Audio only:
There’s been a LOT of buzz about Pope Leo XIV, both in Catholic media and secular media. Everyone has been digging into Leo’s past and online history (which in itself is very surreal) and we’ve found a lot. Here’s why Joe believes Pope Leo XIV could be an excellent Pope…
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer and like everyone else, I’m still waiting to see what Pope Leo the XIV pontificate is going to be like.
CLIP:
Is he woke? We still don’t know. The new Pope is American. We still don’t know if he’s woke. He criticized JD Vance in a tweet, so maybe he’s woke or maybe he just doesn’t like the guy who killed his boss,
Joe:
But I’m very excited. But one thing that I’m hopeful and even confident that we’re going to see, namely the restoration of greater unity amongst Catholics. It’s no secret the Catholics have been very divided over the past few years. Not only squabbling factions of so-called liberals, conservatives, and traditionalists, but the internet is replete with examples of so-called conservative Catholics turn one another apart, either for not loving Pope Francis enough or for loving him too much. It seemed like every time Pope Francis would speak off the cuff or he’d say something a little ambiguous, it would lead to a new fight over what he meant and how you were meant to feel about it. I think it’s fair to say that this was one of the chief reasons that Pope Leo was chosen to restore unity to the church and that there are actually several positive signs that should give us hope that he’ll succeed at least somewhat in that mission. Speaking of incredibly positive signs, I’ve seen some over on shameless joe.com. Your support there over the last few months has been overwhelming, but I am
CLIP:
Once again asking for your financial support.
Joe:
I’ve been very grateful to our supporters over on Patreon. I love interacting with you guys. I’ve gotten some great video ideas from your questions and your comments, and I want you to know that by becoming a member, you get access to exclusive q and a live streams as well as ad free videos hand you directly helped keep this ministry going, so please go to shameless joe.com and become a member today. Alright, so here are six reasons that I’m hopeful that Pope Leo is going to bring greater unity to the church. First, we’ve already seen some of this unity in action in his papal election. I’d venture to say most Catholics had never heard of Cardinal Privos when he became Pope Leo the 14th. And so they didn’t know how excited to be about his election and many Catholics who are more conservative leaning theologically and politically were alarmed when they saw how excited liberal Catholics like Cardinal Blaise Cupich or Father James Martin were when Pope Leo was announced to the world. But since then, a very different picture has emerged. The Washington Post reported this weekend that conservative cardinals like Cardinal Mueller were pleased with the choice of pontiff and the Italian press is crediting, or in their case, maybe blaming Cardinal Dolan, calling him the king maker for organizing conservative and liberal cardinals alike to support. Now Pope Leo drawing support from the us, from Africa and from Asia. Now Cardinal Dolan himself hinted that there was actually a pretty quick consensus amongst Cardinals of all stripes that Cardinal Privos was the right choice.
CLIP:
You all as seasoned journalists would know, and you’ve done your background. This kind clay was rather quick.
Yes,
Right? That would lead a savvy observer like yourselves to say there must have been some unanimity from the beginning. There was no shock here. So yeah, if that leads you to think that hey, there was a great sense of unity, there was kind of appeal that this guy exerted right from the beginning.
Joe:
So what would draw people of such varying viewpoints to rally around the same choice for Pope? Well, the attributes they point to Cardinal Soch, for instance, praised him as a missionary pastor. These are precisely the things that all Catholics should desire in a Pope, someone who loves Jesus and loves the downtrodden. In other words, the Cardinals seem to have gone looking for and may have actually found someone who couples Pope Francis’ most attractive qualities, but with some important differences.
CLIP:
So he was obviously close to Pope Francis. We can already tell by the times he loved him very much and listened to him, but we’ll see some changes as well. And that’s refreshing, don’t you think? Yeah.
Joe:
So what are those differences between Pope Francis and Pope Leo? That leads to the second reason. I’m hopeful because I think we actually got a sense of some of those differences right away, ranging from what we might call his papal style to his papal motto and even his name as Pope. Now, Pope Francis from the beginning seemed to have a desire to shake the church up. He was content to buck small tea traditions that he found cumbersome. He took a totally new papal name, and from the very moment that he emerged on the balcony after his election, we see him in a bare white caic without the traditional red mella or stole. And we find out from him very quickly that he’s not going to live in the traditional papal apartments, but instead he’s going to live in the Caza Santa Maria. Well, Pope Leo has returned the papacy to more of a sense of normalcy as it were. He emerged in the traditional garb. He took a surprisingly traditional name more on which in a moment, and he’s living in the same place that Pope’s lived before. Pope Francis. Now Liturgically, I’m going to let the man speak for himself, whether it’s by the Reverend Way in which he celebrates mass and crisp, clear Latin
CLIP:
Re,
Joe:
Or in his reminder to the
CLIP:
Church that moreover, the church should resist the temptation to believe that it can compete with modern mass media by turning the sacred liturgy into spectacle. Here again, church fathers such as Tertullian remind us today that visual spectacle is the domain of the Secm and that our proper mission is to introduce people to the nature of mystery as an antidote to spectacle. As a consequence, evangelization in the modern world must find the appropriate means for redirecting public attention away from spectacle and into mystery.
Joe:
A third reason that I think Pope Leo’s pontificate is going to be a mission of reuniting. The church is right there in his papal motto. Now, Pope Leo’s motto, which he first adopted when he became a bishop is in ilo uno unum, which means in the one we are one, it is a perfect model for him for several reasons. First of all, it’s a quotation from Saint Augustine and Leo was the prior general of the Augustinian order. He is a son of Augustine to use his own words from his introduction to the world,
CLIP:
I’m a son of Saint
Joe:
Augustan, but second Augustine is saying that although we Christians are many in the one Christ, we are one. Now back in 2023, then Cardinal Prevost explained that he chose this motto because unity and communion are truly part of the charism of the order of Saint Augustine and also of my way of acting and thinking. So he’s stressing the need for unity, but also pointing out how it is that we get there. We become unified precisely through our communion with Jesus Christ. In the words of St. Paul, we are one body because we partake of the one bread. The more we draw close to Jesus, the more we draw close to one another and it’s only in the one Christ that we can ever truly be one. So this isn’t a unity at the expense of the truth, but a unity in the truth himself. Biblically, this mission of unity in the truth is critical to the success of Christianity.
Remember, Jesus prayed for his future disciples that we would become perfectly one so the world would know that the Father had sent him. When we are divided as Christians and as a church, we don’t just hinder Christian unity, we cripple our efforts of evangelization. We endanger even our own battles for holiness. After all, one of the reasons that Christ gives us a church is so we can fight the spiritual battles together. And it’s a great sign that Pope Leo seems to take this call to holy unity. Seriously, this connection between unity and evangelization was one of the themes that Pope Leo hit in his first homily as Pope, but with a fascinating twist, he’s preaching to the College of Cardinals and the new Pope reminded them that we preach Christ in a hostile world and that we do this first of all in our personal relationship
CLIP:
With the Lord in our daily commitment to the journey of conversion. But then we have to do so as a church experiencing together that our belonging to the Lord leads to our bringing the good needs, good news to all.
Joe:
Now, the Pope Himself obviously plays a special role in bringing people together in this way. And so Leo quotes in Ignatius of Antioch who famously existed and said that the church in Rome presides in charity over the universal church and one way that we are, one is by being united to the Pope, the successor of Peter. That’s been an important part of Christian theology for 2000 years. But Leo chose to focus on something else, something beautiful in his letter to the Romans. This same saint Ignatius writes,
CLIP:
Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ when the world no longer sees my body.
Joe:
Now in context, Leo meant this quite literally, he was about to be martyred in Rome by being fed to wild beasts. But Leo suggests that we can find in his words a reminder.
CLIP:
It’s to move aside so that Christ remains to make oneself small so that Christ may be known and glorified to spend oneself even to the utmost so that all may have the opportunity to know him and to love him.
Joe:
In other words, as John the Baptist said, he must increase and I must decrease. Now, those who know the new Pope describe him as shy and less outgoing than Francis, but that profile might be perfect for someone trying to ensure that the eyes of the church are on Jesus Christ rather than on the Pope. Pope Leo’s papal name definitely matters. Now, I love the fact that he didn’t choose Paul III or John Paul III or Francis ii, that instead he reached back further into the church’s history to take his name after one of the most beloved popes in the modern era. Much of the energy in the church over the past few decades has been wasted in intra Catholic fights over how best to properly interpret Vatican ii. But Pope Leo the IV was only 10 years old at the close of Vatican ii. He’s simply too young to have been a partisan in many of these fights.
Instead, Cardinal Privos one to identify his papacy with that of Pope Leo the 13th, and he explained why in the midst of the first industrial revolution, Pope Leo the 13th wrote the 1891 and Cyclical Rum Navarro in it, Leo the 13th, decried the greedy capitalist of his age, lamenting that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring. Poor, a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. But in that document, he also warned that to remedy these wrongs, the socialists working on the poor man’s envy of the rich are striving to do away with private property. And the Pope warned this goal must be utterly rejected since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit and is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind and would lead only to confusion and disorder.
Now, in explaining why he chose the name Leo, the new Pope argued, I think correctly that we find ourselves in the midst of a second industrial revolution this time a digital one in which artificial intelligence threatens to create new challenges to human dignity, to justice and to labor, and it might just be this external threat. That’s precisely what we as Catholics need to come together. And I, for one, am grateful that we have a Pope who seems aware of the dangers and well-equipped to chart what are certain to be uncertain waters. Now, like I said before, it’s no secret that the church is more divided than in times past. It seems as though the culture wars that have been raging throughout America and the West have crept into church dialogue with increasing polarization. It would’ve seemed impossible, at least to me even a week ago, to find a pope who both Patrick Coffin and Father James Martin seemed excited about. And yet here we are.
CLIP:
We’ll see what happens. I’m, I am generally optimistic, encouraged and I was shocked, but I was also shocked when they read out his name Leo the 14th, and that was the name I wanted the Pope to take. So I’m glad that he did. That’s a great sign. It was a comfort to me.
What a rush. This is the first American Pope Robert Prevost, who we’ve followed for some years at American Magazine. This is truly historic. It feels like a dream.
I’m going to keep paying attention to what he does because there are good things that he’s done. I’m going to show you some of those today. They’re actually some pretty crazy good things and there are some signs that we need to be cautious, but it’s day two, as the kids say, let the man cook.
Hey everyone, it’s Jim Martin, and just sort of stunned by the news of the election of Pope Leo the 14th former Cardinal Prevost. I got to know him a little bit at the Senate. He was at my table, and I know him to be a down to earth kind, modest, reserved guy, hardworking, decisive, not afraid of speaking his mind. It’s a great choice. I also think it’s really important to note the choice of the name Leo the iv. A nod to Leo the 13th is the father of Catholic social teaching. So just an amazing choice.
There’s some signs afoot that this guy is not the neo modernist activist. He just looked like someone in continuity with things that are traditional, things that are anchored in the past. And I think the fact that he has signaled so many things that angle him in a more traditional way gives me sign of hope.
Joe:
Now, if this feels uncanny or almost surreal, then you’re in good company. As I say, I never would’ve predicted this, and that’s not to say that Pope Leo isn’t going to do something that’s going to upset one side or another, or both sides of the theological and political isles. I suspect that’ll happen. But it is surprising and it is heartening to see so many Catholics of all stripes upbeat and encouraged by the new Holy Father. Perhaps this will all turn out to be a honeymoon phase. Perhaps we’ll go back to the circular firing squad the minute Pope Leo says, or does anything remotely controversial, but we don’t have to. Now, of course, as many as you know, right before becoming Pope Cardinal Privos was in charge of the Dicastery for Bishops, meaning that he helped to advise Pope Francis on the selection of new bishops.
And so one of the first tests of Leo’s own pontificate is going to be who he chooses as his own replacement and the kinds of bishops that he begins to appoint. Now that he has a free hand, it’s an understandable concern, one that I’m sure the Cardinals took into consideration when electing him as Roman pontiff, but I think that there’s a very important angle to this that most people are missing. You see, the face of the priesthood is rapidly changing, particularly here in the United States, and this critical sea change in the clergy is going to have a major impact on who Pope Leo chooses to elevate to the Episcopate. Now, what major trend is that you’re going to have to click here to find out in the meantime, through the intercession of St. Augustine, let’s pray that we shall become more fully one in Christ Jesus. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.