-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES — There are two key points that the surprise election of Pope Leo XIV makes clear.
The first is that this choice demonstrates that the Catholic Church is not as divided as a number of specialists had continuously pointed out before the Conclave began.
The second, of perhaps greater importance, is that the institution, over and above its internal tensions, which do exist, is quite clear about the place it should occupy beyond its spiritual commitment.
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That is why the whole episode has the imprint of the late Argentinean Pope Francis, and reasserts the meaning of his election in 2013, when the Church needed to escape its elitist seclusion.
Now, with Pope Leo, it shows a continuity that is further strengthened to follow the path of the deceased pontiff.
Continuity of a “street church”
The American and Peruvian Robert Prevost had been a strong ally of Jorge Bergoglio, who rose to become Pope Francis. And now as Pope Leo, in his first steps in the papacy, has revealsed himself as a keeper of the notion of a “street church,” recalling Thursday evening in perfect Spanish his pastoral work for almost two decades in a region of total poverty in Peru. It was also an exhibition of a marked distance with the government of his country of birth — the United States.
These observations are significant, considering what they are suggesting. It would be naive not to consider the Church as a global and influential power, as well as a superstructural one. There are multiple voices that speak through this organization.
The result of the conclave is a signal that comes out to contradict and dispute the policies that have been imposed across the planet, marked by a growing discourse that abandons toleration and reconciliation, justifies hatred and contempt for otherness, celebrates xenophobia and the destruction of international law.
Not the right way
This is not the right way, would be the message in simple and not exclusively pastoral terms. So this election is not good news for Donald Trump‘s United States and its allies, even if the event crowned a compatriot of the tycoon. It’s also bad news for the emerging European extremists who have made the persecution of migrants and disregard of human rights a badge of honor.
It is clear that he will generate political tensions.
It is interesting to wonder about the impact of the Vatican with this new leadership, when its views become a powerful demand upon the White House to amend its policies. Prevost in the past already previewed part of his opinions. He has been active on social networks and posted messages that denounced that there is nothing “even slightly Christian, American or morally defensible in a policy that separates children from their parents and locks them in jails.”
In this sense, this new Pope comes to pound the same social nails left by his predecessor, and it is clear that he will also generate political tensions. It remains to be seen if he also opens a little more the cultural doors that Francis closed, on the issues of the place of women, LGBTQ and the divorced. In addition to the acute question of celibacy, among other key chapters.
Modernity is possibly the Church’s greatest challenge for its future. How it fits into this reality is uncertain, but we can all acknowledge today recognized that it has a keen sense of where history has brought us.
