We’ve had a new pope for exactly two weeks now and from comments I am seeing online, some are elated while others are positively dismayed by the choice of Robert Cardinal Prevost as the new Vicar of Christ. My first reaction was a rather personal one ~ for the first time in my life there is a pope sitting on the throne of St. Peter who is younger than I am! That in itself is a lot to digest. Popes were supposed to be old guys and suddenly this “youngster” (to me) is prancing around in the white robes and skullcap of the Petrine office. It feels like that moment when you meet your new doctor for the first time and you realize, “He looks like a teenager!”

But now that I have overcome the initial unsettling wave of chronological dysphoria, I am ready take a more balanced, objective view of the situation. Leo XIV is not only the first pope younger than myself but he is also the first American pope, Chicago born and bred, something that was considered unthinkable even a year ago. The cardinals in conclave were willing to pursue this pragmatic option in my opinion because the scandal plagued Vatican finances are in such a disheveled state that they needed someone able to tap more easily into our vast national wealth. That is not a criticism but merely an observation. Fiscally, the Vatican has its back to the wall, a problem which the Bergoglian papacy only exacerbated by purposely alienating American Catholics, who also happen to be the Vatican’s largest donor class. The hope is that Leo, as an American, can right the ship.

From the moment he first appeared on the Loggia wearing the traditional papal robes of office Leo appeared to be a conciliator. But what most struck many was his choice in taking the name Leo XIV, a clear sign that he envisions a dramatic change in direction for the Church after 12 chaotic years of “Francis the agitator.” This Leo’s predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, likewise stepped into a supercharged time of crisis for the Church back in 1878, as it came under full frontal assault by Freemasonry. The Industrial Revolution was raging like a wildfire upending Christian civilization wherever it laid down smoke belching factories and massive urban slums. Leo responded with his great encyclical Rerum Novarum which afforded dignity to the workers yet defended the rights of property, threading a common sense course between the excesses of unrestrained corporate capitalism and the equally soul deadening mosh pit of Marxist socialism.

Leo XIII vigorously exposed and condemned the diabolical program of Masonry which was attempting to undermine the Church and the Christian foundations of society, replacing these with its own crassly materialistic ethos of base naturalism. To counter this pressing Masonic offensive he composed the Leonine prayers, including the St. Michael prayer, to be universally recited at the end of every Mass. Indeed these petitions were dutifully prayed through the year 1964 when Masonic influences in the Church finally managed to suppressed them.

Leo XIII is usually considered to be the first pope of the modern era, in part due to the fact that he was the first to reign spiritually but with no temporal power, since the Papal States had been confiscated by the new Italian State under his predecessor, Pius IX. Leo reigned at a time when Christian societies were undergoing radical transformations and an arms race was well underway that would lead to the unprecedented destruction and bloodshed of World War I. Yet he was also considered to be quite liberal by his contemporaries. And so it is quite intriguing that 147 years later Pope Leo XIV chose him for his own papal namesake. The new pope is undoubtedly sending some kind of message, though we will all have to wait and see to comprehend its full meaning.

I am quite familiar with liberal Chicago Catholicism which goes back 80 years or more even into the 1930s. That is the garden soil in which Leo XIV was born and bred, so I have no doubt that this pope will have certain liberal tendencies. But I am also aware that there is another mitigating factor which is known as the “grace of office” which may well temper the more natural human tendencies. I think back to the 12th century when Thomas Beckett, an unreformed libertine and crony of Henry II, was unexpectedly named Archbishop of Canterbury. That office changed his whole attitude and he became renowned as a “shepherd of souls.” Beckett ended up dying a martyr for defending the rights of the Church against his old friend the king.

A more recent example would be Leo XIII’s predecessor, Pope Piux IX who as a young man had actually joined a Masonic lodge. Although later rejecting Masonry, he still favored liberalism at the time of his papal election in 1846, even enacting many liberal policies in the Papal States which he governed. Two years later however Pius was forced to flee Rome during the terrible 1848 Revolutions which rocked all Europe, an event which changed his views considerably. Pius IX went on to be one of the most conservative popes of modern times, promulgating his famous Syllabus of Errors condemning the new secular liberal social order. After permanently loosing the remnants of his Papal States around 1860, Pius went into self-imposed exile in the Vatican until his reign of 32 years, the longest in history, ended in 1878 with his death.

What history shows us is that one cannot predict the outcome for any person who assumes such a high office. God’s ways are not man’s ways, and so it is rash and pointless to pin labels on, or make predictions about where this new pope may lead the Church. It’s not really about Leo XIV’s resume but about his cooperation with the grace of God that will bring the Church out of its current malaise. Our fervent prayer now should be that Leo XIV will respond generously to any grace of office God offers him. After all, we have no right to pre-judge any man, but especially the one who walks in “the shoes of the fisherman.” Yet far too many I’ve seen are already indulging in such premature prognostication on social media, and less than a month into his papacy.

The Church has only barely survived a multi-year ‘reign of terror’ by the Francis Vatican and we have now been given the opportunity to heal and recover thanks to Leo XIV whose stated aim is to reconcile and unify Catholics once again. Like his namesake he must deal with a hostile, Godless, and secularized world which seeks to destroy the faith. The last thing this pope needs is more bitter Catholics sniping from the sidelines. Instead, I suggest we pull out those former Leonine prayers “for the conversion of sinners and the liberty and exaltation of the Church” from an old missal and start praying them daily. Who knows, maybe this Leo will reinstate them at every Mass (He was but nine years old when they disappeared). And whatever he may say or do, we need to bear with him in charity. I know he’s just a youngster (looking from my limb), but my advice is to give him a chance.

Francis J. Pierson + a.m.d.g.