I’m rather surprised no one has posted pope news yet. So here you go. His past writings suggest a liberal bent, but popes are wont to surprise.
Robert Francis Prevost has become the first clergyman from the United States to lead the Roman Catholic church, ending the Vatican’s longstanding opposition to the idea of a US pontiff.
The 69-year-old from Chicago has taken the papal name Pope Leo XIV, a senior cardinal announced from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on Thursday evening.
The announcement, which followed white smoke billowing from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, prompted raucous celebration and delight among the 50,000 pilgrims and tourists in St Peter’s Square.
I’ll respectfully avoid the reference to guys from Chicago in Star Trek: Picard.
theoretically the whole curia should obey the pope, but in reality it is a very large appartus that is very hard to steer, I doubt we’ll see meaningful changes. I remember the first years of Francis reign, there was a lot of shift and scandals but also a lot of pushback. Eventually things became quieter and back to ‘business as usual’. The same happened with Benedict, it was clear he quit due to his inability to steer the institution.
I think that is the reason Francis made so many cardinals.
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I think he realized his papacy was not going to be enough to make a tangible change so he stacked the deck in his favour by creating a lot of new cardinals. This way it was most likely someone like him would succeed him.
Notice I didn’t say I had any ambitions of some major changes or overhauls. We honestly know very little about this guy at this stage anyway, so any claims like that would be silly on several levels. But if we had gotten a complete shit head regressive bigot you can bet they’d more easily be able to steer into it
The US Catholic Church is in turmoil, more than many realize. When I heard he was an American* I actually was very nervous. Last year an archbishop from Boston was excommunicated, not removed from his post actually excommunicated, for schism. Wasn’t accepting the pope’s legitimacy. It’s getting weird here. Trumpism is popular and is diametrically opposed to the (in the US sadly languishing) social justice mission of the Catholic Church. It’s hard to square “I hate woke” with “everyone has human dignity.”
*sort of
At a certain point, you have to realise people do things deliberately. Francis set him up because he was going to continue reforms. I’m not religious; I left the Catholic church at 12. But it’s inarguable that the pope has outsized influence – we can’t ignore that.
We can talk about what priests have done – I’m an SA survivor myself (though not from priests) – but that holds no bearing on what is expected of Leo. My gut says this was a good choice.
Am I qualified to make such an assessment? No, I’m not. Nonetheless, I’ll hold off on any interpretation until we see action.