge Leo to stick to current Catholic doctrines on issues such as gay marriage.
In the United States, where the new Pope is born and raised, Leo hopes to continue Francis' role as a counterweight to President Trump's anti-immigration agenda. “We argue that America's religious rights can challenge some of Trump's declarations by having a certain captured religion and that their faith supports their political views and has a pope from the United States,” said Kaila Jewel Ringo, a Buddhist writer and teacher of Dharma, based in upstate New York.
It is too early for Pope Leo to know how to exercise his voice outside the church. Religious leaders warn him against wearing shoes in a proper political framework.
People tend to project the Pope's desire to play for his team, and ask, “Is Trump important in the world, is he opposed to Trump, or is he opposed to Trump?” “But in reality, the left and right polarities miss all the really interesting things about religion.”
Many constituencies want the Pope to talk about the causes of their pets, but he can also speak to the desire for basic decency and acceptance across religions.
“If what he says and what he symbolizes honors all the different people on earth, then it's a person of power with so much influence that he can say those things,” said Samantha Berman, 31, Jewish and originally a Rome teacher of art.
That alone makes “a lot of people feel seen, heard and loved,” she said.
Josephine de la Bleuyere Elisabetta Povoredo contributed a report from Rome.
