There is no more crushing burden in this life than to be elected as the Vicar of Christ. Yet Pope Leo XIV greeted the watching world with unfeigned joy, as if relishing the near-impossible mission of leading 1.4 billion Catholics and offering the rest of the world an example of Christian evangelism and sacrifice.
The new Pope is not only the first American to be elected, but his choice of name places him as a fierce defender of the independence of the Church in opposition to the secular world, following the tradition of Leo the Great, who miraculously saved ancient Rome from Attila the Hun.
At the end of the 19th century, Leo XIII defined Catholic social teaching to meet the challenges of modernity. In his career from Chicago to Chiclayo in Peru, Robert Prevost has mediated between capitalism and socialism, North and South, the mundane and the sublime.
