The failure of religion is not making believers better people. No religion multiplies goodness; none makes generosity germinate in their congregations.
Understanding and assuming that failure would be the greatest sign of lucidity in a religious leader. The attempt to correct it so that religions are not only the refuge of human despair, the stick to overcome fears and uncertainties, but fundamentally sources of affection and solidarity between people, will complement this essential lucidity with action to make a kinder world.
In the West, John XXIII was the religious leader who most preached human goodness. More than preaching it, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli radiated kindness because that was his hallmark. It was “John the Good.” One of the exceptional cases of clarity without a dark side. The problem is that, by its nature, it did not conceive of evil, because it did not contain it even in minimal doses. You cannot conceive what is not contained. And because of that virtuous lack it was difficult for him to explain evil.
All of John XXIII’s predecessors and successors were normal people. They all preached compliance with the rules of Catholic Christianity to avoid divine punishment. The parishioner of the Popes has been, in general terms and in the best of cases, the thief who does not steal to avoid going to jail. No Pope or imam or rabbi or pujaris or pandit managed to make goodness gain ground over evil. No religion manages to produce better people on a mass scale.
The Popes have been better or worse statesmen, but none publicly assumed the failure of their religion and of all other religions: not having produced a better humanity, multiplying kindness and generosity among people.
Leo XIV has not yet shown signs of being different from his predecessors on such a crucial point. Nor has it reconsidered positions that are cruel, such as the rejection of euthanasia. It does not matter that millions of people die suffering unspeakable suffering, but rather comply with the Catholic interpretation of “thou shalt not kill.”
That, in addition to the rejection of a woman’s right to decide about her body, could have been criticized by Pope Irene Montero and Ione Belarra. But instead of opening specific debates, they exposed an adolescent and silly leftism with statements and gestures that implied repudiating the presence of Leo XIV in Spain.
With more neurons than ideological hormones, both understood that the most significant thing about the pontifical visit was that the Pope’s message went against the grain of the far-right Vox’s speech and the moderate right-wing Popular Party (PP), which indulges in the extremism of the Falangists.
With more neurons than hormones, Belarre and Montero would have listened carefully to the Pope and perhaps would have learned from his lucidity. Each phrase, each word integrates deep reasoning. In his homilies and speeches there is nothing left over. Everything he says is precise and forceful. It was corroborated during his visit to Spain. Leo XIV has a vigorous thought that he expresses clearly and categorically. And he does it from another characteristic of his own: humility.
This Pope is the sum of his academic knowledge and his life experience. His knowledge shows the signs of mathematics, a science in which he was trained and which helped him organize his thinking and structure his theological and philosophical training.
In Leo XIV, his lived experience was enriched by the two decades he spent in Peru, serving the poorest of Cajamarca in the diocese of Chiclayo. The result is not yet appreciated in its full magnitude by a global faithful in which the halo left by the charismatic pontificate of Francis is still strong, whose path, to some extent, he is a continuator.
On his tour of Spain, the main topics addressed were: the risks for humanity implied by Artificial Intelligence (a topic masterfully addressed in his first encyclical: Magnifica Humanitas), and the abjection implied by the segregation of immigrants and gender violence.
Leo XIV admitted the existence of this type of violence, clearly positioning himself on the opposite side of those who denied it. The North American Pope made his position clear: there is sexist violence, linked to a dominant culture of a patriarchal nature in matters of gender.
Regarding digital technologies and the uncontrolled advance of AI, the head of the Catholic Church reaffirmed what was explained in Magnifica Humanitas.
Following his reasoning in this area, it is clear that he shares the position of the Israeli historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari in the criticism he made against the push given by President Javier Milei to the idea of granting legal status to AI and the creation of business corporations run by “non-humans.”
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The imperative need to reject all types of segregation for immigrants is the third point on which the leader of Catholicism was categorical, clearly going against the grain of European and North American conservatism.
The anti-immigrant phobia radiated by the Vox party and its leader, Santiago Abascal, as well as that of all the far-right and xenophobic parties in Europe, was clearly questioned by the Pope, who, like his immediate predecessor, describes it as a form of cruelty and an anti-Christian attitude.
It is not that Leo
Defending these values, Robert Francis Prevost, the first North American Pope in history, emerges as the clearest, bravest and categorical voice against the message full of supremacism and arrogance that Donald Trump and his European and Latin American apologists shout.
Leo XIV is the one who responds with lucidity and forcefulness to the leaders who from Washington and Buenos Aires, and from the opposition trenches in Europe, promote greed and venerate millionaires as superior beings.
It is not a small thing, although it is far from being the most important step ever taken: admitting that the failure of religions is not having multiplied human goodness, but only served as a painkiller and anesthesia for the pain and desolation of humanity.
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