Leo XIV: The criteria for his choices

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 to be a busy and very telling season of nominations. Already, the appointment of Iannone allows us to begin sketching a profile of the Pope and his choices.

What follows really is only a sketch – designed to be amended and even erased – as everything could be contradicted over time. It is, however, a matter of trying to identify some guidelines to understand Leo XIV’s reasoning.

The first major appointment, to the top spot at Bishops, in fact followed a mini-reshuffle near (but not at) the top of the Secretariat of State: after sending Monsignor Miroslaw Wachowski, “Deputy Foreign Minister,” as nuncio to Iraq, the Pope assigned Roberto Campisi, the Secretariat of State’s assessor, as the Holy See’s observer to UNESCO.

Finally, Leo XIV appointed his team of secretaries. As second secretary, he chose Fr. Marco Billeri, a young priest from the diocese of San Miniato, whose bishop, Giovanni Paccosi, had met the Pope when they were both missionaries in Peru.

What do these three nominations say?

Iannone’s appointment to the Dicastery of Bishops indicates that Leo XIV will seek institutional figures with solid doctrine as heads of dicasteries. Iannone was not a bishop who could be counted among Pope Francis’s critics; he has always carried out his work rigorously. He is a canonist, and not the type to enjoy the spotlight.

Leo XIV was able to assess his abilities when Iannone was part of the “dream team,” which, along with Cardinals Parolin, Koch, and Prevost, was tasked with dialogue and engagement with the German bishops who came to the Vatican to discuss their synodal journey with the dicasteries. Iannone’s work was instrumental to much that was successful in the effort absorb the shock of the German bishops’ controversial Synodal Way.

Iannone’s appointment, therefore, is not good news for the champions of at least one major strain of what the Church has been calling “synodality” since Francis gave us the term – really a buzzword with no clear working definition – early in his pontificate. Moreover, Leo has chosen a canonist, thus highlighting the need for someone knowledgeable about how law is supposed to govern the Church.

Now, Leo XIV will have to choose four more heads of dicasteries in the coming months: the Laity, Family and Life, Christian Unity, the Causes of Saints, and Divine Worship. If the choice falls on profiles similar to Iannone’s, as is believed, then a pattern emerges, a direction, and a desire to create a team of high-profile institutional figures. Disappear so that Christ may remain, Leo XIV had said in his first Mass as Pope in the Sistine Chapel. Is this the criterion?

The mini-revolution at the top of the Secretariat of State suggests a Pope who doesn’t make epochal changes all at once, but rather one step at a time. But it’s also a Pope who examines situations thoroughly and knows how to act accordingly.  It’s worth noting, in this regard, that Campisi is the first assessor since the position was established by Paul VI in 1967, who wasn’t given an episcopal appointment after his tenure as Secretariat of State’s number 4. In the Vatican world, these are signs not to be underestimated.

Just as the Pope’s dismissal of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Deputy Minister of the Interior should not be interpreted as a form of revenge on the part of the Pope, but rather as part of an ongoing career plan for both.

Finally, the choice of a personal secretary. Leo has chosen young people from outside the Vatican walls. Above all, his choices have been of people he trusts: as is the case with his longtime secretary, his second secretary, and in numerous other instances.

In practice, the Pope seeks to have institutional figures in government and familiar faces in his daily work.

For the close day-to-day work, Leo has chosen familiar figures who lack in-depth knowledge of the Vatican, thus likely protecting himself from any potential influence from the Curia or the environment. Of course, two secretaries in their early thirties with no knowledge of Vatican institutions run the risk creating or contributing to confusion or error. It’s also true that they are undoubtedly loyal to the Pope, and to him alone.

Leo XIV thus emerges as a Pope who makes slow but inexorable decisions, and who, over time, will aim to create a community of trusted individuals to stand by him and support him in his work.

Trust will also be necessary in his relationships with the people he appoints to top curial positions, but for those a different sort of trust – with a different object – may be preferable to the kind of trust one has in a personal secretary. Expect Leo to choose people with institutional profiles rather than marks for personal loyalty.

It’s still too early to tell whether, based on this reasoning, the Pope will once again look to the traditionally cardinalatial sees at his next consistory,, whether the positions will also correspond to titles, and whether there will be a return to a more “traditional” vision of the Vatican world.

The moves Leo has already made nevertheless show his desire for change, while remaining within the confines of tradition and traditional choices. There is, in this, a personal touch, but otherwise the Pope does not appear eager to depart from established historical precedent – tradition, if you will – just as he has been mostly happy to reiterate or refer to clearly taught and settled doctrine when asked about or confronted with major questions regarding faith and morals.

This too is a signal.