This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Daily Iowan: What was your experience meeting the Pope, and how did you get the opportunity to meet him?

Branch: I’m on the board of an organization called IOTA, which stands for the International Orthodox Theological Association. It’s a very exciting group. There are five of us on the board, and it’s a relatively young organization — only about ten years old at this point. [IOTA] is hosting high-level academic meetings in various countries that have historically been Orthodox Christian.

[IOTA] has a mega conference every four years. The last one was in Volos, Greece, in January 2023, and our next one’s going to be in Kutaisi, Georgia, in 2027. A pattern is kind of emerging where we have a halfway conference between the four years, sort of like the Olympics. This year is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. 

All the participants came into the Vatican in a special meeting hall. I did not know before I was going in that I would get to be in the front row. On one side, there were members of our board, and on one side of the room, there were bishops from all over the world. There were about 300 people behind us.

He was about 30 or 45 minutes late because he had been talking with the president of Argentina. He came out, and he was so peaceful and calm. He came from this big meeting with the president of a major country, and he was so calm. He was calm, humble, and warm. Those are my words to describe it. 

He just met and acknowledged each person, I got to greet him in Italian, have an exchange, and then our whole group got to talk with him about Christian unity and what the conference was doing. After all this, personal shaking of hands, personal conversation, very slow, patiently dolled the way down the line, he then went and met the bishops. Then he sat on his chair, and he gave an address. 

It really was so meaningful to me and my interest in literature and religion and orthodox theology, which is a huge part of my academic thing. I love being involved in IOTA — it’s this amazing opportunity to go and be a part of something that is really real about reforging Christian unity worldwide. 

How long was Pope Leo’s address, and what did he discuss?

It was about ten or 15 minutes. He talked about how important and meaningful it was that we’re working on this topic of Christian unity. He also said something I found really moving…to realize that, yes, we all have to work for this, but as Christians — Christian unity is God’s work. 

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We can work for this and pray for this, but it’s not going to be something that we achieve on our own. That’s a very fundamentally Christian theological view; it is not like God controls everything like we’re all puppets. 
It’s not like everything we do is just all humans left to their own devices. He was really saying we all have to keep praying about this. He had a lot to say about dialogue and really enjoyed good faith, investment, and conversation between the groups.  

Did you ever think that you would have an experience like this?

No, not at all. This is one of those things that you don’t see coming in your English professor career. I would say that that’s really indicative of academic life for me. The stuff I work on, the stuff that I really care about, and I’ve just had marvelous encounters like that, where, because of the thing I worked on or whatever expertise I have. The fact that this kind of encounter I totally didn’t see coming comes out of this work and stuff…that’s so beautiful and good. 

I want to emphasize this is a very exciting way Iowa is connected to the world. An English professor who also works interdisciplinary about literature and theology and is making this kind of connection. That’s really a big piece of the post-secular teaching and research that I did — how religion matters and what goes on with it in our 21st century world.