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“Cardinal Robert Prevost, a long-time missionary in Latin America, was elected as the surprise choice to be the new leader of the Catholic Church on Thursday, becoming the first U.S. pope and taking the name Leo XIV… Prevost, 69 and originally from Chicago, has spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru and has dual Peruvian nationality.” Reuters
Here’s our recent coverage of Pope Francis’s passing. The Flip Side
The left is cautiously optimistic about the new pope.
“The Catholic Church is nearly 2,000 years old, while the left/right spectrum only dates to the French Revolution, a little over 200 years ago. The accretion of church teaching over the centuries—not to mention the historically remote context of such ancient texts as the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, and the writings of the early church—make the church simultaneously very conservative and very radical…
“It does seem that Leo XIV, like Francis, gives a high priority to care for migrants and the poor. Leo XIV also supported the Black Lives Matter movement and has been friendly to gun control. But he’ll also likely continue to hold fast to traditionalist gender norms and the natural law doctrine that makes the church hostile to LGBTQ rights…
“What’s politically significant is that right-wingers such as Vance have tried to co-opt the church along partisan lines… The choice by the College of Cardinals of the first American pope as someone with a record of opposing xenophobia might in fact have a conscious political dimension: It’s a rebuff of the attempt by figures like Vance to pretend that they alone own the church—an institution that has a global reach and a diverse membership.”
Jeet Heer, The Nation
“Though more moderate and diplomatic in manner, the new pontiff seems likely to stick to the reforming direction of travel set by his predecessor… The deliberately inclusive language of his Thursday evening address in St Peter’s Square suggested that he will continue Francis’s ‘synodal’ mission to open up ecclesiastical structures to greater lay influence. For women in the church, that will hopefully mean a further rise in influence after the incremental gains of the last papacy.”
Editorial Board, The Guardian
“Historically, the Church in America has periodically been divided over a multitude of issues… But if there’s one unifying through line in the American Church’s history, it’s support for immigrants…
“For much of its history, after all, the American Church—clergy and laity both—consisted not just of immigrants, but immigrants whom America’s Protestant majority degraded and despised: the Irish, then the Italians, then the Mexicans and Latin Americans. Most of that history may seem ancient to us today, but we should remember that our nation didn’t have a Catholic president until John F. Kennedy, who had to pledge he’d heed no Vatican communiqués in order to win election.”
Harold Meyerson, American Prospect
“I don’t see him going out of his way to pick fights with Donald Trump or anyone else in American political leadership. But he chose a name that recalls the legacy of Pope Leo XIII… That choice seems to be a deliberate signal of solidarity with the working class and the poor, and when the moment comes for Leo XIV to express those principles, he will be difficult to ignore.”
Mollie Wilson O’Reilly, MSNBC
The right is cautiously optimistic about the new pope.
The right is cautiously optimistic about the new pope.
“It would be a mistake to [assume] that Robert Prevost will be another Francis, excitingly disruptive and liberal on the usual matters… In a 2012 address to bishops, Prevost took a dim view of the popular culture that fostered ‘sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.’ Two cases in point being the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ and ‘alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.’…
“And as a bishop in Chiclayo in Peru, he opposed a government plan to add teachings on gender in schools. ‘The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,’ he told journalists.Granted, he may have changed during Francis’s pontificate, but all that sounds to me like normal Catholic teaching, not the kind of approach that progressive Catholics might favor.”
Melanie McDonagh, Spectator World
“We expect Leo XIV will be a solid witness to the dignity of every life. He has tied together the issues of abortion and euthanasia frequently in his homilies: ‘God’s mercy calls us to protect every life, especially those society overlooks — the child yet to be born and the elderly nearing their journey’s end — because each bears Christ’s face.’ We are needful of exactly this kind of bold leadership against the culture of death…
“But we confess some apprehensions as well… The pontificate of Francis has been doctrinally, liturgically, and tonally disruptive. We hope Leo XIV brings peace within the church even as he calls for peace outside of it. Pope Francis often made scabrous criticisms of younger, more tradition-minded priests and faithful… Does Pope Leo XIV stiffly resist or gently accommodate the generational turnover and geographic shift that is turning the Catholic Church in a more traditional direction?”
The Editors, National Review
“Pope Leo is thought to share his predecessor’s focus on the needy, and in his speech from the balcony of St. Peter’s he called for a church that seeks to be close ‘especially to those who are suffering.’ But it’ll help if he isn’t hostile to free markets, as the best way to alleviate poverty and much suffering. Francis seems to have believed that the corruption he saw in Argentina was called capitalism…
“[Moreover, Francis’s] remarks on social issues sometimes could be ambiguous, and his efforts at inclusiveness were perceived by many as unsettling Catholic doctrine. Responding to those debates is now up to Pope Leo. So is cleaning up the Vatican’s financial messes, which is a matter of not only money but trust. What’s demanded is a skilled administrator…
“Perhaps the conclave saw that in Cardinal Prevost, or maybe he was a compromise candidate between progressive and conservative factions. Whatever the case, we join Americans of all faiths, or none, in welcoming Pope Leo and wishing him Godspeed for the work ahead.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
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