Readings: Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 42:2-3.43:3-4; John 10:1-10
Our Gospel today continues the theme of the Good Shepherd. While this is certainly fitting for Monday after Good Shepherd Sunday, is especially fitting for our celebration of the Mass of Thanksgiving for the election of our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV. It is important to bear in mind, as no doubt the Pope does, that there is only one truly Good Shepherd, that is, a shepherd who is good in and of Himself: Jesus Christ.
Hence, all the Church’s shepherds depend on Christ the Good Shepherd to carry out their pastoral ministry. This, of course, recalls Pope Francis’ exhortation to bishops and priests to smell like the sheep entrusted to their care. It is by being among the sheep that you come to smell like them.
Being a confidant and friend of Pope Francis, Pope Leo seems to have taken this to heart. “To be a good shepherd, our new Holy Father insisted, “means to be able to walk side-by-side with the People of God and to live close to them, not to be isolated.”
1 Priests are not doctrinal enforcers. Bishops are not managers. Popes are not kings. It was Pope Saint Paul VI who abolished the papal coronation ceremony and who retired
the triregnum, the papal crown that indicated that the pope was governor of the world, which is unfitting for the vicar of the King whose kingdom is not of this world.
Pope Leo’s first words to the Church and to the world echo those of the risen Lord to His disciples:
La pace sia con tutti voi!- “Peace be with you all!” In this same inaugural address, noting his spiritual heritage as an Augustinian, he quoted Saint Augustine, saying- “With you I am a Christian and for you a bishop.” Then, in his own words said, “In this sense, we can all walk together towards that homeland which God has prepared for us.”
2
For those of us who follow these things closely, it was astounding that the Cardinals chose someone from the United States to serve as Roman Pontiff. But that they did.
Since the instructions for this Mass both permit and even encourage sharing a biography of the new pope, it seems most fitting to do so.
With his two brothers, Robert Prevost grew up in a Catholic family, where his father served in their parish as a catechist, in the suburbs south of Chicago. Being from the south side, the Holy Father is a White Sox fan,
as footage of him watching a 2005 World Series game wearing Sox jersey and jacket and
the testimony of his brother demonstrate. I have it on good authority from several friends from Chicago that Catholics there tend to root for the Sox, not the Cubs. But the Pope's mother, who was from the northside, seems cast doubt on that!
Rather than entering seminary after attending minor seminary for high school, the Holy Father, matriculated at Villanova University in Philadelphia. There he studied mathematics and philosophy. After graduation, he taught math and physics to high schoolers. Eventually, he discerned a call to religious life in the Order of Saint Augustine.
Prevost earned his Master of Divinity, which is the seminary degree, from the Catholic Theological Union (CTU) in Chicago. A good friend of mine, Father J.T. Lane, who now serves as provincial for the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament for the United States, also attended CTU. Because he was the only member of his order in formation at the time, we spent a lot of time at the Augustinian house. He remembers Father Bob, now Pope Leo, as a kind, intelligent, and relatively quiet person.
At age 26, the young Robert Prevost was ordained a priest in Rome by Archbishop Jean Jadot, who has served as Apostolic Delegate to the United States (there was no nuncio until the U.S. formally established diplomatic relations with the Holy See under President Reagan) and who was then serving as President of Secretariat for Non-Christians. He then went on to earn both a licentiate and a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
He went back and forth between Chicago and Peru. By all accounts, in both places, the future Pontiff lived simply, even in an austere manner. Eventually, he was elected by his Augustinian brothers to serve as Provincial of the Augustinians in Chicago. He also taught canon law to seminarians both in the U.S. and in Peru. Upon election as their Prior General by Augustinians worldwide, he returned to Rome, where he lived from 2001- 2013.
After briefly returning to Chicago, in 2014 Pope Francis named him bishop of Chiclayo in Peru. In January 2023, Pope Francis called him to Rome as Prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops and created him Cardinal in the Consistory of 30 September 2023. In his address
Urbi et Orbi on the day of his election, the only words Pope Leo spoke that were not in Italian (he is now the Bishop of Rome) were these words of greeting, spoken in Spanish to members of his diocese in Peru.
Prior to Pope Francis, the last pope who belonged to a religious order was the Camodolese monk who, in 1831, became Pope Gregory XVI. So, having two popes back-to-back from religious orders is an anomaly, especially given that only thirty-four of 267 popes have come from religious orders. But then, since the establishment of Benedictines in the fifth century and the rise of the Dominicans and Franciscans in the thirteenth, religious orders have been instrumental in reforming the Church.
In his address to the College of Cardinals last Saturday, the Holy Father explained why took the name Leo:
There are different reasons for [choosing Leo], but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour3
For those who may not know,
Rerum Novarum launched the Church's modern social teaching. In this letter, Pope Leo XIII noted that "Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice- with that justice which is called distributive- toward each and every class alike."
4 Distributive justice is concerned with the just distribution of resources, goods, and opportunity in a society. Distributive justice sees to a just and equitable distribution of wealth, one in which workers share in the profits their labor generates.
It's easy to forget that in his 1991 encyclical marking the one hundredth anniversary of
Rerum Novarum,
Centesimus Annus, Pope Saint John Paul II warned of the spiritual vacuity of consumerism, which like Marxism, reduces the human person "to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs."
5 Neither must we forget Pope Saint Paul VI's still prophetic encyclical
Populorum progresso in which he warned that "during troubled times some people are strongly tempted by he alluring but deceitful promises of would-be saviors. Who does not see the concomitant dangers: public upheavals, civil insurrection, the drift toward totalitarian ideologies?"
6
Speaking to journalists earlier today, the Holy Father said that Church recognizes of the witness of journalists who take risks to tell the truth.
I am thinking of those who report on war even at the cost of their lives – the courage of those who defend dignity, justice and the right of people to be informed, because only informed individuals can make free choices. The suffering of these imprisoned journalists challenges the conscience of nations and the international community, calling on all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press
He the same address, he noted: "The Church must face the challenges of the times...Saint Augustine reminds us of this when he said, 'Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times.'"
7
Pope Leo's episcopal motto is
In Illo uno unum- "In the One we are one." It is n the Eucharist that the Lord's prayer to the Father is realized, if not yet fully.
8 May God strengthen, bless, and guide Pope Leo XIV as he walks in the shoes of the Galilean fisherman. May the Good Shepherd give him the grace to serve His flock in truth and love.
Vive il papa!
1 See La Croix, "Cardinal Prevost's warning in the face of polarization," 9 May 2025.↩
2 Pope Leo XIV. Urbi et Orbi- Prima Benedictio 8 May 2025.↩
3 Pope Leo XIV. Address to the College of Cardinals, 10 May 2025.↩
4 Pope Leo XIII. Encyclical letter Rerum novarum (On Capital and Labor), sec. 33.↩
5 Pope John Paul II. Encyclical letter Centesimus annus (On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum novarum), sec. 19.↩
6 Pope Paul VI. Encyclical letter Populorum progresso (On the Development of Peoples), sec. 11.↩
7 Pope Leo XIV. Address to Representatives of the Media, 12 May 2025.↩
8 See John 17:20-23.↩
