Leo XIV’s first Apostolic Letter is dedicated to the sixtieth anniversary of the conciliar declaration Gravissimum Educationis. It is titled Drawing New Maps of Hope and revelas, in its content and language, much of the ideological tension with which te neo-elect Pope Leo XIV is contending.

On the one hand, the last thing [...]

Pope Leo XIV gave a speech on October 23, to participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements, and with it brought a central question (back) into sharp focus: Who really is Leo XIV?

It’s a question pretty much everyone has had, petty much right from the beginning of his still-very-young pontificate, and [...]

Leo XIV visited Italy’s President, he pulled out all the stops. Leo and President Sergio Mattarella met at the Quirinal Palace this past week, on Oct. 14, in a visit that used the entire ritual of a state visit, an unmistakable signal.

Pope Francis had preferred simplified visits, and refused the escort of mounted [...]

The week in which Leo XIV published his first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te, was also the week in which he made the first governing decision that overrode a decision of his predecessor – on the subject of Vatican finances – and that is no small matter.

Dilexi Te is, in fact, profoundly the work [...]

Pope Leo XIV has made his first major curial appointment. As prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops, the Pope has chosen Bishop Filippo Iannone, who has headed the Dicastery for Legislative Texts since 2017.

This is only the first of many appointments he will need to make, marking the beginning of what will prove [...]

It’s been called “the trial of the century” – a monicker or epithet it shares, not without some irony, with several other trials of the past two decades – but it has a claim to the title inasmuch as it represents the first time in history a cardinal faced charges tried in the ordinary [...]

The picture emerging of Leo XIV is not one of a Pope who makes impetuous choices or grand gestures, but of a thoughtful Pope who calmly weighs every decision.

With the appointment of Monsignor Miroslaw Wachowski as nuncio to Iraq, for example, Leo XIV may have laid the first piece in what promises to [...]

If there’s one thing we know about Leo XIV, it’s that we still don’t know much about him. When you search for a line of thought, you inevitably come across an exception. When you think you’ve found a fundamental idea, the Pope turns into what appears to be the opposite direction.

The truth is [...]

After one hundred days of Pope Leo XIV in office, there is curiosity and even anxiety over how the still very young pontificate will develop. Those who want radical change cannot understand why the Pope does not rid himself of what they consider the remnants of Francis’s pontificate. But those who have enthusiastically experienced [...]

You likely missed it if you weren’t paying very close attention, but Pope Leo XIV this past week articulated a vision of Catholic participation in public life, which is sure to be a cornerstone of his whole teaching pontificate and a keystone of his political philosophy.

Leo’s speech to Catholic politicians from the