Pope Leo shows you don't need to be woke to stay relevant
What is the secret of Pope Leo's popularity? In less than a month, he seems to have brought something fresh to this most ancient of offices. He has reminded us that the timeless is always timely.
In other words, you do not have to be woke to be relevant. Might other churches, in particular the Church of England, follow his example? Catholics ought not to lecture other denominations; heaven knows, there are more than enough motes and beams to go round.
But Leo XIV does teach us a useful lesson about Christian ministry in the 21st century. The key to contemporary evangelism is not to tell people what they want to hear, still less to imitate the high priests of the secular world, but to speak with the voice of Jesus to Pontius Pilate: 'To this end was I born, for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.'
No sooner had Leo been elected than he gave notice to the Caesars of our time. His clear-eyed support for 'martyred Ukraine' (in contrast to Francis's equivocation) was demonstrated by giving Zelensky priority over Trump's delegation in a private audience after his Inauguration Mass last Sunday.
No less urgent is a new policy on China, where the Communist Party is appointing new state 'bishops' without consultation. Leo knows that if he abrogates the disgraceful concordat agreed by Cardinal Parolin under Pope Francis, Xi Jinping is ruthless enough to incarcerate Chinese Catholics en masse, as he has already done to their episcopate and to the Muslim Uyghurs. But St John Paul II showed how to handle one-party states and Leo has already echoed the Polish Pope's signature message: 'Be not afraid.'
The BBC and others who take the obsolescence of a 2,000-year-old institution as axiomatic have been claiming that the new Pope will be 'continuity Francis'. Leo is an Augustinian friar who, having spent much of his life in Peru, will be no less zealous on behalf of the poor than the Argentinian Jesuit. His choice of name reminds us that the 'option for the poor' goes back to Leo XIII's social teaching and ultimately, of course, to the Sermon on the Mount.
Yet Leo is cast in a different mould from Francis. As a mathematician, a canon lawyer and an intellectual, he believes in resolving disputes, not reopening them. He has fully absorbed the legacy of Benedict XVI, whose recognition as a Doctor of the Church he will doubtless champion. In one of his first homilies, he quoted Benedict: 'God loves us. This is the great truth of our life; it is what makes everything else meaningful.'
For Leo, the mystery and beauty of the Catholic liturgy are integral to faith. That includes both forms of the Latin Mass and the various rites of the Eastern Churches. Anglicans should likewise treasure the Book of Common Prayer.
Leo's inauguration Mass opened with the Sistine choir chanting the Laudes Regiae, the royal acclamations whose origins go back to Roman antiquity. The refrain – Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat! ('Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands!') – proclaims the ultimate triumph of Christ.
Leo XIV exudes American confidence. His promises to be a long, significant and surprising pontificate. The Leonine revolution has only just begun.
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