Besides the Chicago White Sox, what team does Pope Leo XIV root for? Whose side is he on?
Many variations on this question have been asked in the brief time since his election as the successor of Peter, and not just about sports. (The Chicago Cubs started off early with a social media post less than four hours after Leo’s election featuring a Wrigley Field sign declaring “Hey Chicago. He’s a Cubs fan!” This was quickly refuted by the pope’s brother.)
Almost everyone, our team at America very much included, was interested in how Pope Leo would carry forward Pope Francis’ legacy. A month and a half into his papacy, it is at least possible to draft an answer: in profound continuity with the substance of Francis’ reforms, but with a more restrained style.
During his very first blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s, Pope Leo described the church as synodal, making it clear that neither he nor the College of Cardinals who elected him were trying to reverse course from Pope Francis. But he also appeared on that balcony wearing the traditional papal regalia of red mozzetta and stole, which Pope Francis had declined to wear immediately after his election. In his first Sunday appearance in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo led the crowd in chanting the “Regina Caeli,” the Marian hymn for the Easter season.
Even as all of this was going on in Rome, journalists, commentators and influencers across the world were scrubbing through every word, picture and video related to Robert Prevost, trying to figure out who he was and what he thought about, well, everything.
In those first few days, two of the pictures I saw circulate most often on social media set out what seemed to be the poles of the debate. In one, then-Bishop or Cardinal Prevost (the timing and sourcing of the image was unclear) was in an older style of liturgical vestment, a “fiddleback” chasuble, prompting a rush of hopeful speculation among champions of the pre-conciliar Mass that he might roll back Pope Francis’ restrictions on use of that form of the liturgy. In another, he was seated on horseback in Peru surrounded by a crowd of children, a missionary bishop going to visit his people. Alongside this picture, I would often see one of him in his Augustinian habit with a traditional Peruvian scarf and hat, registering how much he had inculturated in his adopted homeland.
On the one hand, this fascination with the man who is now pope is completely understandable, natural and even edifying: Catholics want to be close to the Holy Father and knowing people better is part of the path of coming to love them. On the other hand, in its more obsessive forms, this scrubbing through his history looking for clues amounts to reading tea leaves, having more in common with fortune-telling than anything else.
In addition to those pictures, there were minor news cycles around his views on L.G.B.T. issues and his history of dealing with abuse in the church. The former was about a 2012 intervention then-Father Prevost had given during the Synod on the New Evangelization, when he was prior general of the Augustinians, in which he criticized mass media’s promotion of “abortion, euthanasia and the homosexual lifestyle.” In a 2023 interview after he was made a cardinal, he was asked if his views had changed. He spoke about how Pope Francis had made it clear that the church needed to be welcoming.
With respect to abuse, reports have focused on his role as a regional superior of the Augustinians with respect to where a Chicago diocesan priest could live in 2000 (before the national standard that came into force after the 2001 era of the abuse crisis). Reports have also examined his handling of an allegation of abuse in Chiclayo, Peru, in 2022 when he was a bishop there.
I bring those issues up not because I have anything new to add to the reporting (often better characterized as speculation), but because it is worth taking a step back to think about our own motivations as we are fascinated by reports like these.
There are paired temptations here of tribalism and divination. We can read voraciously in moments like this, looking for reassurance that the new pope is “on our side” or, in the shadow manifestation of that desire, indulging in self-righteous anger that he is not. We can obsess over scraps of information as if they can reveal the future to us, telling us what this pope will do about a host of issues before he has done any of it—so that we can be either exhilarated or furious about it in advance.
Instead, as I once wrote about Pope Francis at the beginning of his papal ministry and about the Synod on Synodality at the opening of its second session, it would be far better to ask what needs to change in us.
We should approach the new vicar of Christ looking not for his alignment with the set of questions we bring to him, but for the invitation God is offering the church through his example and preaching—or to put it another way, with trust that the Holy Spirit is at work.
