The election of Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, is a stunning surprise – and not just because he is the first American to become the successor of St Peter.
Catholic traditionalists were confident that, after the radical turbulence of Pope Francis’s 12-year-reign, cardinals wanted a move away from a progressive, even secular, focus on social justice and climate change.
It looks as if they will be disappointed. The new pope, who grew up in Chicago but has spent most of his career in Latin America, was a protege of Francis, who in 2015 appointed him Bishop of Chiclayo, a city on the coast of Peru.
In 2023, Francis handed Prevost one of the most powerful positions in the Vatican: Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, which carries with it immense patronage. During his tenure, some very progressive bishops enjoyed significant promotions.
Pope Leo, a former head of the Augustinian order, is regarded as urbane, charming and a competent administrator.
Handsome by the standards of popes, he considers himself ‘quite the amateur tennis player’ and looks younger than his 69 years.
His swift election after the fourth ballot clearly shows that he has the ability to reach out to different factions in the Vatican.
He could not have achieved the necessary two thirds majority of 89 votes to win, unless he had persuaded centrist and moderate conservative cardinals to place their trust in him.
But whether Pope Leo will be able to heal the political and liturgical wounds in the wider Catholic Church remains to be seen.
It doesn’t seem likely, for example, that he will entirely remove Pope Francis’s restrictions on the old Latin Mass, which have caused particular anguish for Catholic traditionalists in the United States – and who will be praying that he at least adopts a more relaxed approach, given the growing popularity of the ancient ceremonies among young Catholics.
Indeed, it was rumoured in Rome on Thursday night that Pope Leo sometimes says the old Mass in private and, significantly, in his first appearance as Pope – unlike Francis – he wore full ceremonial robes.
When it comes to American politics, Pope Leo is fiercely anti-MAGA, going out of his way to attack Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, on social media.
He used X to share an article from a left-wing Catholic outlet headed ‘JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.’
He also reposted an accusation that President Trump was using the Oval office to support the ‘Feds’ illicit deportation of a US resident’.
Where does Leo stand on sensitive questions of sexuality, pastoral care and women’s ordination that now divide Catholics far more sharply than they did when Francis took office in 2013?
The College of Cardinals Report, an influential survey of the views of all the cardinals in the Church, wrote this year: ‘On key topics, Cardinal Prevost says little but some of his positions are known. He is reportedly very close to Francis’s vision regarding the environment, outreach to the poor and migrants … He supported Pope Francis’s change in pastoral practice to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion.’
Prevost appears somewhat less inclined to curry favour with the LGBTQ lobby than Francis, but he showed mild support for unofficial blessings for gay couples.
In other words, Pope Leo’s record on ‘hot-button’ issues will do nothing to reassure theological conservatives, whose sense of disappointment was palpable in Rome on Thursday night.
But other Catholics, including some critics of Francis, believe the former Cardinal Prevost will restore a degree of order to the administration of the Church, which – especially in the Vatican – is nothing short of chaotic, thanks to the Argentinian pope’s dictatorial style and habit of bypassing canon law.
However, sad to say, there is already a shadow hanging over Leo’s pontificate. In recent months, his record on handling sex abuse cases has been criticised.
This week, the Catholic investigative website The Pillar republished the claim that in 2022 Prevost, then bishop of Chiclayo, failed to investigate claims by women that they were abused by two local priests. His response has been to point to a defence by his diocese maintaining that he ‘took the necessary canonical steps’. The article also claimed he declined to comment on an allegation that in 2000 he ‘allowed a Chicago archdiocesan priest who was accused of having sexually abused minors to live in an Augustinian rectory around the corner from a Catholic school’.
These allegations were so serious that Prevost was not considered electable by many Vatican commentators.
But if there is one lesson the public learns almost every time a pope is elected, it is that Vatican commentators, including me, are useless at predicting who will emerge on to the loggia of St Peter’s.
A tennis-playing pope from Chicago who goads his political opponents on social media while fighting off allegations of mishandling sex abuse cases? It didn’t seem possible – but it just happened.
Damian Thompson is former editor of the Catholic Herald, associate editor of The Spectator and presenter of its Holy Smoke religion podcast
