The election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, a 69-year-old Augustinian missionary to Peru, as pope on May 8 was a signal to all that his fellow cardinals wanted someone to continue the urgent reforms and renewal of the Catholic Church that his predecessor Pope Francis initiated. Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, is one leader committed to human rights and dignity, to the cause of the oppressed and migrants, and to social justice. This is mainly the reason he chose the name Leo, after Pope Leo XIII, a most influential pontiff who responded to the challenges of the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century.
Leo XIII established the Catholic Church’s fundamental and powerful social teaching in his encyclical “Rerum Novarum” in 1891. At that time, there was immense social upheaval marked by ideological struggles between repressive socialism and uncontrolled and exploitative liberal capitalism. The vital importance of workers’ rights and the human dignity lost to the mechanized forms of production, and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few super rich families and corporations, and powerful oppressive nations, were highlighted by Pope Leo XIII.
Globalization is in a serious situation today, where exploited workers from impoverished communities in the developing world, toiling long hours for low wages and sometimes in inhumane conditions, are producing the consumer items demanded by the citizens of rich nations. This will be a big challenge for the new pope.
Leo XIV is carrying on the same challenge in the modern world when he recently called for peace and an end to the starvation of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, saying the elderly, the children and the families still surviving there are “reduced to starvation.” He also said war-torn Ukraine “awaits negotiations for a just and lasting peace.”
“In this, our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest. For our part, we want to be a small leaven of unity, communion, and fraternity within the world… in Christ we are one,” he added.
He was born in Chicago, Illinois, to migrant parents of French, Italian and Spanish ancestry. He speaks several languages and is also a citizen of Peru, to which he was a missionary for 20 years. He will need to challenge our ongoing industrial revolution marked by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). This is creating more unemployment, poverty and human suffering, which he experienced during his time in South America.
Thousands of impoverished people, living under cruel and unjust governments in the Global South, are fleeing from disasters brought about by climate change and repression. They journey to the Global North as asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in search of work. But they are rejected and banned from living in well-off countries. Many live in migrant camps in Europe and many more were deported unjustly by the current United States administration. Pope Leo XIV has great compassion for, understanding of and solidarity with them.
“My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who, in turn, chose to emigrate. All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged: it is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God,” Leo told an audience composed of the diplomatic corps in Rome recently.
Prevost was 27 when he was ordained in 1982. He studied canon law in Rome before being assigned by his order, the Order of Saint Augustine, to serve in Peru. He became the order’s leader from 2001 to 2013, during which he visited many countries, including the Philippines. He was made the bishop of Chiclayo in northwestern Peru in 2015 and a cardinal in 2023, putting him on the path to the papacy.
Pope Francis made him head of the Dicastery of Bishops, an important Vatican office that oversees the selection of bishops around the world. In that role, he knew many bishops, their strengths and their weakness. One challenge confronting him then, as now, is the widespread clerical child abuse crisis. There are bishops who cover up such abuse. Bishops who love money more than God and dress up in fine robes, enjoy the pomp, and sit on their thrones in cathedrals. No washing of the feet for them. Pope Leo XIV once walked in the village mud with people, and this is what he expects of bishops everywhere.
He said “the bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom.” The Church leader is “called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them, to suffer with them.” He also said of bishops who were unable to bring their pedophile priests to account and cover up the abuse they committed: “Silence is not the solution. We must be transparent and honest; we must accompany and assist the victims, because otherwise their wounds will never heal.”
These are words that bring hope that he will pursue justice for victims of clerical child abuse and bring an end to the tolerance, cover-up and silence surrounding this heinous crime. Hopefully, he would get bishops to persuade the child-abusing priests to repent and accept punishment from the civil courts for their crimes. Only then would the abuse end.
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