FRIDAY marks the anniversary of Robert Prevost’s election as Pope Leo XIV.
It was a truly remarkable event in the life of the Catholic Church.
For the first time, cardinal-electors chose a man who was born in the United States, arguably the world’s last remaining superpower (though for how long is anyone’s guess).
Although Donald Trump claims Prevost owes his position to his presence in the White House, he was perhaps the least of the cardinals’ concerns when they placed their ballots in front of the high altar in the Sistine Chapel.
The Italians have a saying that conclaves always follow ‘a fat pope with a skinny one’. It sounds better in Italian: ‘Fate sempre seguire un papa grasso a uno magro’.
The classic example is the election of the jolly John XXIII after the acerbic pontificate of Pius XII – the man dubbed Hitler’s Pope, rightly or wrongly, for his caution during the Second World War.
Papa grasso/papa magro is a metaphor for the Catholic Church’s ability to duck and dive as it negotiates an increasingly hostile world.
It allows what is very much a broad church to shift priorities, adjust doctrinal emphases, and effect change while giving the appearance that everything remains the same.
That was perhaps most dramatically seen with the election of Jose Borgoglio. Outspoken and progressive, Francis was the antithesis of his traditionalist predecessor, the saturnine and Machiavellian Benedict XVI. A bit of a papal bull in a china shop, Francis was just what the Church needed.
Former US President Donald Trump meeting Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2017. Picture by AP/Evan Vucci
On the face of it, Leo XIV is the antidote to Francis’s somewhat anarchic approach to Vaticanology.
A fierce critic of the Church’s ruling elite in the Curia, Francis was always the outsider. As far as the Vatican was concerned, Francis wouldn’t be seen dead there, which is why his decision to be buried in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore outside the Vatican City was so symbolic.
Francis embraced poverty – he turned his nose up at the fancy dress so beloved of Benedict – and refused to live in the papal apartments. Leo is back in the dressing-up box and back too in the papal apartments.
And while Francis was very much not a details man, Leo is the opposite. Francis liked to throw everything up in the air and see where it settled. Leo is a planner, a strategist, but above all a diplomat.
But as this papacy has unfurled over its first year, there are signs that Leo’s time at the helm may be more continuity than people at first suspected.
The traditionalists took heart from his decision to wear the red mozzetta (signifying authority and power). Moving into the Apostolic Palace and using Castel Gandolfo as a retreat from Rome was also a signal of regime change to Francis’s foes.
But where it really matters, Leo has pushed forward with Francis’s changes that shifted the balance of the US Catholic hierarchy away from Maga enthusiasts such as Cardinal Timothy Dolan; he has continued to promote Francis’s project to make the laity more involved in Church thinking and management – synodality; he has sided with the poor (as you might expect from a man who was a missionary bishop in Peru); and he has emphasised the universality of the Church with last month’s visit to Africa – Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea – where he underscored the importance of living in harmony regardless of religious difference.
But it is his calm pushback on Trump’s imperialism and Maga’s abuse of Christian values to promote their illegal war in the Middle East where he has had the most dramatic impact so far.
Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image appearing to depict himself as Jesus in a Truth Social post criticising Pope Leo
Trump and his lackeys have no difficulty lashing out at those who stand in their way. Dog’s abuse has been poured on world leaders who have stood up against the White House’s belief that it alone has the right to control world affairs.
Leo has had his fair share of vituperation too.
But unlike the leaders of countries like Canada, Germany, Spain, Britain and France, the Vatican cannot be tamed by the threats of tariffs, withdrawal of trading partnerships, and the other economic weapons Trump uses at will.
The Pope remains the single world figure capable of taking on Trump and emerging intact. While recent Catholic converts like JD Vance might patronise him, the Pope has the moral authority to speak no only on behalf of the Catholic Church and its 1.4 billion adherents, but on behalf of the wider world too – whether it be Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or Jew.
If anyone has God on his side, it is this Pope.
It is gratifying to see that he has not been shy to take on the responsibility of ‘peacemaker’. As Leo enters the second year of his pontificate, he must continue to call out the warmongers, and build a coalition across religions and beliefs prepared to challenge global terror.
What we are witnessing is terrorism no longer being perpetrated against states, but being used by them. The victims are the poor, the dispossessed and the vulnerable. They need a voice. Leo’s could be it.
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