Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Conclave Chooses First American Pope
The College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church sitting in Conclave has selected Robert Francis Prevost OSA of Chicago as the first American pope. His Holiness will be known as Pope Leo XIV. The selection was announced after the fourth ballot, and there were a few surprised faces, most of them happily so. This journal opposes organized religion in all its forms, but the political reality cannot be ignored. He leads 1.4 billion Catholics. That is about a sixth of mankind currently alive. His papacy is a political fact, and the truth is, the Church of Rome could have done much worse.
Commentators from the Vatican, people who have forgotten more about the politics of the church that most ever knew, stated that he had two qualities that probably tipped the scales in his favor. First, he has missionary experience and worked in northern Peru for years. He is a US citizen, but he has lived in the heart of Latin America. He knows the South well.
Second, Pope Leo XIV is well-known in the curia, and Vatican bureaucracy. At the same time that Pope Francis I appointed him a cardinal, he was appointed prefect of the Dicastry for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America in 2023. That made him a mover and shaker in the appointment of bishops and a bigwig in Spanish-speaking countries. The Vatican bureaucracy is not unfamiliar territory to him.
People seeking insights into his future actions as pope look to his speeches and his previous actions. He is not terribly good on treating homosexuals as equals. He has some blind spots about women and their role in the church. He is probably not going to approve gay marriage within the church nor will women be ordained while he is boss.
At the same time, Pope Francis made him a cardinal just over two years ago. At that point, the former pope was undoubtedly preparing for his departure from this life. He was busy putting people in place to safeguard the changes he succeed Benedict XVIl. This suggests that he will not go back too far, if he takes the church back at all.
When a man takes on the name by which he will be known during his papacy, the tealeaf readers try to tease out the meaning. Pope Francis chose to lead under the name of St. Francis of Assissi, a choice this journal finds admirable. John Paul I and II both sought to united the strains of reform from John XXIII and the more rigid theology of Paul VI.
The name Leo has not been used in over 100 years by any pope. Leo XIII was pope from 1878 to 1903, when he passed away, the fourth longest papacy. And he sought to bring the church into the modern era. He was known as the "Social Pope" and the "Pope of the Workers." He never accepted socialism but was no fan of laissez-faire capitalism either. He created soup kitchens, homeless shelters and orphanages, and opened branches of Monti di Pieta, a bank that loaned to the poor at low rates of interest. He was not a revolutionary, but for that, he may have been more effective.
This journal is hopeful that the new Pope Leo keeps the intellectual curiosity of this predecessor alive. Leo XIII opened up the Vatican archives to researchers. If Leo XIV continues with that openness, it will benefit historians, politicians and theologians.
Finally, politics had to have a hand in this. At a time when the American government is behaving in a most unChristian manner, an American pope is a signal. Those old enough to remember the elevation of John Paul II will recall the Cold War tensions that he engaged. He can take some credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This journal is atheistic, but it also recognizes those theists who uphold the values of the Enlightenment. There are worse allies than Leo XIV appears to be. Time will tell, but there is reason to be cheerful.
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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