Leo XIV and the new geography of the Church

More than a million people attended the Jubilee of Youth at Tor Vergata in Rome, the first such large gathering since Leo XIV’s election. Leo XIV did not miss his appointment with young people: he went to greet them at the beginning of the Jubilee, asking them to pray for peace; he went to Tor Vergata eager to be with them and to deliver a message.

Leo XIV lacks the captivating charisma of John Paul II and the crowd appeal of Pope Francis. But he’s not a Benedict XVI either, from whom he inherited some of his calm presence but not his shyness. The meeting with young people was an interesting test for understanding the new pontificate and the messages it wants to convey.

The Pope wanted to personally carry the cross on the evening of the vigil, among young people.

In the homily at the Mass of the Jubilee of the youth, Leo XIV sent a message of Christian hope. “We are not made – he said – for a life where everything is taken for granted and static, but for an existence that is constantly renewed through gift of self in love. This is why we continually aspire to something ‘more’ that no created reality can give us; we feel a deep and burning thirst that no drink in this world can satisfy. Knowing this, let us not deceive our hearts by trying to satisfy them with cheap imitations! Let us rather listen to them! Let us turn this thirst into a step stool, like children who stand on tiptoe, in order to peer through the window of encounter with God”.

The Jubilee of Youth, however, also represented a watershed moment in Leo XIV’s pontificate, as it marked the end of the first hundred days of his reign. There are still no government decisions that allow us to understand the direction the new Pope’s work will take. But there are fairly concrete indications of the intended direction of his pontificate and the environment in which it is emerging.

The first indication is that it will be a modern pontificate. Modern not in the sense of modernist, but modern in the sense that it is a pontificate resulting from a generational shift and also from a change in geography.

Leo XIV is not only the first Pope of a new generation, one that did not directly experience the years of the Second Vatican Council. He is also the first Pope to emerge from a global and globalized conclave, where the lingua franca was no longer Latin and Italian, but English.

This was one of the unintended consequences of Pope Francis’s decisions. Pope Francis had decided to internationalize the College of Cardinals and change its selection criteria. With Pope Francis, there were no longer cardinalatial sees, but instead personal profiles. In many cases, Pope Francis fished in the far reaches of the earth, purely for the sake of representation.

This is how the generational change occurred. Many of the new cardinals not only had no experience in the Roman Curia, but they hadn’t even studied in Rome. Generally, many of them came from the English-speaking world, or at least handled English as a second language better than Italian, when they spoke Italian at all.

Cardinal Charles Bo of Myanmar, Cardinal Goh of Singapore, and Cardinal Maafi of Tonga are examples of this type. But even where there is a good knowledge of Italian, many cardinals prefer to express themselves in English when they have to speak officially, as in the case of Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg.

English as a lingua franca has also changed the way we think. This is how a candidate like Robert Francis Prevost emerged, known to 90 percent of the cardinals for his presence in eleven congregations and fluency with what turned out to be the lingua franca of the conclave.

The second point is that, although born in an English-speaking environment, the modernity of the pontificate lies in its not being North American or Anglo-Saxon, but American in a broad sense. Being English-speaking mitigates the Latin Americanism that Prevost imbibed in his missionary work and later as bishop in Peru. Being an Augustinian lends institutionality and universality to a profile that is that of an American Pope, but above all, a Western Pope.

The third indication is that, given his profile and personal history, this Pope neither seeks nor provokes divisions at least until he decides to enter a debate that isn’t his own.

Benedict XVI was a Pope who sought unity, and every step he took was designed to achieve unity within the Church. It didn’t work entirely, not only because he wasn’t understood, but also because he was burdened by the prejudices of the Second Vatican Council and the ensuing debate over it. Benedict XVI was a Pope who sought to transcend prejudice, having himself been a victim of discrimination.

Pope Francis, on the other hand, was a pope who sought division and provocation. He was a Pope who hadn’t been a player at the Second Vatican Council but had grown up in the post-conciliar controversy. And he had decided to take a stand, dividing the world into good and evil, lamenting its backwardness, and paradoxically turning back the clock on intra-ecclesial debate.

Leo XIV is not a victim of the prejudice that Benedict XVI was, and he is not a provocateur like Pope Francis. He has his profile, one that transcends divisions.

And that’s why he knows how to speak to young people. When he’s with them, he switches languages frequently – mostly between Spanish, Italian, and English – and delivers his message clearly in all of them. It’s an experience that comes from his years as a missionary, and it’s more than that. It’s also something innate within him.

It remains to be seen whether this shift in the cardinalate that led to the election of Leo XIV also represents a generational shift for the Church. In short, whether Leo XIV is speaking to a Church that is increasingly English-speaking, and therefore increasingly endowed with pragmatic reasoning, explicit language, and simple, impactful messages.

The encyclical the Pope is writing will provide several answers in this regard. Prevost is an English speaker, but in his three months as Pope, he has demonstrated a thorough understanding of another form of expression: that of the Western world and the Church’s tradition. Will the next encyclical be the first document in the history of the Church whose editio typica will be in English?

And how will the language change the Pope’s style?

These are the new elements to watch for in the Pope’s next steps. An American, modern, Western Pope. A calm American, ultimately.