In this video, our apologists Joe Heschmeyer, Jimmy Akin, Tim Staples, and Catholic Answers host Cy Kellett share their first impressions of the newly elected Pope Leo XIV!

Transcript:

Tim: His brother said he wanted to be a pope. I mean, a priest from the time he could walk.

Joe: I’m in John Wayne Airport. There’s noise and people walking by.

Jimmy: It has been conventional wisdom for a long time that there wouldn’t be any American popes for the foreseeable future.

Tim: I love America. Yes, I do, but we’re a mess.

Cy: We just need to take that clip and put it on YouTube. Could we just have Tim with his hands up? I love America.

 

Joe: I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago, Illinois, was just named today the new pope, Pope Leo XIV. He is the first American pope. And this comes literally one day after on Lila Rose’s show, I said, well, he was the most likely American to become pope. There probably wouldn’t be an American pope this time around, and he was probably unlikely.

– What are the odds that we get an American pope?

Joe: I would say very low, but not zero. Okay. Prevost is the name that I sometimes hear thrown around as a possibility because of his work with the Congregation for Bishops. He knows a lot of the cardinals.

– If you had a percentage, you would say Cardinal Prevost is going to be the next pope. This American cardinal, what would you give it?

Joe: I would put it in the low single digits. So, mea culpa, he did indeed become pope. I said it’d be someone unexpected. And on that count, at least, I was right.

So what do we know about the cardinal? As you can imagine, this is going to be a little more informal. I’m in John Wayne Airport. There’s noise and people walking by. But I wanted to make sure to get something out, just because people are asking me, what do we know about him?

So far, we know a little bit. We don’t know a ton. He actually only became a cardinal in 2023, so he is somewhat of an unknown, I think, even to the other cardinals. But here’s what we do know. He was born in Chicago. He’s the first American pope. He was born in 1959, so he’s 69 years old. He actually went to Villanova for college, where he studied math. He then joined the Augustinian religious order. He then the Augustinians sent him to Chicago Theological Union, where he got his MDiv. He went on to Rome, to my own alma mater, the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, better known as the Angelicum, where he got both his license and his doctorate in canon law since 1985.

So basically my entire life, he’s spent a lot of his life essentially as a missionary in Peru, although he had some stints in the U.S. as well as particularly in the last few years in Rome. Sorry for the airport announcements and everything else. In Peru, he taught canon law, he taught patristics, and he taught moral theology in the seminary. So he has a wide range in terms of what he’s taught on.

Additionally, a wide range. He’s got a lot of languages that he speaks: English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, and he can also read German and Latin. So he is well prepared for maybe the international dimension of the papacy.

First, his papal name is a really fascinating choice: Pope Leo XIV. This seems to be a nod to Pope Leo XIII, who was pope from 1878 to 1903. That, coupled with his more kind of traditional-looking papal garb, is telling. An interesting sign. He didn’t feel the need to be John Paul III or Francis II or anything like that.

Right now, I think a lot of what you’re going to be hearing are just rumors or speculation or things that aren’t very based in fact. But the Catholic Herald last week put it like this: they said Prevost is something of a cipher when it comes to many of the contested issues in Catholic life in terms of where he stands on matters such as the ordination of women deacons or the blessing of persons in same-sex unions or the Latin Mass. He’s played his cards awfully close to his chest. So he’s not someone who’s known for having strong, maybe doctrinaire positions in either direction. He has a reputation, if anything, of maybe being something of a centrist, which could be very interesting.

We just don’t know. And so I would avoid anyone claiming to know more than we have information to support. On some issues, the black-and-white issues like women’s ordination to the priesthood, he’s been perfectly clear. But a lot of the other issues seem like they just have not come up in a way where he’s had to address them. And so we’re just guessing, really.

Tim: Nobody knew who Prevost was until pretty recently because he was in like the top 10 and all of that that you saw out and about. But I just liked the guy because, number one, he’s an American and a linguist. Right? I know he’s fluent in five languages. He wrote.

Cy: How unlikely is that? An American that speaks five languages.

Tim: That’s right. And he’s not, you know, I don’t want to pick on the Americans. Right? I mean, I love America. Yes, I do, but we’re a mess.

Cy: You just need to take that clip and put it on YouTube. Could we just have Tim with his hands up? I love America.

Caller: Okay, we get it.

Tim: But we’re a mess when it comes to the Universal Church. We’re just notoriously, you know, in kind of a little bubble. Yeah, you might say, over here. But I tell you, Prevost, he just… He has everything. I mean, the man. I love the fact that he is a cradle Catholic. You know, his brother said he wanted to be a pope from the time he could. I mean, a priest from the time he could walk. Right? And he was just devout his entire life, always knew what he wanted. He went to high school seminary. Right? So he entered at 14 years old, basically, like our friend Father Mitch Pacwa.

Cy: Yeah. And this is in the 1970s, when actually high school seminaries were on the way out. Not many people were entering.

Tim: That’s right. Same with Father Mitch, you know, but there’s nothing like a Catholic that’s been formed from the time they can walk. And that’s this man. But, you know, he goes into the Augustinians, as you know, and he’s in Chicago, which is a great place to be. Chicago. It’s a mess as a city: crime, you name it. I love that. I love that he’s from Chicago. I love that he’s an American. But he, you know, he goes through. And as you know, he got his doctorate in canon law from the NAC, that is the North American College in Rome, and he became a priest in ’82, and then he spent those next five years. And even though he got assigned to Peru, he was really back and forth between Rome and Peru. He didn’t really get his legs in Peru until after he got his doctorate of canon law.

Caller: Okay.

Tim: And licentiate before that. But in ’88 is when he went back to Peru with that brand new doctorate. And for 10 years, you know, he was not only teaching, which he did, but he also pastored. He was a pastor, which I think is so important for a pope to be in. A lot of times in Peru, too.

Cy: I think he’s there during the Shining Path. I have to look that up. I have. But that’s a tough time to be.

Tim: In Peru, from what I read. Yes. I don’t know, but that detail popped up in what I was reading. And so, you know, he’s just… He’s got, you know, think about. He’s an Augustinian. You know, the Augustinians are famous for education, pastoral ministry, and mission. That sums up what we need in a pope, especially in, you know, a successor of Pope Francis, because that was Pope Francis’s heart. And I think that’s another reason why I really like Prevost. He was close to the Holy Father, Pope Francis. Pope Francis is reported to have said he was his guy.

Tim: Yeah, I read that. I gotta confirm.

Caller: Aren’t you allowed to do that? I don’t know if that’s allowed. I’m gonna look that up.

Caller: That’s right. That Pope, you’d think he…

Caller: What are the rules on that?

Tim: That’s right. You’d think he… Universal authority or something.

Caller: Yeah, right. Who does he think he is?

Tim: But at any rate, he spent those years in Peru, but then he came back to the United States after 10 years there in Peru and once again, you know, in Chicago, you know, he became the provincial there of the local Augustinian order. And then eventually in 2001, he became the prefect of the entire order. But I think all along the way, this is a brilliant man, a holy man. He’s quite reserved. But everything about this man, I think, points to this guy’s going to be a great pope, in my humble opinion.

Cy: You’re not the only person that I have heard say that. And what did you think about the name Leo? What did you think about…?

Tim: What did it mean to you? I don’t know if I can say this on the air.

Caller: Oh, I love it.

Caller: Well, I mean, what I’m kind of… I really want to know.

Tim: Now you’re going to get mad at me.

Caller: Oh, oh, I see. Because…

Tim: No, Leo. What a perfect name in that, you know, Leo was known as the liberal pope.

Right.

Cy: You know, I love Leo XIII.

Tim: Of course, I love Leo XIII. As do I. And the Pope of the Rosary. No pope ever wrote like this pope. He wrote multiple encyclicals just on the Rosary, as well as the Blessed Mother. He was the most prolific Marian pope we’ve ever had.

Tim: But he was known as the Rerum Novarum.

Right.

Cy: That’s what he’s remembered for more than anything.

Tim: Verum Novarum, the worker and the dignity of the human person, which leads to Centessimus Annus, Annus of John Paul 100.

Cy: Years later, and Quadragesimo Anno.

Caller: I skipped over…

Caller: Oh, did… I didn’t mean to.

Tim: No, I jumped over. No, you’re right. Was that Benedict XV?

Caller: No, that… Or was that Pius? I think Pius XI.

Tim: Yeah, Pius XI, those three. Wonderful. We studied those in the seminary. How could I not? And we studied them together, in fact, just…

But Leo XIII was the one that kick-started it. And again, he’s known as, quote, unquote, the liberal pope. But he also… And the reason why I think folks would get mad at me, I think it’s a profound title for this pope because he also wrote the encyclical on the heresy of Americanism.

Cy: I wondered if you were going to get to that. Now, I thought that was Pius IX that wrote that, but somebody told me earlier it was Leo XIII that wrote that.

Tim: No, it was Leo XIII. And I actually love that encyclical.

Cy: Well, you got to explain that, though, because people… It’s not an anti-American thing. It’s against the heresy of Americanism.

Tim: Yes, a very big difference, because he praises America, you know, Pope Leo did, but the problem is Americanism. And we’ve had problems that go way back, as you know, I mean, all the way back to the 1800s. Our lovable bishop, John England of Charleston, South Carolina, who famously, you know, after the Pope condemned slavery for the umpteenth time from the Vatican, you know, going back to Paul III, you know, hundreds of years. And of course, Bishop John England, who was a powerful man, said, well, you know, the Pope’s not talking about our slavery here in America. See, we have a different kind of… And of course, the Pope was expressly talking about that and slavery, period.

But we’ve had this problem in the United States of Americanism that we have an inflated idea of ourselves, let’s just put it that way.

Cy: Generally speaking, well, we’re a new order of the cosmos. You know, we’re a Novus Ordo. So, like, we’re like the… And that is an inflated view.

Tim: It is. And I think if you read the letter, in fact, I gave a talk on this on one of our cruises years ago. If you read it, he writes, it’s the only encyclical letter ever addressed to a particular bishop. And it was to the great Archbishop… Yeah, Cardinal Archbishop Gibbons. James Cardinal Gibbons, who I absolutely love. I love that man. You read his book *Faith of Our Fathers*. It’s one of the reasons why I’m Catholic.

But he addressed it to him because he was the Cardinal Archbishop of the first see of Baltimore. And the Pope is basically saying, it’s time that we slap this stuff down. This idea, taking our Declaration of Independence and the certain things that we hold dear to and exalting them up out of their proper context, let us just say, like, freedom of the press.

Tim: Freedom of the press. Okay, what does that mean? And of course, freedom of press and freedom of speech always have to be qualified in the context of the common good.

Cy: Because look what they are now. I mean, exactly the most vile pornography is covered under this idea of freedom of the press. The Pope was right about that. Leo XIII was right.

Tim: He sure was. And it’s a lot more. But you know, the whole idea that, you know, if we disagree with the Pope, well, by golly, we saw this happen, didn’t we, during the reign of Pope Francis. We’ll just go out and have a protest, you know, let’s march against the bishops, you know, and hold up signs. You know, we want this, I mean, this idea of Americanism and unfortunately a lot of the negative stuff.

And I have to say this, you know, in watching the lead-up to the Pope’s election, the commentators were, and I’m going to be nice, I, you know, I’m going to be nice. But just the incessant slapping of Pope Francis and saying things that are just not true over and over and over again. Well, you know, the Church, he was unorthodox and wasn’t orthodox. And now we’re going to get back to the actual teachings of the Church. And you had even so-called Catholic commentators saying stuff akin to this. And it was like I was getting hit in the belly over and over and over again. I’m going, oh, Lord, you know.

But a lot of these problems, let’s face it, come from America.

Jimmy: Howdy folks. I just thought I’d share with you a few thoughts about the newly elected pope. What I’m going to be offering you are first impressions only. They are subject to revision because we’re still getting to know this new pope. He’s not like Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who everybody knew before he became elected as Benedict XVI.

But there is some that is known about Cardinal Prevost. You know, he’s been around on the world stage a little bit. I was aware of him as a possible candidate for the papacy or what’s known as a papabile, someone who’s popeable. I was not expecting him to be elected though. And one reason for that is it has been conventional wisdom for a long time that there wouldn’t be any American popes for the foreseeable future.

Partly the reason for no American popes is in the past. Well, there weren’t that many American cardinals, and I’m talking like 100 years ago, and they didn’t have airplanes to get American cardinals over the Atlantic Ocean quickly enough to let them play that much of a role in the discussions leading up to a conclave that could lead people to have confidence in them.

Then after World War II, America became a global superpower, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, America was sort of the last man standing in terms of being a global superpower. And you didn’t, the thought went that the cardinals wouldn’t want to have the United States as the dominant geopolitical power in the world at the same time as having the papacy in the hands of an American.

There’s also some reasons why they might want to be suspicious. In the 20th century, especially after World War II, when the CIA was founded, there was meddling that the CIA did in nations across the world, including in Italy, and that even though a lot of Americans aren’t aware of that, it kind of gave a bad reputation to America and American intelligence in a lot of circles.

And so there could be concerns about if we had an American pope, would papal policy be crafted in CIA’s Langley headquarters and so forth? So there are reasons for suspicion, and Americans tend to be sort of loud and we can have a reputation for, especially given our global superpower status, for having the attitude of just being large and in charge.

And that’s something that was not a particularly desirable trait for a pontiff, because the pope needs to be the servant of the servants of God. And that’s a little bit in tension with some of the images that America has projected, including, like, under President Bush or under President Obama or under President Trump. You know, there are very large, colorful personalities, and so I can understand why many cardinals would be hesitant to have an American.

So, you know, we’ve now kind of crashed through that barrier. I don’t know when we’ll have another American pope, but it was a bit of a surprise to have one this time. And I’m pleased that the College of Cardinals were able to find someone that they had confidence in and that that person is an American, and they didn’t let that deter them. So I think that’s a positive.

I also like the name that he’s chosen. Cardinal Prevost chose the name Leo, and so he’s known as Leo XIV. And anytime a pope picks a name, you tend to think of who last had that name. And what might that tell us about this new pontiff?

Well, like every pope, the previous Leo, Leo XIII, had some flaws, but he was a fundamentally good pope with many admirable qualities. He also wrote the famous St. Michael prayer for protection against dark forces that used to actually be part of the prayers after the Mass. And so this is just one thing connected with Leo XIII, but it’s notable that he did that. And I think it would be a good idea to say the St. Michael prayer for the protection and guidance of Leo XIV.

In terms of his theological orientation, well, I guess I’ll say this. One of the things I was watching was how many ballots would it go before we had a new pope? Now, four ballots is sort of the modern minimum. Nobody gets elected on the first, second, or third ballot. And if someone’s elected on the fourth ballot, it means that this is a person that the cardinals can agree on.

There didn’t need to be a lengthy, drawn-out process. If the conclave had gone on really long, or if a conclave goes on really long, what you tend to have is a couple of candidates representing different parties where neither party is strong enough to get their guy elected. And so then they start searching for compromise candidates.

The fact that Leo XIV was elected on the fourth ballot means that there was pretty quick agreement. A lot of votes coalesced around him quite rapidly. And of course, there are going to be other people who got votes. And I’ve even encountered rumors about who some of those were. I’ve seen a rumor that has been reported in the press that Cardinal Tagle from the Philippines, who would have been a highly progressive pope, was an early leader. And then the votes kind of coalesced around Prevost as an alternative.

In terms of what I can say about Prevost’s positioning theologically, he’s a centrist. He’s not highly progressive, he’s not highly traditional. He has not written a lot or spoken a lot on the various hot-button theological issues in the Church. And so I would expect that we’re not likely, at least for the foreseeable future, we’re not likely to have any major theological shifts in the Church.

Now, he’s a big promoter of peace and so forth and environmentalism and things like that. But all of that I look on as kind of secondary. It’s not the Pope’s main job to promote environmentalism or to promote world peace. As valuable as world peace is, it’s not the Pope’s main job. The Pope’s main job is to teach the Christian faith. And I’m not seeing any early signs of rupture on that.

I also suspect that we’re going to be in for a more peaceful period in the Church than what we’ve had in recent years. But I’ll get to reasons why I say that.

One thing that the cardinals definitely look for today is someone to be pope who is a missionary, who has a missionary heart. Now, when Francis was elected, he had made an intervention as Cardinal Bergoglio. And an intervention in this case is a speech in the general meetings before the conclave where he really pushed the idea of the Church needs to be missionary.

And so I think the cardinals saw that, and they thought that was promising. But then, even though Pope Francis was able to engage with the world media in ways that attracted good publicity, his missionary efforts didn’t seem to bear a lot of fruit.

In this case, the cardinals have again picked someone with good credentials as a missionary. Cardinal Prevost, even though he was born here in the United States, he spent many years in Peru and, you know, helping people there. And so I think that that’s part of why they were willing to go with him, even though he’s American in origin, because he’s clearly showed heart for people in the developing world, and that also earns him some credentials as a missionary.

Another thing that cardinals look for in a pope is someone who is a governor. When Pope Francis was elected, there was a big concern that the Roman Curia, that’s the offices in Rome that assist the pope, that they were kind of unmanageable. You know, we’d been coming out of the Vatileaks scandal and so forth. There were a lot of concerns about management in Rome.

And one of the things Pope Francis was elected to do was to clean house in Rome to get the governance of the Church kind of back on track. And that’s another area where the results were kind of mixed. But Leo XIV does have qualities that suggest he has governing ability. He’s been a diocesan bishop. He also has worked at very high levels in his Augustinian order.

And he knows the inside of the Vatican to some degree because he’s been the head of the Congregation for Bishops, which is one of the most important congregations, or now it’s the dicastery for bishops. It’s one of the most important dicasteries in Rome because it’s involved in selecting bishops all over the world.

All over the world. And Francis appointed him to head that, even though reportedly the two of them didn’t always see eye to eye. But even Francis had a lot of confidence in him, despite the fact that they sometimes disagreed.

In terms of his governing style, Prevost has a reputation for being more reserved. Now, Francis, by his own admission, he was going to make a mess. In fact, he reportedly said when John Paul II died, he actually supported Ratzinger as pope because he realized that was a moment when we needed cont... Read more on Catholic.com