Habemus Papam
El Financiero, May 9th, 2025
We now have a pope. Last week, in an article titled Habebimus Papam (“We will have a pope”), I wrote about the great ability the Catholic Church has shown in selecting a shepherd who, beyond guiding the faithful, also assumes a position of global leadership. There, I briefly reviewed the popes of the last two centuries, among whom was Leo XIII—whose name has now been chosen by the new pope.
There are colleagues who write and know much more than I do about the Church and Catholicism itself, and they will surely offer better-informed opinions on those topics. What I want to share with you here is the hypothesis that the appointment of a pope has global impact that extends far beyond the purely religious. I believe that has been the case for over two hundred years, and it’s reasonable to expect it will be again now.
Based on his trajectory, it appears this pope was Francis's choice, brought in through the method Francis used—Jesuit and Peronist as he was, though that may sound odd. He brought him to Rome just two years ago with a position of great organizational importance, and a few months ago made him a papabile. Francis Prevost, though born in the United States, built his career in Peru and in the global leadership of his order, the Augustinians. He is more of a Latin American pope than an American one, and like Francis, comes from a religious order rather than the secular clergy.
The Augustinians are the most discreet of the three orders created in the 13th century. Franciscans and Dominicans have been far more active and public, historically competing with each other—and, since the 16th century, with the Jesuits, with whom the Dominicans have had notable friction.
Leo XIII, as I mentioned last week, was the creator of Christian social doctrine—a path the Church proposes as a middle way between capitalism and communism, through the famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. I believe the ideas in that encyclical also ended up forming the basis of 20th-century neocorporatism. He was pope from 1878 to 1903, during the heyday of the Gold Standard and the British Empire, but also the colonial partition of Africa in the Berlin Conference of 1885. He was, notably, a great promoter of North American Catholicism.
I have no idea what Leo XIV intends to do, or how much of it he will be able to accomplish. But if his choice of name is important—and I believe it is, as shown by recent popes—it would seem to signal an effort to strike a balance between the different ideologies currently battling over the future of the world. His inaugural message’s emphasis on the essential equality of all people, and a couple of recent tweets criticizing JD Vance’s anti-immigration stance, point in that direction.
As you know, the interpretation I offer in this column is that we are experiencing a clash between two essentially collectivist camps. On one side, there are those who emphasize power as the primary element in human relationships, from which identity-based ideologies arise—such as Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, and other views asserting that identity determines a person’s worth.
On the other side, a similarly dogmatic stance has taken shape—though opposed—focused on anachronistic views of religion, race, and place of birth, which have led to illiberal democracies where possible. Due to the authoritarian character of those systems, they resemble Asian authoritarianisms: Russia, China, Islam—though that may not seem obvious. Both visions, I stress, assume that some human beings are more valuable than others.
Pope Leo XIV’s first message is a balm.