What's in a Pope? Actually, quite a lot!

Let’s talk about Pope Leo XIV and me. First me! I was baptized Catholic and took my first communion when kids usually take their first communion. We went to church semi-regularly – most Sundays and on Easter and Christmas (midnight mass, of course) – most often when my mom found a congregation she liked. That wound up being Sacramento’s Newman Center, a hippie-dippie Catholic campus church with progressive clergy and none of the fanciness of the cathedral. It was a church the late Pope Francis would have served at.

When it came time for my confirmation – the ritual teenagers go through to commit themselves to the Church’s teachings – my mom gave me a choice. My choice came in the form of the question, “If God created everything, who created God?” “Don’t know,” answered mom, “but if you have any doubts, you shouldn’t go through confirmation.” And that was that.

Growing older, I never drifted towards organized religion, instead embracing what I call Militant Agnosticism, basically, I very much defend my right to say “I have no fucking idea what is going on!” while pillaging what I like from various spiritual teachings, philosophies, and science to create my own private creed. Which means, I’ve read some holy books, including the Bible, so I am familiar with Jesus’ teachings. That’s where I come from when I write about the new pope, Catholicism, and Christianity.

Prior to the elevation of Cardinal Bob Prevost to Pope Leo XIV, there was a lot of speculation about who would be pope. Odds-on favorites were the Italians, because the Italians are always favorites. There was talk of either an African or Filipino pope, and some hope of an American getting the cardinals’ tap, with conservative Catholics rooting for New York’s Timothy Dolan, a right-winger favored by Trump (after himself, of course). Father Bob was on few people’s draft board.

When Bob became Leo, most Americans were psyched, even non-Catholics. “We finally have an American pope!” the U-S-A crowd chanted, without knowing the particulars of Father Bob’s pre-papal life. Yes, Father Bob is from Chicago, a Sox fan at that, poor guy; however, he spent most of his life attending to the spiritual needs of Peru, where he became a citizen. Since leaving Peru, he’s served in Italy, in The Vatican. If the new pope is an American pope, best insert “Latin” in front of that “American,” because there is where he’s dedicated himself the most.

Even then, Leo XIV was very clear in his introductory speech and his first address to the Cardinals that he is a globalist. Tellingly, Leo’s initial speech to the public was in Italian and Spanish, with a bit of Latin thrown in. Though American, Leo did not speak English. Let’s read into that a bit.

First some numbers: The data on global religious affiliation is dated, but shifts in faith tend to move slowly, so I feel confident referring to these numbers. According to PEW (2010), 31.5% of the world’s population is Christian. Of Christians, at least 50% are Catholic (the rest are Protestant, Orthodox, Mormon, nondenominational, or one of the many splinter faiths).

Globally, Catholics mostly live in Europe, African, and the Americas. While the Americas hold most of the globe’s Catholics, there is a pretty significant split between north and south. In the United States, only 20% of the population is Catholic (12% white Catholic, 8% Hispanic Catholic – PRRI, 2020). In South America, nearly 80% of the Christian population identifies as Catholic. Moreover, while North America accounts for 8% of the global Catholic population, Latin America and the Caribbean top the globe with 39% of the world’s papists (PEW, 2010).

While it is true that evangelical Protestantism is challenging Catholicism in Latin America (especially in Brazil), not only is the Church still strong in Spanish-speaking countries, it is growing most rapidly in Africa, where it is the dominant brand of Christianity. The Catholic Church is not only more global today than ever, it is increasingly becoming more than mostly white people.

Look at the numbers alone and it makes sense that Pope Francis, though of Italian heritage, was drafted out of Argentina, and Pope Leo, though from Chicago, hails from Peru. If the Cardinals are going to refuse one of their Black or Brown brothers pope, they best find someone to represent nearly 40% of their parishioners.

The second thing to consider in the selection of Pope Leo XIV is politics, or rather where scripture and politics mix. For quite some time and up until Francis, pope have leaned mostly politically conservative. When many didn’t take political stances, like the anti-communist John Paul, the popes have dug in hard on doctrine, with interpretations far from liberal, especially in areas like gender and sexuality (see Benedict). Much to the distress of the Catholic right, Francis broke with most of the modern past and became what trolls call “a woke pope.”

How “woke” was Francis? As woke as the teachings of Jesus, which is plenty, plenty woke. Like Jesus, Francis championed those without a champion, the weak and the meek. He put the needs of the poor above the desires of the rich. He shunned the powerful to attend to those most disenfranchised. He focused on humanity in general, from both a human and humble perspective. He was a fierce critic of war.

Like Jesus, Francis had no taste for the trappings of power, luxury, and pomp. His disdain for the pageantry usually associated with popes caused much grumbling among the corrupt and conservates in the church’s hierarchy, many of whom he demoted, defrocked, or sidelined. Francis knew that if he was to bring the Church closer to the true teachings of Christ – from washing the feet of the poor to aiding immigrant travelers to throwing money changers out of temples – he needed to remake Church leadership, which is what he did. That included making his ally Father Bob a cardinal.

In Pope Leo XIV’s public debut, he kept things pretty tame. He spoke of global peace and community, but only hinted at what those things meant. In his first address to the College of Cardinals, he let it rip. After some formalities Leo makes it clear that he will follow Francis’ example of humility:

Beginning with Saint Peter and up to myself, his unworthy Successor, the Pope has been a humble servant of God and of his brothers and sisters, and nothing more than this. It has been clearly seen in the example of so many of my Predecessors, and most recently by Pope Francis himself, with his example of complete dedication to service and to sober simplicity of life, his abandonment to God throughout his ministry and his serene trust at the moment of his return to the Father’s house. Let us take up this precious legacy and continue on the journey, inspired by the same hope that is born of faith.

Leo digs in:

In this regard, I would like us to renew together today our complete commitment to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis masterfully and concretely set it forth in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, from which I would like to highlight several fundamental points: the return to the primacy of Christ in proclamation (cf. No. 11); the missionary conversion of the entire Christian community (cf. No. 9); growth in collegiality and synodality (cf. No. 33); attention to the sensus fidei (cf. Nos. 119-120), especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety (cf. No. 123); loving care for the least and the rejected (cf. No. 53); courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities (cf. No. 84; Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 1-2).

There’s a lot of Catholic jargon there, so some clarity: What Leo is talking about centering the Church on the teachings of Christ. He is not interested in the rules laid down by Peter or any of the letters from the meddlesome Paul, but what Jesus said and did. He wants a Church that is both modest in temperament and active in tending to peoples’ needs. He equates an authentic church with an inclusive church, one that is dedicated to providing “loving care for the least and rejected.”

Here Leo is refuting the American Christian right notion of a militant Jesus, the white, muscle-bound spiritual warrior worshiped by the gaggle of heretics that call themselves Trump’s religious advisors. This is another very loud rejection of the warped vision of JD Vance, a Catholic convert who laughingly thinks that Jesus had a hierarchy of love. It is also a complete rejection of the perversion known as Prosperity Gospel. (It is quite reasonable to assume that none of these jamokes have ever read the Bible.)

After establishing that Leo is going to walk Francis’ path (and thus the road Jesus paved), he scares the crap out of MAGA who are already freaking out:

Sensing myself called to continue in this same path [as Pope Francis], I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.

The key here is Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, an 1891 encyclical on “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor,” in which Leo XIII analyzes the problem of “the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses,” and concludes that the Church must support the workers’ right to organize to fight for their fair share and a more equitable distribution of God’s bounty. The Rerum Novarum is pretty long and reads like something out of the Catholic Worker Movement, a group of American Catholic political radicals led by Dorothy Day in the early 1900s.

As noted, the MAGAs are freaking the fuck out. One troll tweeted immediately that the new Leo is a “WOKE MARXIST POPE,” as if Jesus himself wasn’t the ultimate wokester, a dirty commie, and hippie pinko prototype. Others predict dark times and fret that Leo doesn’t support Trump’s immigration horror show (again, without asking WWJD?). It’s notable that most of this criticism comes from people who are neither Catholic or Christian, people who would not tolerate others commenting on their faith. No matter, that these people are pissing their pants, makes me wanna low five Pope Leo.

So, the Catholic Church looks like it has a decent man as pope. While that is good, especially as a counter to the Trump/Putin/Xi/Netanyahu axis of inhumanity, it doesn’t wash the Church of its many sins, its crimes against children, its deep corruption, its rank misogyny, and base hostility towards LGBTQ people. Certainly, Pope Francis tried to address the rot (how much is open for debate) and Pope Leo seems to want to do the same, but the proof will be in the papacy.