The missionary Pope: a face to be discovered each day
Leo XIV experienced the mission for a long time, in Peru first, as a reason for being alive. This is something new for a pontiff. He has already spoken about authority that should “disappear so that Christ remains.” The choice of the name denotes freedom from influences and expectations, but also rootedness in a thousand-year-old history of faith. He was chosen for his human qualities, and those who like to see his election in geopolitical terms are plain wrong.
First of all: Leo XIV is a missionary pope. Certainly, the first in modern times and, perhaps, the entire history of the Church. The missionary vocation is the defining element of Robert Francis Prevost's life. He said it explicitly in the (rather rare) interviews available on the Internet.
Now we are finding out about his 20 years in Chiclayo, the diocese in northwestern Peru, where he reached out to people in some of the remotest villages, on foot or horseback, like our old-time missionaries. It is no small feat for us missionaries to have a pope who not only invites us to undertake the mission, but who lived it firsthand, for a long time, as the reason for being alive. This makes a difference.
For centuries, the mission was considered a marginal activity by a few missionaries who left for abroad, while the Church remained all busy at home, centred on itself. The mission did not affect the thinking of the Church. Mission theology was not part of the theological curriculum (and in many faculties still is not). Now this is no longer the case: the mission is the heart of theology and ecclesial thought.
Pope Leo confirmed this on the first evening when he said, “we must look for ways to be a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges and encourages dialogue, a Church ever open to welcoming, like this Square with its open arms”.
Building bridges (the exact opposite of erecting walls) is a programme inscribed in the word pontiff, and it is also in our name: Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. A missionary Church means a mission that belongs to the people of God.
On the evening of the Habemus Papam, Leo cited well-known words by Augustine: “With you I am a Christian, for you I am a bishop.” Augustine himself, Pope Leo's spiritual and theological reference, explained its meaning well: being a Christian is a sign of grace and an opportunity for salvation. To be a bishop, on the other hand, is a task one receives, which comes with dangers.
In short, grace and salvation are the legacy of all the baptised and count infinitely more than the tasks that distinguish them. The grace of baptism, in which we receive the very name of Christ, is the foundation of the equal dignity of believers and of their participation in the same mission.
That such authority counts less and is even dangerous is confirmed by Leo when he said, before the cardinals, that it is "an indispensable commitment for anyone in the Church who exercises a ministry of authority to disappear so that Christ remains.” What a bright and countercurrent programme.
The choice of the new pope surprised me and therefore I was not in a hurry to write these lines. We need slow reflection rather than speed, which tends to turn into superficiality and approximation. I do not know Cardinal Prevost personally or anything about him before the conclave.
I had seen his name among the papabili, but I wrote him off because I thought no pope could come from the United States, the great superpower now more than ever disliked by many countries in the world. I had read that he had taken Peruvian citizenship and that he had a strong bond with the South American episcopate, but Latin America, I thought, had already had its own pope.
Instead, to my mind it was the time for Asia, and for reasons that seemed valid to me. Excellent candidates came from Asia. But now I realise how inadequate my predictions were, based too much on the need for the Church to adopt a global strategy.
Other observers are now making the same mistake, strongly emphasising the pope's nationality as if that were the most important thing about him, or even considering his election as a response to President Trump. The cardinals certainly did not stoop so low.
I am convinced that Cardinal Prevost was elected for his human, cultural, intellectual, spiritual, pastoral and missionary qualities. These are the only things that really matter, since no one in the Church is a foreigner or valued for his or her origin.
I believe that the cardinals did not think that continents should take turns to express a pope: they simply chose the person they considered the best.
Prevost was not a public figure, but I believe that he made himself known to many in the years of service in Rome as prior general of the Augustinians first and then as prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops, leaving, without much fanfare, a positive trace in the soul of those who knew him and then elected him.
The pope's first word was peace, the same one pronounced by the Risen Jesus and echoed on the night of his birth. Peace qualified with very evocative adjectives, disarmed and disarming, about which we have already written.
He chose the name Leo in reference to Leo XIII who, in order to meet the challenges of the Industrial Revolution, inaugurated the Church’s social doctrine, a legacy of teachings (my words) still mostly unknown and unapplied.
Today we are being dragged into the irresistible revolution of artificial intelligence, with deep anthropological and social consequences; therefore, like Leo XIII, the new pope will focus on the issues of social justice, human dignity, and work.
In short: a programme for justice and peace is emerging. The pope wants to commit himself, the Church and the whole of humanity to realise these two fundamental goods that derive from the proclamation of the Gospel.
Yet, however suggestive and well motivated the name Leo may be, it is, in my opinion, rather distant and only immediately significant to but a few. Perhaps there are other very personal devotional reasons, but I believe above all that the pope chose this unexpected name as an act of very personal and intimate freedom, especially from the influences and expectations that the names of the most recent popes carry with them.
The emotion and shyness of his first appearance make me think of a man who is aware of his limits, but who is also capable of being sincerely free, none but himself.
He is the fourteenth pope to be called Leo. It seems to me that he does not want to act as the forerunner of something new, but more simply be part of a thousand-year-old history of faith that preceded him and that will follow him, one that comes from afar and that will continue even after he is gone.
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01/10/2023 13:42
10/07/2023 16:45
