When the white smoke announced to the new Pope, many eyes went to the balcony of the Basilica of San Pedro with a mixture of astonishment, expectation and political calculation. The chosen one, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, is an American who is perceived Peruvian, American as Francisco and heir of his legacy, promoter of changes but also guarantor that he will not take the church to a schism.
Dressed with the traditional Mozzetta red and singing the Regina Caelihis first public appearance deliberately contrasted with the symbolic austerity that characterized his predecessor, Francisco, in 2013. For conservative sectors of American Catholicism, which for a decade vilified the Argentine Pope, that image was a visual balm. But will it also be a change of course?
The question is not less. Because, beyond the outer signs, what is at stake with Leo XIV is not so much the continuity or aesthetic breakup, but if he can, or want, to close the gap that Francisco’s pontificate himself left exposed: a latent crack between an American Catholicism cling to immutable doctrinal principles – represented by figures such as the American vice JD Vance Vance, the judicial activist Leonard Leonard Leonard Leon. Ultra -conservative ideologist Steve Bannon – and a global church that, with Francisco, sought to aggiorn the social drama of the time: migrants, the poor, inequality.
Leo XIV, say those who know him, is not a reactionary. Although it values certain traditional symbols, it cannot be classified as a “traditionalist.” “He will not seek to offend unnecessarily to the American right as Francisco sometimes did, but he will not yield in his fundamental commitments with the most vulnerable,” analyzes the theologian Cathleen Kaveny, by Boston College.
The key is in the tone: if Francisco was a charismatic and unpredictable shepherd, León will be an institutional Pope, formed in canon law, with a more technical and less confrontative look. But that does not make it weaker.
Before arriving at the Vatican, León served for nine years as a bishop in Chiclayo, one of the most impoverished dioceses in Peru. And then led the order of San Agustín from Rome. Those who saw him act in those spaces highlight his temper: his kindness is real, but not naive. They have, they say, a firm spine, and will not be easily dragged by the centrifugal forces of ecclesiastical or geopolitical interests.
The problem is that, as Christopher White, correspondent of the National Catholic ReporterLeón knows firsthand “the lines of failure” of American Catholicism. He is no longer a pontiff who can be accused of ignoring the idiosyncrasy of the faithful of the Global North, as happened to Francisco, whom many crossed out of “Marxist” for their criticisms of wild capitalism. León is, by nationality and training, one of them. But he will not necessarily share his agenda.
The choice of an American Pope breaks with a tacit rule of global balance: the idea that the greatest power in the world could not also lead the universal church. But in times of crisis – a second presidency of Donald Trump, a polarized society, an injured church – that rule was obsolete. Massimo Faggioli, an ecclesiastical historian, argues that “all this disorder has made the idea of an American Pope become acceptable.” It is no longer the imperial power of the twentieth century, but about a culture in crisis that seeks a voice with internal legitimacy.
Steve Bannon, however, interprets León’s choice as a cynical play. In his vision, the new Pontiff is a puppet of “Woke Globalism”, a continuator of Bergoglio’s “radicalism” but with an American passport, ideal for attracting donations without giving in progressive values. “The Church needs liquidity,” says Bannon, “and seeks American money without the weight of traditionally Catholic values.” His accusation is not naive: he points to the axis of the conflict between faith and economic power, and exposes how the religious right understands the papacy in an instrumental key.
The Royal Challenge of Leo XIV will be navigating that mined field. If you try to satisfy the conservative sectors only for national identity, it will betray Francisco’s pastoral direction. If you open them openly, it risks to deepen the schism. Its ability will consist of translating the principles of the previous pontificate – opposition by the poor, opening without rupture, decentralization without chaos – in policies that cannot be ruled out as “anti -American.”
There are, however, clear limits. In issues such as the role of women, bioethics or gender identity, it is unlikely that León advances with the audacity that many progressive sectors would desire. His canonist profile and his closeness with the Roman apparatus make him more prudent in those areas. But that same condition could turn it into an efficient executor of structural changes that Francisco only glimpsed, such as financial transparency, the administrative reform of the Vatican or a global immigration policy consistent with social doctrine.
Finally, his relative youth (he is younger than Francisco at the time of his choice) gives him a key advantage: time. Unlike the Argentine Pope, who arrived with the sense of urgency, Leon has a margin to consolidate, without trouble, an agenda of serene and effective continuity. And if it manages to overcome the background noise of American nationalist Catholicism, it could become the necessary bridge between a universal church in tension and an increasingly skeptical world before religious hierarchies.
It will not be a pontificate of dramatic ruptures, but it could be, if Leon chooses that path, that of a silent stabilization that saves the unit without giving principles. In a period of permanent polarization, that would already be a miracle.
By rn
