On Saturday evening, April 11, Pope Leo XIV led a vigil for peace at St. Peter’s Basilica. It was an act of vulnerable leadership that should not be missed as such, precisely because there are very few such leaders on the world stage today.
Since his appearance at Saturday evening’s vigil, Pope Leo has emerged as embodying vulnerability as he called for peace; so too did he embody it later as he dismissed the ridicule coming from a world leader and as he demanded greater recognition of those at risk. Pope Leo is a veritable exemplar of vulnerable leadership, and recognition of this is growing as he maintains his presence on the world stage.
As I have written several times in these pages, when people first hear ethicists talking about human vulnerability, they frequently think we are referring to adults living in a state of precarity. But we should not not think of vulnerability primarily in that way. Indeed, vulnerability does not primarily mean having been wounded. It means, rather, being capable of being wounded for others.
In light of the president’s comments about the pope on April 12, Pope Leo’s unambiguous response was the quintessential expression of vulnerable leadership. “I’m not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what the church works for.” “I will continue to speak out strongly against war, seeking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateralism among states to find solutions to problems.”
As Pope Leo knows, for Christians, Christ is the ultimate vulnerable one, capable of being wounded from his birth in Bethlehem to his death at Golgotha. He leads us to follow him on the pathway of vulnerable discipleship. Indeed, the spirit of Christ leads others to leave themselves vulnerable to the will of God and to the needs of humanity.
Vulnerability and moral leadership
Retrieving this broader notion of vulnerability is what philosophers and theologians have been trying to do for years. Philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas, Martha Nussbaum, Judith Butler and Jessica Benjamin as well as theologians like Enda McDonagh and Hille Haker have insisted that vulnerability is the foundational concept for agency in the moral life. The professor of social work Brené Brown has probably done more than any other thinker to help restore our notion of vulnerability to include the capacity we have to be morally responsive to the other.
Emphasizing the priority of vulnerability, Butler writes that it “is prior to any individual sense of self. It is not as discrete individuals that we honor this ethical relation. I am already bound to you, and this is what it means to be the self I am, receptive to you in ways that I cannot fully predict or control.”
Christians recognize vulnerability as the nature of our Savior and that we too are called to be vulnerable as our Savior taught us.
On April 11, we could actually see vulnerable leadership on the television screen. It was like watching Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day or Mahatma Gandhi. We have not seen a vulnerable leader like them for a long while.
Pope Francis paved the way for the kind of leadership we are seeing from Pope Leo through his accompaniment of and responsive listening to the poor and marginalized. But Pope Leo is literally taking on other leaders and is offering a remarkably healthy, helpful and enduringly humane example in his own style. He is an exemplar in action.
With this “style” of vulnerability, Pope Leo is not raising up weakness, but rather human capacity. He sees our humanity as itself resourceful, strong and empowering. We saw each of these capacities in the text he delivered at the vigil for peace as well as in his most recent comments.
Resourceful. Vulnerable leaders are first responders. They are not foolish, but mindful of how they can be responsive. They consider what they can bring to the table. As an imitator of Christ and thus as a preacher of the Gospel, Pope Leo constantly offers his own support to those who seek to be peacebuilders. But first he helps us to say no to violence, no to killing, no to war. He invites us to stand with him in opposing the multitudinous expressions of war flaring up around us and to contradict the claims of those who see warfare as a pathway to human progress.
I remember watching him when he first overlooked St Peter’s Square as the newly elected pontiff. His eyes welled up at the enormity of the call he had. From the start, he appreciated the weight of his responsibility.
His resourcefulness can be seen in the active loyalty he has garnered from the American hierarchy. Indeed, though Pope Francis was deeply revered by many of the American laity, his supporters within the American bishops were noticeably less in evidence. Certainly many of the American cardinals stood with Francis, but other bishops less so.
Today, we see them following Pope Leo, taking strong positions defending immigrants or speaking against our participation with Israel in the war against Iran. Archbishop Timothy Broglio conveyed on April 5 on “Face the Nation” that “I would line myself up with Pope Leo, who has been urging for negotiation.”
Strong. Pope Leo is not hesitant to take dramatic steps. We saw remarkable evidence of this when he declined President Trump’s invitation to the 250th anniversary of American independence by reporting that he would be visiting and praying with African refugees that day in Lampedusa. Pope Leo’s plans on that day will inevitably stand as a contrast to however we celebrate the anniversary.
Pope Leo’s strength comes from God’s grace, his prayerfulness and the vulnerable disposition of his soul, all so evident in his first apostolic exhortation “Dilexi Te,” published on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi as a tribute to Pope Francis’ last encyclical, “Dilexit Nos.”
The sentiments in “Dilexi Te” could be found again in the words with which Pope Leo started the peace vigil: “Prayer is not a refuge in which to hide from our responsibilities, nor an anesthetic to numb the pain provoked by so much injustice. Rather, it is the most selfless, universal and transformative response to death: we are a people who are already risen!” In our response in prayer to him who rescued us, Pope Leo invites us to find our strength in the face of death. That is the vulnerability of a true Christian.
Empowering. Many theological ethicists are insisting these days that we need more people vulnerable to the cries and needs of humanity, and we need more people to recognize in their vulnerability the need to respond to others. That turn to mercy is the liberating turn of vulnerability.
On Mercy Sunday, April 12, we had the wonderful text from John’s Gospel of the disciples gathered in the upper room (Jn 20:19-31). There, Christ’s vulnerability is completely revealed, as he shows the disciples his wounds and as he later invites Thomas to touch them.
Through him living out his vulnerability, the disciples are now, by the Spirit, called to live out their vulnerability. Indeed, the readings of Mercy Sunday are precisely about vulnerability, a willing responsiveness to the other, or, as I define mercy, the willingness to enter into the chaos of another.
We need to recognize how empowering Jesus’ vulnerability was to his disciples. Now, finally, after their time with Jesus in the upper room, they are able to go out and preach Christ crucified.
True vulnerability promotes empowerment. Ironic, no? We see world leaders looking to command authority by the exercise of frightening, awesome power. But Christians do not see those displays as empowering others.
I saw on Saturday in the shuffle of a fearless pontiff moving from St. Peter’s Square to St. Peter’s Basilica a vulnerable figure calling us to prayer. Suppliant, rather than commanding, he offered us an empowering pathway.
Later the next day, three of his American cardinals, Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy and Joseph Tobin, joined ranks with Pope Leo in opposing the call to war. Like them, many of us who preach find in Pope Leo’s footsteps the footing to stand for mercy and reconciliation, to preach with greater courage through greater vulnerability.
After more than a year of having a fairly powerful model of leadership on our screen advocating the use of even more power, someone else has arrived on the stage, inviting us to consider how we are made, as he is, in the image of a vulnerable Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Pope Leo’s vulnerability is catching on.
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