Shortly after the election of Pope Leo XIV on May 8, 2025, I realized that almost a year earlier he had visited the community of the Lay Centre in Rome. On that day—May 15, 2024—I left deeply moved and grateful for the chance to meet him so closely. We had no inkling that he would one day become the 267th pontiff of the Catholic Church, succeeding Pope Francis.

Cardinal Robert Prevost presided over the Eucharist, joined us for dinner and took part in an hourlong dialogue with members of our community, which is made up of lay men and women who study or work in Catholic organizations in Rome. I recently experienced a flashback to that Mass when we sang the hymn “Gather the People” (written by Dan Schutte) at Mass. At one point, the song declares: “Here we become what we eat.”

“As we have just sung, here we become what we eat. At this table, we receive Communion and become Communion—the body of Christ, the church,” Cardinal Prevost had said at the start of his Mass with us. Now, as pope, he conveys a similar message.

Just over 100 days after the election of Pope Leo, it remains difficult to determine his governing priorities. Yet some early impressions of his personal style are beginning to emerge, along with a few central themes that are likely to shape his pontificate and its approach to evangelization.

Three particular themes seem to inform his vision of life in the church and evangelization. I have called them “Unity and Peace,” “Synodality” and “Martha and Mary” (or “Service and Listening”).

Unity and Peace

Unity is perhaps the theme the new pope has explored most extensively so far. At the Corpus Christi Mass he presided over on June 22, he stated: “The Eucharist, in fact, is the true, real and substantial presence of the Savior, who transforms bread into himself in order to transform us into himself. Living and life-giving, the Corpus Domini makes us, the church herself, the body of the Lord.”

As soon as I heard this, sitting in the square before the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, I connected it to what he had once told us at the Lay Centre: “Here we become what we eat.” For Pope Leo, unity is more than a social or organizational vision. It is a constitutive element of life in the church.

That is, in essence, an Augustinian statement. When Cardinal Prevost, a member of the Order of St. Augustine, first appeared before the people in St. Peter’s Square as pope, he quoted St. Augustine: “‘With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop.’ In this sense, all of us can journey together toward the homeland that God has prepared for us.”

As leader of the universal church, he presents himself simply as a fellow Christian, while fully embracing the responsibilities of a “shepherd with the smell of the sheep,” as Pope Francis would say. Pope Leo shows every sign of being a social pope, much like Francis—deeply connected to the realities of the world and attuned to the pulse of those in painful situations.

His choice of the name Leo, as many have noted and as he confirmed in his first meeting with the cardinals after the conclave, is a direct reference to Pope Leo XIII and to the church’s role in confronting the problems of the world. “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 defense of human dignity, justice and labor,” he said to the meeting of cardinals.

Pope Leo presents himself as a beacon of unity, and with this vision comes the promotion of peace. “Peace be with you all!” were his first words as successor of the Apostle Peter. “It is the peace of the risen Christ. A peace that is unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering. A peace that comes from God, the God who loves us all, unconditionally.”

In the context of the Easter liturgical season, he made reference to John 20:19-23—a biblical passage in which, after Christ’s death, his disciples are anxious, worried and unsettled, uncertain of what lies ahead. Jesus, resurrected, appears to them and says: “Peace be with you.”

The peace of Christ is a gift and must be shared with others. Peace is built, first and foremost, in the heart of each person, and it demands “that we work on ourselves,” the pope noted in an audience with diplomats on May 16. “Peace is built in the heart and from the heart, by eliminating pride and vindictiveness and carefully choosing our words. For words too, not only weapons, can wound and even kill.”

Words, like gestures, should be disarming—yet also unarmed, he suggested. Aggression, violence and war will never produce peace. It is the church’s mission to be a source of light. “Help us, one and all,” Pope Leo prayed in his first appearance on May 8, “to build bridges through dialogue and encounter, joining together as one people, always at peace.”

Synodality

For Pope Leo, synodality is a process that generates unity within the church. Some of us tend to think of a synod as bringing together differing opinions, perspectives and life experiences in the church so they might clash and the strongest prevail. The pope sees “walking together” as precisely the opposite of that.

At the Pentecost Vigil celebrated at the Vatican on June 7, he revealed that on the evening of his election, synodality was a word that came to his mind. “Moved as I looked out at the people of God gathered here, I spoke of synodality, a word that aptly expresses how the Spirit shapes the church,” he said. “God created the world so that we might all live as one. Synodality is the ecclesial name for this.”

It is a message closely aligned with Pope Francis, who often insisted that “in the church there is room for everyone, everyone, everyone.” Francis defined synodality as the style of the church in the third millennium, a process of listening to one another and together discerning God’s will. The Theological Commission of the Synod on Synodality (2021–2024) stated that the gifts of the Spirit are given to all the baptized “and are manifested in many ways, with equal dignity.”

To be a synodal church, Pope Leo now says, means recognizing one’s own flaws, but also one’s strengths. Above all, it is having the humility to acknowledge that the body of the church must prevail over individual choices. It requires that “we feel part of a greater whole, apart from which everything withers—even the most original and unique of charisms.” Synodality is unity in diversity.

Finally, a synodal church is “a church that moves forward,” as Pope Leo said in his first words to the public. It is a church that is always on the move and never detached from the realities of the world. He added that we want to be “a church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close above all to those who are suffering.”

Martha and Mary

During his working vacation at the summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, Pope Leo celebrated Mass at the Cathedral of Albano. On that occasion, he preached on the Gospel passage recounting the story of Martha and Mary (Lk 10:41-42). While Martha busies herself with domestic tasks during Jesus’ visit to their family home, her sister Mary remains seated, listening to her master’s teaching. Martha complains to Jesus about her sister’s behavior, to which he replies: “She has chosen the better part.”

In speaking about this story, the pope stated that “serving and listening are, in fact, twin dimensions of hospitality.” They are not “mutually exclusive,” he noted. He extended an invitation to all faithful to cultivate a deeper interior life, and this means fostering a direct relationship with Christ through spirituality, prayer and silence.

“Our relationship with God comes first,” he said. “Although it is true that we must live out our faith through concrete actions, faithfully carrying out our duties according to our state of life and vocation, it is essential that we do so only after meditating on the word of God and listening to what the Holy Spirit is saying to our hearts.” 

Here lies another characteristically Augustinian teaching. “And see, you were within, and I was in the external world and sought you there,” St. Augustine wrote in his famous prayer: “Late have I loved you.”

By all indications, Leo will be a pontiff of deeply spiritual teachings and will continue to encourage all Christians to remain open to the action of the Holy Spirit in their lives. “This is a dimension of the Christian life that we particularly need to recover today, both as a value for individuals and communities, and as a prophetic sign for our times,” he said at Albano.

On the other hand, here comes Martha, the sister portrayed as more active, hard-working and even critical of the reality she faced. Pope Leo is also a missionary. Missionaries empty themselves of many of their own convictions, their way of doing things, in order to adapt to the place in which they find themselves. A missionary learns new languages, adopts new customs, lets go of practices long ingrained in life, and proclaims the Gospel in a new way, one shaped by the culture in which one is immersed.

Pope Leo is a missionary pope for a missionary church: “Together, we must look for ways to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges and encourages dialogue, a church ever open to welcoming,” he said on May 8.

On the Vigil of Pentecost, he added: “Evangelization, dear brothers and sisters, is not our attempt to conquer the world, but the infinite grace that radiates from lives transformed by the Kingdom of God.” To be a follower of Jesus, “we have no need of powerful patrons, worldly compromises or emotional strategies,” he said. “Evangelization is always God’s work. If at times it takes place through us, it is thanks to the bonds that it makes possible.”

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