A ‘Refreshing’ New Pope
For a few hours last week, our fractious world united as one, awaiting word of who would become the next leader of the Catholic Church. Television stations across the globe interrupted their regular programming, demonstrating Catholicism’s vast reach. (Who can name, for example, the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention or any other denomination?). The world’s response also reflects something more profound: a yearning for a moral voice to call out the best in ourselves.
Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, did not disappoint. His first words as the new pope — and first American pope in history — felt like a soothing balm. “May peace be with all of you,” he announced in Italian. “I … would like this greeting of peace to enter your hearts, to reach your families and all people … all over the earth.”
Looking out at more than 50,000 people gathered before the columns embracing St. Peters Square, he called for a church that “builds bridges … is always open to receive, like this square with its open arms, all, all.”
All, all. One couldn’t help but think of the words of his predecessor and mentor Pope Francis, who spoke of a church for todos, todos, todos: everyone, everyone, everyone. Yet, coming from an American at this time in U.S. history, Pope Leo’s words about building bridges, embracing all, carries another, equally urgent message. They remind us of what is best — what has always been good and decent — about America too.
Speaking on “The PBS News Hour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks observed how refreshing it is to see “an American on the world stage being a decent human being, a good person.”
I agree.
At his first Mass as pope, the new pontiff said his selection as the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics reflects no merit of his own. Instead, echoing the words of John the Baptist, he noted that those who would lead must “move aside so that Christ may remain, to make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified.”
Speaking beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, he stressed that the true beauty of the Church, lies “not in the magnificence of her structures or the grandeur of her buildings, but rather through the holiness of her members.”
I can’t help but contrast Pope Leo’s words of healing, his example of humility, with the self-aggrandizing speech Donald Trump gave to mark his first 100 days in office. A speech rife with insults, name-calling and bold-faced lies (no, President Trump, egg prices haven’t fallen 87 percent since you became president).
Trump applauded himself for “the best hundred-day start of any president in history.” Adding, “Everyone is saying it.”
He denigrated his political opponents as “dumb,” “lunatic” and “criminal,” and bragged — yet again — about the size of the crowds he draws
He mocked a congressman who walks with the help of a cane. He boasted that he told federal workers to “get the hell out of here” — people who inspect our food, research cures for disease, and insure children with disabilities get a proper education, to name just a few of their services.
He labeled jurists who rule against his administration’s patently unconstitutional actions as “communist, radical judges.”
Perhaps like me, you are absolutely sick at heart — and downright exhausted — with Trump’s screeds and his perennial promoting of personal grievances.
What America needs now is less Donald Trump, more Pope Leo.
In his homily before the cardinals, Pope Leo warned of placing one’s faith in “other securities” such as “money, power, success, pleasure.” Trusting in such things, he said, “is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity.”
Pope Leo could well have been describing the U.S. in these past 100 days. We have witnessed federal workers lose their jobs for no cause. We have seen immigrant parents deported and separated from their American-born children. We have watched quackery replace science at the Department of Health and Human Services.
This past week, Benedictine Sister Therese Elias of Mount St. Scholastica Monastery in Atchison, Kansas, gave a talk in which she defined a mystic as someone who tells us what is missing in our lives, who “wakes us up from the trance of everyday living.” Perhaps after these first 100 days of the second Trump administration, American Catholics who voted for him — many out of a sincere belief he would make our country stronger and our lives better — can now awaken from a trance.
May we, instead, seek to “be close, especially to those who suffer,” as Pope Leo has asked us to be. Not only in our church, but in our country.
May we have the humility to know that we need each other, to remember that when we walk “without fear, united hand in hand with God and among ourselves, we move forward.” Let us remember, as Pope Leo has said, that “evil will not prevail.”
