One of the most poignant images after Pope Francis’s death was a close-up photograph of his shoes as he lay in his open coffin inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Scuffed, worn and workaday, they were a testament to the Catholic Church he wanted — one that walked out to the margins, served the most vulnerable and rejected clerical trappings.
Two weeks later, when Pope Leo XIV stepped onto centre-stage of the Vatican auditorium to address journalists, he too wore simple oxfords — like Francis, foregoing the traditional papal red slippers.
But while he may walk in Francis’s shoes, early signs point to a papacy with a style and direction all its own — straddling ideological lines and blending traditional Catholic signifiers with a political awareness shaped by cross-cultural experience and global power dynamics.
Some familiar messages, some new
In his first major address to the media, after a self-deprecating joke in his American Midwestern English, Leo delivered a pointedly political message.
He called for the release of imprisoned journalists, praised war correspondents, urged responsible use of AI and decried ideological noise in the media. He appealed to reporters to give space to the weak — “those with no voice.”
Francis, by contrast, used his first meeting with journalists to thank them for covering the conclave and push for communicating “the true nature of the Church.” As pope, he subtly ridiculed journalists who asked tough questions and made clear in interviews his distaste for negative coverage, once condemning reporters for the “sickness of coprophilia” — an obsession with excrement.
At his first address to world diplomats to the Holy See this week, Leo called for peace and said it was more than the absence of conflict, instead requiring work and diplomacy. He also reaffirmed Catholic teaching that the family is rooted in the union of a man and a woman and that the “unborn to the elderly” possess equal dignity.
Leo’s biography, already reflected in choices from his first days as Pope, speaks to a man shaped by more than one culture and country.
Before Francis made him a cardinal in 2023 and appointed him to lead the Vatican’s powerful Dicastery for Bishops, many assumed a pope from the United States was out of the question — too politically fraught for a global Church wary of aligning with the world’s dominant superpower.
But Leo’s politics stand in sharp contrast to those of U.S. President Donald Trump — on migrants, the poor, media freedom and climate change, not to mention tone. His support for migrant rights included a forceful (and now deleted) tweet rebuking Vice-President JD Vance, who will be among the dignitaries at the papal inauguration mass on Sunday.
Leo is positioned as a moral counterweight at a time when many fear the U.S. is veering toward authoritarianism. That stance, say observers, may have helped secure his election in the conclave’s secret ballot.
Even his earlier appointment to lead the Dicastery for Bishops put him in a strong position to reshape the U.S. bishops’ culture-war focus on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
“I think it’s not coincidental that Pope Francis chose me,” he told BBC in 2022 of his new role selecting bishops worldwide. “I am American and I think I do have insights into the Church, into the United States … and to look at the challenges the Church in the United States is facing.”
Leo’s reputation is a centrist unswayed by right or left, said Catholic Church historian Massimo Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University near Philadelphia, where Prevost studied. “But Trump’s second term is not just a change in government; it’s a regime change. It’s shut down government-church co-operation on refugees and migrants and elevated so-called religious freedom.”
Faggioli says this U.S. political moment, where freedoms once taken for granted are at risk, may require Leo, a man defined by balance, to step outside his comfort zone.
Still, he has shown a willingness to take clear stances on other geopolitical situations. Francis was slow to name Russia as the aggressor against Ukraine and failed to grasp the invasion as a colonial act of aggression, says Faggioli. But in a 2022 interview Leo (then Bishop Robert Prevost) described the war as “a true invasion, imperialist in nature, where Russia seeks to conquer territory for reasons of power.”
WATCH | Leo calls for peace in Ukraine, Gaza:
Leading his first Sunday prayer since his election at conclave, Pope Leo XIV called for an end to the wars killing innocent people in Ukraine and Gaza. He also called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Despite widespread attention to Leo’s Americanness — from “Bob from Chicago” memes to his love of the White Sox — he’s also a Peruvian citizen, with decades there as a missionary and later bishop of Chiclayo.
“The Latin American cardinals see him as one of their own, not as a gringo,” said Thomas Reese, Jesuit priest and senior analyst with Religion News Service. “I think they came into the conclave totally united behind Prevost and that made the difference.”
Leo saved English for the 2nd day
In Peru, he also served as a key counterforce to Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a deeply conservative Catholic lay group headquartered there that was openly hostile to Francis. (In one of his final acts as pope in January, Francis dissolved the group, which was plagued by sex abuse and financial scandals.)
Leo’s Peruvian identity was also on display from the balcony overlooking thousands in St. Peter’s Square an hour after the white smoke rose, when he spoke in Italian, Latin, and notably, Spanish — a subtle shift of his identity away from his homeland to his adopted country and the broader Global South. Only the next day, during mass with cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, did he speak his native English.
If his language choices nodded to Francis’s Global South-facing Church, his ornate gold vestments — Francis preferred plain, often reused garments — presented a contrast, which some interpret as a gesture toward traditionalist factions. His message — focused on listening and mercy — clearly echoed his predecessor.
“He’s a pastor from a new generation and a strong collaborator of Francis absolutely in favour of the synodal process,” said longtime Vatican correspondent Andrea Vreede, referring to Francis’s drive to make the Church less hierarchical and give more voice to ordinary members, women included.
His choice of the name Leo XIV links him to Pope Leo XIII, author of the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, “Of New Things,” a foundational text of Catholic Social Teaching and a cri de cœur against the exploitation of workers during the Industrial Revolution.
“He was on the side of labour unions, of the worker, the defenceless people in his time,” said Reese. “I think Pope Leo will be a prophetic voice for justice, peace and protecting the environment. I think it’s now become the DNA of the Catholic Church and the papacy.”
Observers note a connection to Saint Francis of Assisi, the previous pope’s namesake. The 12th-century friar Leo — a close companion of Francis — was responsible for writing down many of Francis’s prayers, letters and teachings, and thought to have been a main contributor to the saint’s most important early texts.
While the new Pope’s name gestures to the past, early signs promise a leader who will also chart his own course for the Roman Catholic Church.
