Papal Election Grab Bag
Synodality, Americanism, Augustinianism, Etc.
Habemus papam! Cardinal Robert Prevost, the American-born former prior general of the Augustinian Order, Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, and Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops has been elected pope and has taken the name Leo XIV. His election is significant in a number of ways: he is the first pope from the United States; he is also a pope from Latin America (and Peru, specifically); he is an Augustinian. My hope is to return to these topics in Window Light in the weeks ahead. In this grab bag, however, I want to offer some brief, scattered reflections on Pope Leo’s election.
Last week, I offered my thoughts on what factors the cardinals would consider in selecting a pope and my prediction regarding who would be elected. Let’s see how I did. Of course, my prediction of who would be elected was wrong, as it was likely to be. I had narrowed my prediction down to two, Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille, France, and Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana. I was right, however, that the cardinals would seek a “unifying” candidate, bypassing the two perceived frontrunners, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Luis Tagle of the Philippines, and avoiding a candidate considered too close to Francis, like Bologna’s Archbishop Matteo Zuppi, instead seeking a pope who would continue Pope Francis’s initiatives while appealing to Catholics who were not as enthusiastic about Francis or who brought to the table other strengths like managerial experience. In late reporting before the conclave, Prevost, Aveline, and Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, the Spanish-born Archbishop of Rabat, Morocco, were considered potential candidates in that category.
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The first thing I said would likely be top of mind for the cardinals was how the future pope would continue the push for greater synodality in the Church begun by Pope Francis and implement the recommendations of the Synod on Synodality’s final document. The cardinals do seem to have elected a pope who will champion the further implementation of synodality in the Church. As a Vatican prefect, Prevost participated in both sessions of the Synod on Synodality, but more importantly, he became a champion of the process. In a 2023 interview with Vatican News, he stated:
[W]e need to learn to really listen to the Holy Spirit and the spirit of truth-seeking that lives in the Church. Move from an experience where authority speaks and it’s all over, to a Church experience that values the charisms, gifts, and ministries that there are in the Church.
As the prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops, he added three women members to the staff responsible for assessing candidates for appointment as bishops. And as the Bishop of Chiclayo, he was seen as a pastor accompanying the people, supporting them in their ministries and serving alongside them in crises like the COVID pandemic. The cardinals likely thought that in Prevost’s diverse pastoral experiences in the Augustinian Order and as a bishop and Vatican official, he had demonstrated the managerial competence needed to implement synodal reforms throughout the Church in the years ahead.
In one of the General Congregations, or gatherings of the cardinals, on the day before the conclave, Prevost gave a speech in which he spoke on the importance of synodality. This was in contrast to a speech given earlier by Cardinal Parolin, who failed to mention synodality at all. Although Parolin was considered a faithful right-hand man for Francis and had spoken in support of synodality at the Synod, it seems to me that he increasingly gave the impression that he represented a group of Vatican-based cardinals who resented some of the reforms Francis had implemented in the name of synodality. This impression was reinforced by the strange diatribe against Pope Francis given by Cardinal Beniamin Stella, an advocate for Parolin, at an earlier General Congregation, criticizing the late pontiff for including lay people in the leadership of the Vatican dicasteries. Perhaps the cardinals saw a sharpening contrast between those who were resistant to deepening synodality and those who welcomed it.
Another key point I raised last week is that there has been a definitive “de-centering” of Europe in the Catholic Church, and even if that didn’t preclude a European cardinal from being elected as pope, it did mean that only a European who had significant connections with the Church in the Global South had a serious chance of being elected. I think this was borne out by the conclave. For one, the cardinals elected the second non-European in a row. But second, support from cardinals from the Global South, particularly Latin America, was decisive in Prevost’s relatively rapid election (after only four rounds of voting).
Reporting prior to the conclave suggested that Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the former Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras and past president of the Episcopal Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM), had been advocating on Prevost’s behalf amongst the Latin American cardinals, and more recent reporting suggests a Latin American bloc entered the conclave firmly supporting Prevost. Cardinal Rodríguez, who at 82 years old was too old to participate in this conclave, had also reportedly played a key role in building support for Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in 2013.
But this support from Latin America did not come out of nowhere. From 2023 to 2025, Prevost was president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America (CAL), a Vatican office dedicated to strengthening relations between Rome and the Latin American bishops (typically the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops also heads this organization). Significantly, CAL was originally founded by Pope Pius XII in 1958 to coordinate efforts to bring missionary priests from North America and Europe to Latin America to address the shortage of priests there; it was as a result of these efforts that the Midwestern Augustinians ended up in northern Peru beginning in 1963, making possible Prevost’s work there beginning in the 1980s. Through his leadership of CAL, Prevost would have been in regular contact with many of the Latin American bishops and attentive to their needs. As the bishop of Chiclayo, Prevost also would have been involved with CELAM, building connections with other Latin American bishops.
In the near future, I hope to write something about the Catholic Church in Peru to provide some context for Pope Leo’s background there.
Before the conclave, I wrote that it was striking that, after the papacy of Francis, none of the cardinals regularly listed as papabile were from Latin America, so there’s a certain irony that the Latin American cardinals had such a key role at the conclave and that the new pope is Latin American by adoption. Perhaps we are in the midst of a moment of Latin American ascendance in the Church?
Of course, in the United States, much greater attention has been given to the fact that Pope Leo is the first pope from the United States. This is particularly remarkable because nearly every commentator, including myself, was agreed that a pope from the United States was a near impossibility, although to be fair, I also noted that Prevost was the one possible exception, given his extensive time serving in Peru and in Rome.
I think the implications of having an American in the Chair of St. Peter will only become clear with time. Much of the focus since the papal election has been on the possibility that Leo could serve as a sort of counterweight to President Donald Trump or “Trumpism,” given the former’s concern for the plight of migrants and refugees and for the fate of the climate. Rather than serving as a partisan figure, however, my hope is that Leo can foster the deepening of synodality in the Church, which, as I noted in the Schemmel Lecture I delivered at Clarke University last month, I think serves as a Christian witness in our troubled world. Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli Tutti and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent document on human dignity, Dignitas Infinita, provide a blueprint for the social dimension of this witness.
The Wall Street Journal article on the conclave I cited earlier also includes an intriguing tidbit that suggests that the election of a pope from the United States reflects the influence of the United States in shaping global culture:
Several [cardinals] had little in common with the Italian-dominated Roman Curia, the Vatican administration. English was the lingua franca for a new crop of cardinals. European prelates spoke about the dangers of artificial intelligence with African cardinals, who replied with laments that their continent’s natural resources were being plundered to produce tech gadgetry. Latin American cardinals discussed the migration of their compatriots to the U.S. A cardinal flying in from Mongolia wowed his colleagues with stories of offering Mass to nomads in tents.
Whatever desire there may be to resist, or tame, the United States’ political influence on the global stage, this vignette suggests that American culture has shaped the younger cardinals and, through the English language, helped create a sense of unity amongst them.
Pope Leo’s election also raises some interesting legal questions related to his US citizenship. Will he be able to vote in any upcoming elections? Does he still have to pay taxes to the IRS? The answers might surprise you!
One reason I predicted that Cardinal Aveline might be elected pope rather than Prevost was because late reporting right before the conclave suggested that Prevost’s then growing support may have plateaued over concerns about two cases in which Prevost is accused of not taking sufficient action to either investigate cases of sexual abuse or to protect minors from priests credibly accused of abuse. Others, including those who knew him well in Peru, have claimed that Prevost was attentive to the needs of victims and implemented reforms to prevent sexual abuse. I anticipated that the cardinals would seek to avoid a choice where there was any hint of scandal related to sexual abuse, but either they felt the claims against Prevost were unfounded or that his strengths outweighed these concerns.
What’s in a name? While I was hoping the new pope would choose the name “Francis II” to signal a commitment to furthering the initiatives promoted by Francis, Cardinal Prevost chose the name Leo XIV, primarily to signal an affinity for the last pope of the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XIII. As a scholar deeply familiar with modern Church history, it’s tempting to overthink what Leo XIV might have been signaling with this choice of names, but, as he revealed in a meeting with the cardinals the day after his election, his reasoning was fairly simple and straightforward: through his encyclical Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII inaugurated the Church’s modern social tradition by responding to the social ills of the Industrial Revolution, and more broadly oriented the Church toward addressing the challenges of the modern world. In the same spirit, Leo XIV hopes to draw on the Church’s teaching “in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”
Pope Leo XIII was also the pope who condemned the vaguely defined heresy of “Americanism” in his encyclical Testem Benevolentiae, creating a certain irony that the first pope from the United States took the name Leo. In general, what Leo XIII meant by “Americanism” was the belief that the American experience, and particularly the experience of US Catholics, represented the movement of the Holy Spirit, ushering in a new age for the Catholic Church. In particular, Leo XIII identifies the beliefs that the liberties experienced in the American political system should also be practiced in the Church, and that the active life (represented by the pragmatic industriousness of the American spirit) is superior to the contemplative or “passive” virtues prized by the Church in the past (Pope Leo was especially concerned about contempt for the religious life). Although Pope Leo XIII’s condemnation of Americanism has to be understood in its specific historical context, it is also a reminder for US Catholics to be wary of the notion of “American exceptionalism” and the belief that the United States plays a unique, providential role in the world. Perhaps I can revisit this theme in more detail in a later article.
Pope Leo XIII was also responsible for the revival of Thomism at the end of the nineteenth century, particularly through his encyclical Aeterni Patris. I doubt this is part of the earlier Leo’s legacy that Pope Leo XIV is hoping to emulate. Although I have my own reasons for not seeking another revival of Thomism, my doubts that this is Pope Leo XIV’s plan stems from the simple fact that he is an Augustinian. Of course, theologically speaking, one could be an Augustinian and a Thomist, but regardless, I don’t see a new Aeterni Patris on the horizon.
Perhaps the more interesting thing about Leo’s Augustinianism, theologically speaking, is that Pope Benedict XVI was also identified as an Augustinian in theology (although obviously he was not a member of the Augustinian Order like Leo). This was contrasted with the more Thomistic leanings of Pope John Paul II, and Benedict’s Augustinian perspective undoubtedly shaped his understanding of Vatican II, the post-conciliar Church, and world events. It will be interesting to look for any commonalities in Leo XIV and Benedict XVI’s teaching and leadership rooted in their shared Augustinianism. But they likely reflect different types of Augustinianism, as well. Benedict’s was rooted in the ressourcement movement and the broader study of the Church Fathers, while Leo’s Augustinianism, mediated through the history and development of the Augustinian Order, likely also draws on the longer history of Augustinian theology and spirituality, including the work of early modern masters like Henry Noris and Giovanni Berti. Leo’s spirituality is likely also shaped by his long experience as a member of a religious order. Finally, it’s worth remembering that Leo’s training is as a canon lawyer rather than as a theologian, which will certainly make his approach different from that of recent popes.
To close, soon after Pope Francis’s death, I noted that
, who I interviewed for an episode of the Window Light podcast, had been interviewed on Al Jazeera English regarding Pope Francis’s legacy of dialogue between Christians and Muslims. At the time, there was no publicly available video of the interview, but since then, she has posted that video and another interview with Middle East Eye, along with several other articles and interviews, at her newsletter Digging Our Well.
Thanks for sharing about my interviews, Matt!