Leo XIV: Between Jubilee, Consistory, and Diplomatic Corps

Through the first eight months of his reign, Pope Leo XIV has conducted himself as a transitional leader. The challenges he faced and the decisions he made were all somehow shaped by Pope Francis, who initiated the Holy Year and remained its principal point of reference until its end.

This period has been a “middle world” in which the old and new pontificates overlapped.

The conclusion of the Jubilee on January 6th sets the stage for Leo XIV to define his pontificate.

Aside from a few necessary adjustments, the life of the Church continued in ways that suggested the previous pontificate was not yet over. At the same time, the new one had already begun. For example, Pope Francis had left a series of documents on the table—like the apostolic exhortation on poverty and the document on the titles of Mary—and Leo XIV published them.

There were also commitments Francis had made, which Leo XIV scrupulously honored.

Appointments of bishops moved largely in the direction desired by Pope Francis. The See of New York in the United States has a new archbishop before the See of Chicago, though Chicago’s cardinal archbishop is older. Even Leo XIV’s first international trip, to Turkey and Lebanon, was a direct legacy of his predecessor.

With close of the Jubilee Year of Hope, Leo XIV reaches a turning point. Now he can actively shape his role, as evidenced by his decision to convene a consistory for the very day after the close of the Jubilee and to schedule an early meeting with the diplomatic corps.

These three days become the crucible for Leo XIV. They are his opportunity to solidify his direction, listen to others, and finally assert his leadership beyond the legacy of Pope Francis.

The consistory has three sessions over two days, bringing all cardinals into discussion. Everyone might get a chance to speak, moderated by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State. This move brings the Secretariat of State back to prominence after Pope Francis sidelined it. Francis had excluded the Secretary of State from the Council of Cardinals, only adding him later and informally.

The consistory also addresses the problem of concentrated government power. Pope Francis’s synodal approach used parallel commissions and committees, leaving official institutions largely out of the decision-making mix. The Council of Cardinals, which never became part of the Curia’s new constitution, acted as a shadow government—a model proposed but never adopted even in John Paul II’s final years.

Pope Francis ultimately followed a reform model discussed in the late years of John Paul II.

Benedict XVI decided not to pursue it, as his ultimate goal was not governance but communion.

The pursuit of communion led Benedict XVI to several controversial governance decisions, including the one to lift the excommunications that had been imposed on the four Lefebvrian bishops. Benedict’s desire for communion also encompassed his decision to liberalize the use of the preconciliar liturgical and riutual books. .

At the same time, a desire to bring the conduct of temporal affairs up to pace with the contemporary world led Benedict to begin Vatican financial reform. He worked to detach the Holy See from its cumbersome Italian neighbor by internationalizing the anti-money laundering law. He also changed the Financial Information Authority, replacing a group made up entirely of Italians and former members of the Bank of Italy. The Prefecture of Economic Affairs was redefined to function more like a modern Ministry of Finance.

Why were such advanced reforms so inconvenient?

They challenged a model of power created at the end of John Paul II’s pontificate. These reforms also questioned ideas left over from a post-conciliar debate the Polish pope had sought to overcome. Pope Francis revived many of these ideas and restored the old Curia to the center. Later, he undermined it through his powerful personality and desire to centralize government.

Leo XIV is tasked with steering the Church past old debates, advancing discussions that have echoed since the end of John Paul II’s pontificate and even since the 1970s. Recent ideological initiatives during Francis’s pontificate underscore this return to the past, including the revival of the Catacomb Pact, debates over women deacons, and proposed changes to the role of apostolic nuncios. These proposals often arise without regard for their episcopal mandate or papal diplomatic function.

The upcoming consistory may not serve to put an end to all this, but it will help us understand how Francis’s missionary and synodal élan (on paper) can be adapted not so much to the times as to an institution like the one the Church really is, which has its own ways and its own need to proclaim the Gospel and live according to it.

The four themes of the consistory—the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, synodality, and the broad question of the liturgy—signal the Pope’s desire to end the debate and find a common vision for renewal.

Leo XIV, like Benedict XVI, aims for unity in the Church. Leo, like Francis, understands the need to recover the missionary élan of the Church (which means somehow involving all the faithful). Competing narratives, meanwhile, seek either a singular continuity between Francis and Leo, or an absolute repudiation of the Francis pontificate.

After the consistory, there will be the annual address to the diplomatic corps.

The Pope, who has not failed to make the Holy See available for peace talks, is also the pope who has brought the diplomacy of truth back to the forefront, emphasizing in his first meeting with diplomats that the Church cannot avoid speaking its truth, even at the risk of being unpopular. This is a sign, the deep grammar of which bespeaks a decisive break with Francis’s pontificate, at least as far as the conduct of the diplomacy of the Holy See is concerned.

The reform of the pontifical universities undertaken during the Francis era and at Francis’s direction had the merging of languages with the secular world as one of its guiding notions. So did Francis’s reform of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. Both reforms called for merging languages with the secular world. The underlying desire or vision of the reforms was to adapt in a way that would better speak to the Church and the world in the present moment.

Leo XIV, while supporting evangelization, knows the institution must not be sidelined. His second address to the diplomatic corps will set clear indications for the scope and direction of his pontificate far beyond the international political arena.

This week will shape the pontificate’s future.

Careful reading will reveal its direction.