In Pope Leo XIV’s first homily on Friday, he put himself squarely on the side of “ordinary people,” and against the rich and powerful — a not insignificant statement for the first pope from the world’s richest and most powerful country.
It also seemed that in a church divided between those who want to emphasize the defense of doctrine and those who want to prioritize missionary work, the Chicago-born pope defined himself, first and foremost, as a missionary, and in so doing made it clear he wanted a missionary church. This is what a lot of cardinals supportive of his predecessor, Pope Francis, were looking for going into this week’s conclave, and it seems they found it in Leo.
In his homily during a Mass with cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, the pope invoked the story of Jesus, saying that while rich people dismissed him as an inconvenient fanatic, ordinary people found him “not a charlatan but an upright man, one who has courage, who speaks well and says the right things.”
But he noted that they, too, abandoned him when the going got tough. Even for Jesus’ first followers, he was “only a man,” the pope said, and so when he was crucified, they were disappointed and left him.
Leo argued that this was exactly what was going on today, with many spheres — read: mass media, pop culture, government elites, academia, Silicon Valley — perceiving Christianity as “absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent.”
He is a former leader of the international and intellectually rigorous order named for St. Augustine, the fourth-century bishop and writer whose vision of the centrality of faith redefined the church and Western culture by helping bury, and tar, the once influential Greek philosophy of Epicureanism. That worldview, which had a following in some elite ancient Roman circles, prioritized happiness through a moderate pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain.
The new pope seemed to echo Augustine when he lamented those “settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power or pleasure.”
By talking about all of this in his first homily, the new pope signaled that he would make spreading the Gospel into this enemy territory a priority of his pontificate, in strong continuity with Francis.
One part of the homily sounded like a mission statement: “These are contexts where it is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied. Yet precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed. A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society.”
He added, pointedly, that nominal believers occupy these settings too, people who treat Jesus as a superhero rather than someone who led by his actions, and whose actions true believers need to imitate. He said these Christians live as de facto atheists.
The Chicago-born pope went to Peru as a missionary, and his missionary ethos so impressed Francis, who empowered him and put him in a position to become pope. He ended by telling the cardinals that he, like Francis, saw himself as a simple missionary with the job of spreading the Gospel through his actions. Francis made a habit of excoriating cardinals for putting themselves above their flocks, for living big and forgetting what they were there for. Leo also reminded the cardinals arrayed in front of him, in less harsh but no less uncertain terms, that their job was to be simple missionaries, too.
To emphasize this, the pope spoke of an ancient saint who welcomed his coming martyrdom — being devoured by wild beasts in a Roman arena — because it would remove his body from the picture and let his missionary faith shine through.
“His words apply more generally to an indispensable commitment for all those in the church who exercise a ministry of authority,” Leo said. He argued that the cardinals’ duty was not to take center stage, but to “move aside” and “to make oneself small” so that the faith could grow and spread.
“I say this first of all to myself,” he added.
