Pope Leo XIV, Let’s Convert the World

‘What the Church needs going forward is a leader who can marry personal simplicity with a passion for converting the world to Jesus Christ, a leader who has a heart of courage and a keen intellect to match it. Anything less won’t work.’

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

We can pray with expectancy that the Gospel lived and preached by Pope Leo will ignite nominal Catholics, who in turn can light up a dark world. Anything less won’t work. ‘Bridge-building’ that secures people in their godless lives has struck down the Church of Jesus Christ.

But not destroyed her. So we pray and prepare to act. With the power that rose Jesus from the dead, we offer ourselves for her repair. I, like you, am just getting to know Pope Leo XIV. The least American of all American cardinals, he was the dark horse candidate who may be uniquely qualified to lead the Church in this hour.

He served the poor in Peru as a rural bishop, living the tension between oligarchs and Marxists. In Rome, he oversaw the global Augustinian order. Pope Francis promoted him in ‘23 to head up bishop selection for the global Church, thus making him one of the best-known members among the Conclave.

He has intellectual heft. Named for Pope Leo XIII, who authored the Church’s teachings aimed at preserving human dignity amid the rise of modernity, including Marxism (late nineteenth century), both men advocated for spiritual conversion in the context of basic human rights. Leo’s South American experience gave him a whole-person approach to the majority of global citizens.

One concern? An overly politicized approach to oppression can weaken the Gospel. Jesus’ Kingdom invites repentance now, regardless of who is in power. Real conversion cannot be understood in a vacuum but its driver remains the burning love of Jesus for sinners. 

Pope Leo is also a canon lawyer; he has studied the rights of Church members. That means due process for clergy and their alleged victims of abuse. Failure to act decisively and discipline prudently weakens the Church and drives LGBTQ+ activism. Leo has the smarts; he needs courage.

This quietly effective administrator also faces a Vatican in disarray: two billion dollars in debt, to be exact. One can’t help but think that Leo’s Anglo-Saxon roots in both language and financial acumen will serve the Vatican well. This is a critical season for mobilizing a team to clean the Church from within. Jesus, grant this 267th successor to Peter the stamina and strategy to make the Church’s lamp transparent.

Who is up to the task? One pope, yes, but also each of us as members who can strengthen him in prayer and action. Leo is inclined to the ‘synodal way,’ thus disposing him to listen to the voices of laymen and women (I’ll take it!). So I say to good Pope Leo XIV: ‘Listen to us on what we know well: the only real answer to our sexual crisis is to make chaste disciples of Jesus Christ!’

Pope Francis listened to activist voices: GLAAD president Kate Ellis, his bestie Juan Carlos Cruz, Fr. James Martin, and a host of Americans who politicized sexual identity rather than restoring it.

‘Pope Leo, we can do better! Let us recommit as the Church to give ‘em Jesus and convert the world, rather than be converted by it! Friends of DSM/LW, pray that we might be resolute in truthful love, ever fit to declare our hope for wholeness. Pope Leo XIV, we love you, we pray for the arduous task ahead of you, and we are coming soon to chat!’    

I take heart at the good Pope’s homily the morning after he was chosen:

‘May I be its faithful administrator for the sake of the entire mystical Body of the Church…a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world…through the holiness of her members. For we are the people whom God has chosen as His own, so that we may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9).’