Review: A first look at an intriguing new pope

The election of Pope Francis, an Argentine forged in the Global South in the decades following the Second Vatican Council, was a huge surprise and a shift in ecclesial spheres of influence from Europe to the Americas. Francis’ pontificate was also revolutionary in his bold attempts to simplify the church, making it a poor church for the poor, led by bishops who “smelled like the sheep.” At the very least, Francis captured the world’s attention, restored some of the church’s squandered moral credibility and brought a faith that does justice back into the global conversation. 

In other words, he’s a tough act to follow. When Francis died on Easter Monday, we all wondered who would succeed him, and many of us pitied the man who would be tasked with continuing—or revising—Francis’ reforms. 

As much as we wondered (and as an ecclesiologist, I definitely spent more time wondering than most) who could possibly succeed Francis, who was in the pool of papabili, whose stock was up or down at any moment, almost no one would have bet on a guy named Bob from Chicago. But the Holy Spirit, and the cardinal-electors, did indeed select Robert Francis Prevost, Bob to his friends, from Chicago’s South Side by way of a string of rural parishes in Peru and some time as a vetter of fellow bishops in Rome. 

Now it is up to the church, and the new pope, to decipher what this new chapter in the pilgrim church’s journey will include. Will Leo XIV dampen Francis’ reform agenda or intensify it? Will he be to Francis as Benedict was to JP2, meaning that he will be a pope who largely, quietly and ultimately not very successfully tries to carry on the work of his predecessor? Or will Leo be to Francis as Paul VI was to John XXIII—implementing the grand visions of the pope who came before? 

Leo will, of course, wind up being his own man, his own kind of pope, and none of us know what that will be (probably not even Prevost/Leo himself). 

At this moment of uncertainty, Christopher White’s Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy provides exactly the kind of reading Catholics, especially in the United States, will appreciate. Without focusing overly on Francis, who is no longer the pope, or trying to crystal-ball the emerging pontificate of Leo, White nevertheless presents readers with a substantive, engaging portrait of where things stand right now in a church, and a world, increasingly marked by polarization, authoritarianism and violence.

The book functions perfectly as a bridge between one papacy and the next. White uses his journalistic skills to place readers in the moment at crucial points in the papal transition, including Francis’ last trip in the popemobile in St. Peter’s Square, the days leading up to the conclave and the presentation of the new pope on the balcony. 

White’s perspective is particularly useful in that he knows the stakes for this papacy in the United States and in the global church. He explains how Francis’ economic reforms and reform of the Curia were unpopular, and how Prevost’s different leadership style might affect the outcomes of these reforms by solidifying them. He details a meeting with Cardinal Prevost before his election to the papacy—when he was the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops—where the prelate and the journalist sat down to “get to know one another” as fellow Americans. 

With one foot in Rome and another in the United States, White’s life mirrors that of Pope Leo in some respects, and as such readers can expect an interesting take on what is to come from Rome.

White tells the story of Leo’s election in three parts. The first narrates Francis’ final days while providing readers an assessment of the major achievements of his papacy. For White, these include the introduction of synodality and the synodal process, Francis’ strong voice on migration, and the pope’s reframing of climate concerns as a social justice issue. White sums up his assessment of Francis’ success thus: “Twelve years later the greatest reforms he accomplished might be the public perception of the church and the tectonic paradigm shift from a church that is focused on power to a church that is focused on pastoral outreach.”

White resists the urge to pre-emptively canonize Francis with only laudatory anecdotes; he is clear that on some matters, like the reform of the Curia, Francis failed, or at least was met with much resistance. In all, however, White’s assessment of this revolutionary papacy, open to the world right until the end of Francis’ life, sets the stage for the conclave that follows.

Part 2 helps demystify the process of selecting a new pope. After walking readers through the last moments of Francis’ life, the announcement of his death and the reaction in St. Peter’s Square as the news became public, White turns our attention to the conclave, a process surrounded by intrigue in a modern world where ancient practices of secrecy and social media blackouts prompt all sorts of speculation. With White, we see emerging frontrunners and get a sense of behind-the-scenes conversations while also getting some historical context on the conclave process and the set of cardinals who would undertake this task.

The crux of the book, of course, is the account of Prevost’s election in Part 3. Here, White offers readers exactly what we came for. He begins with an early biographical sketch of the new pope, including some information on his parents, his upbringing in Chicago and the church that nurtured his vocation. We get background on Leo as a papal name through the centuries, including some conjecture on why Prevost would select the moniker. Most important, though, we get a sense of Prevost’s formation and his priorities. 

For White, Leo XIV is a man whose ministry was forged in the rural hills of Peru, in parishes and dioceses where collaboration with laypeople and local leaders was instrumental to his success. Detailing Prevost’s leadership style, which he honed among those Peruvian populations, White introduces us to an unusual American priest whose ministry was global before he was chosen to lead the global church. 

The selection of a U.S.-born pope was, for all insiders and Vaticanisti, highly unlikely. Common wisdom claimed that a pope from a global superpower was impossible, so that any election of an American pope would signal the decline of the United States’s international influence and political power. But quietly, some pundits, including White, thought Prevost was a clear possibility. 

In giving us a peek inside confidential conversations with commentators, bishops and other insiders, White’s narrative of the ascendancy of Prevost to the pontificate is entertaining and informative in equal measure. Prelates from the United States weigh in on Prevost’s relative obscurity to members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as well as his global experience and horizon-expanding awareness of Latin American culture. At the same time, it’s clear Leo’s international portfolio and his powerful role as the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops do not make him merely a Francis 2.0. Rather, the quiet, collaborative Augustinian from the South Side by way of Chiclayo promises to be his own man: introspective but decisive, consultative but clear in his vision. 

What can we expect from a pope whose vocation to the priesthood was evident even from childhood, whose graduate study had him learning alongside and from women, and whose ministry was marked in important ways by the empowerment of the laity? As White notes, we can hope that Leo XIV is “a moral voice in a time of political chaos.” May it be so. 

This article appears in December 2025.

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