OIn the evening of May 8, while a hot Roman sun began to bend down on the dome of Saint-Pierre, the 133 cardinals voters of the Roman Catholic church elected Robert Pry, born in Chicago, as a pope. Leo XIV is the first pope of the Order of Saint-Augustin.
Three months ago, JD Vance achieved what most theologians do not do in a lifetime: to make newspapers from St. Augustine. Addressing the American media of the possible Christian base of the “America First” proposal Trumpian, Vance said that such a notion was convincingly Augustinian. Vance argued that it was a Christian to have a preferential love for his family or his nation before larger global obligations towards foreigners, neighbors or non-citizens. His comments implied that love is expanding in concentric circles, diluted in intensity of obligation because he extends more and more from his loved ones and his nature.
In the sound and fury – whether applause, indignation or perplexity – which followed, the voice of Pope Francis, weakened with a silence close by the disease, heard was. From his hospital bed, Pope Francis delivered a correction, explaining that Vance was a poor reader of Augustine and did not understand the parable of the Bon Samaritan, in which we are taught by Jesus himself what is neighboring love. Questioned by the questioner: “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus uses history to teach a preferential love for the wounded, the weak and those who need it. This option is for everyone, whatever the blood relationship or nationality, it cannot be limited, and love is not a rare goods to be colored in rations. Pope Francis rejected a “first America” Trumpian as a coherent political theology.
Pope Francis could have continued by stressing that Saint-Augustin himself had preached on this very parable. Augustin uses the passage as a less example of what we must do immediately for others, but rather what Christ does for us. We – all – are – The injured man elongated beaten and bleeding on the road to Jericho. Our fragile nature, damaged by our propensity to spoil things, needs grace and salvation. Christ himself is the good Samaritan. For Saint-Augustin, Christ makes a preferential option for humanity. Christians must imitate Christ, the real Samaritan good, called to consider just as nothing less than parents in sin and in the promise of salvation. We are called to concrete acts of love for all our neighbors.
It is an interpretation of this parable that the new occupant of the Saint-Pierre chair will know very well, because he himself is “a son of Saint-Augustin” as he recalled the crowd awaiting his announcement. Pope Leo XIV, the first dual nationality pope, himself a bridge through the stretched Americas, joined the Augustinian order in their twenties and devoted his life to a combination of in-depth learning and missionary service of the poorest. In his first comments on Saturday afternoon, in which he explained the choice of his name and his priorities, he reaffirmed this priority for the service at “less and rejection”.
At a time when Catholicism has become newly politicized in America, we have, rather unexpected, a Augustine Pope for what seems to be a Augustinian moment. This moment is less Augustinian because Vance has strengthened the Ordo Amoris And more because, as Augustin himself has clearly done in his magisterium City of Godwritten in the crucible of political and ecclesial crises of 5th Century, empires and civilizations can decompose, the ancient worlds die and new ones are born. Much of what Augustine wrote after the fall of Rome feels breath at our time. THE City of God, written on the space of about 13 years,, was written in part to refute the allegation according to which Christianity was responsible for the collapse of an empire, which its adoption had led to a weakening of the virtues which had propelled Rome to world domination. Augustine’s work was an “apologetic” in the common sense of the term – a defense of Christian virtue and a public confession of the Christian faith as the basis of true society: for good, for justice and true lasting peace. While the institutions were fracturing, migration movements did not push Africa to Europe, but from Europe to Africa, and a new order began to emerge, Augustine interpreted the signs of discordant time.
It is difficult to avoid concluding that it has strange echoes of debates in our own plus Nietzscheen moment. Elon Musk, for example, believes that American society has been “weakened” by empathy and compassion in public life. He described them as “civilizational weaknesses” to overcome. In his speech from the Balcon de Saint-Pierre, the new Pope Augustine clearly indicated that, on the contrary, he considers that this is civilizing and humanizing forces of Christianity.
And it is not the vision of a man of a man. The most clear sign of the person that cardinals would continue to choose in the short bulletin published on the morning of May 6 by the Vatican press office. This summed up their objectives when they entered Conclave: in the next successor of Saint-Pierre, they sought, “a shepherd”, “a missionary”, “a teacher of humanity”, someone capable of leading a “Samaritan church” close to the wound, suffering, and peace, someone who would help overcome the polar forces of the Church and someone who would be peaceful. It was the man who came out with a smile, a little outdated but completely calm, in the Roman sun at the end of the afternoon, with the roars of an amazed and exalted crowd.
Leo emerged dressed like Benoît but resembling Francis. In his comments made on Saturday afternoon, explaining the choice of his name “Leo XIV”, we saw other clues of the probable connection threads between the Papure of Francis and Leo. In a sense, Francis prepared the way for Leo: he often talked about the fact that we live not only at a time of change but a change of era. Francis made the social teaching of the church a central board of its papacy, and Leo suggests that, just like Leo XIII in 1891 changed the industrial era, its migration, its poverties, its trips and its rapid changes, therefore Leo XIV will seek to do so for the digital age of new opinions and trips, as well as opportunities.
It is therefore understandable that Maga Catholics suggest that Leo could hold an American passport but that it is not “America first”. Steve Bannon continued to affirm that he would be confronted with conflicting and stimulating meetings with President Donald Trump.
However, it is difficult not to think that Leo will approach such meetings in a different disarming mode. His nature as a cardinal prevost was not to avoid conflicts and to speak clearly and firmly, but his way is almost exactly the opposite of Trump’s public character. Leo smiles easily, is calm, calm, sweet and not the master of a bell ringer. He took more time to appear on the balcony because he stopped and took the time to script each word. His sermon in the Sistine Chapel the next day was not out of the cuff (it seems less likely to ad-lib than Francis), but was prepared, read, considered and carefully designed.
Pope Leo is said by those I know well who worked closely with him to manage conflicts by finding means to fill the differences and build unity. And he is an American of a very different provision and personality on the world scene in Trump: he represents a different America. In a moment when the joyfully plural expressions of being American are channeled towards a single dominant scenario, the prudent Léo XIV, considered, oriented towards the world, is unlikely to achieve the aspirations of Loyalists Maga to a confrontation, a cultural war or an open conflict. As the son of Saint -Augustin, Pope Leo has deep resources to play this very differently, towards a dialogue and a peace that resists the use of force – which Augustine calls “lust to dominate” – and makes no abandonment to the false versions of good.
By writing in the 1960s, Hannah Arendt, another American bridger of worlds in a broken wartime, wrote a short essay on the papacy of Jean XIII. No fan of the Catholic Church as an institution, however an admirer of John XIII, a pope of peace and renewal and reform of the Church, he entitled his essay “Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli: a Christian on the chair of Saint-Pierre”. The title referred to a conversation with a chamber of the day of his death, when Arendt was in Rome – a city she loved.
How did a real and humble Christian succeed in the midst of all the policy of the papacy to sit on the stone chair, they amazed. How, I wonder, could she have described this pope of the Americas, another double national who pronounced the words “peace” nine times in her first speech, and who clearly made his desire for dialogue, the proximity of his people and an ethics of love of the unconditional neighbor, of his desire to, in the imitation of Christ the good Samaritan, all that he can help us to come out of culture and Currently seek, and to make more human?
Pope Leo is exactly the person to help Vance, Trump and, indeed, answer this question, not by a bitter confrontation but by the example of being a “teacher of humanity” who raises us all to something worthy of the gift and the call of human being.
