Only in recent decades has the modern Catholic Church had popes with pastoral experience outside of Western Europe. Pope John XXIII served as a diplomat in Bulgaria and Greece (as well as France) Pius XI was nuncio in Poland. Other than that, the pre-papal experience of our pontiffs was confined to Western Europe, and mostly Italy at that.

Has there ever been, since the early days of the Church, a pope who was a missionary in a foreign land? Pope Leo has seen the world from the bottom up, an experience that can only be life altering. 

With Pope Leo XIV, the Church has its first globalist pope, a true global citizen. And not just any sort of globalist, but one who has been down and dirty with the folks, not only in Peru but in all corners of the world. Pope Leo is being touted as the first American pope. That misses the point. He has spent less than half of his life in the United States.

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If anyone can sing the Johnny Cash classic, I’ve Been Everywhere, Man, without a shade of exaggeration it’s Pope Leo. Not only did he spend nearly 20 years in Peru, he studied for his doctorate in Rome and served for 12 years as the prior general of his Augustinian religious congregation. Although Rome was his home base as the Augustinian prior, he travelled to remote corners of the earth to visit his priestly brothers.

Catholic means “catholic” as in universal, and Pope Leo has that one down pat. Probably, that is one reason the cardinals were so quick to elect him in the brief conclave that lasted little more than 24 hours.

There were other reasons too, I suspect. Cardinal Robert Prevost was an adherent of Pope Francis’ pastoral plan which includes synodality and deep concern for the poor and other marginalized people. In fact, he linked the two, stating a synodal Church is “close to those who suffer.”

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A registered Republican in Illinois, Prevost can walk both sides of the aisle, talking with both progressives and conservatives. Not that he was a compromise candidate. It would have taken more than four ballots for the cardinals to decide to cast aside their favourites to pick a middling figure who could meet the required two-thirds majority.

Being a Republican hasn’t made him a shill for the Trump administration. In Peru, he supported the cause of migrants fleeing poverty and repression in Venezuela. As well, rather than speaking directly against Trump, Prevost used his account on X to post the views of other Church figures critiquing Trump’s policies towards migrants.

His time in Peru, much of it working with the poor, were formative. He took his name from Pope Leo XIII who famously launched the era of Catholic social teaching with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. The encyclical supported workers’ rights to form unions while denouncing both socialism and what we today call neoliberalism.

In his opening remarks as pope, Leo XIV urged Catholics to always choose charity and compassion. It remains one of the world’s greatest scandals that, amidst the technological developments and vastly increased wealth of the past century, hundreds of millions of people continue to suffer from extreme poverty. As with all recent popes, he can be expected to address this scandal.

Pope Leo spoke of peace and dialogue in those comments. He prayed for God to help us “build bridges, with dialogue, with encounter, uniting us all to be one people always in peace.” Those who know him say this is not empty rhetoric. He is a man who listens to all, even the lowly.

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Although Pope Francis often talked about bridges, he wasn’t effective in building them. Pope Leo may talk the same talk, but he appears to have the personality and the project management experience to make sure such construction happens. Call Francis the prophet and Leo the “faithful administrator.”

There is no job the papacy needs to perform more in this time than to string the harp of peace and reconciliation. Many countries are at war while others are on the verge of it. Where there are no wars, there is polarization. That includes within the Church. It will take a maestro to bring reconciliation amidst age-old conflicts. No person can do it alone. It will take a full orchestra. But a pope whose first words upon stepping onto the loggia are “Peace be with all of you” at least knows the symphony he will be conducting.