VATICAN CITY: Leo XIV urged the Catholic Church to “desperately” counter a lack of faith in his first homily as pope Friday, a day after the modest cardinal largely unknown to the world become the first US head of the 2,000-year institution.
Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost on Thursday became the 267th pope, spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics and successor to Argentina’s Pope Francis, after a secret conclave by his fellow cardinals in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.
In today’s world, Leo warned in his homily to assembled cardinals, there are places or situations 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,” said the new pope, 69, standing at the Sistine Chapel altar with Michelangelo’s famed fresco of “The Last Judgment” behind him.
The former missionary deplored “settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent” and, in an echo of his predecessor Francis, said people were turning to “technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.”
“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,” said Leo in Italian, wearing a white papal robe trimmed in gold as he addressed the seated white-robed cardinals.
In an apparent message to evangelical Christians, Pope Leo also warned that Jesus cannot be “reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman”.
“This is true not only among non-believers but also among many baptised Christians, who thus end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism,” he said.
In an unscripted introduction to his homily in English, he also evoked a need to overcome divisions within the Church, telling his fellow cardinals: “I know I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me”.
Many around the world were still digesting the choice of the man sometimes referred to in Rome as the “Latin Yankee” for his decades-long missions in Peru.
“A pope from the United States is almost more surprising than an Argentine and Jesuit pope,” such as Francis, wrote the Corriere della Sera daily. Francis was the first pope ever named from the Americas.
Build bridges
In his address to the crowds Thursday, Leo echoed his predecessor Francis with a call for peace and urging a “missionary Church”.
“Help us, and each other, to build bridges through dialogue, through encounter, to come together as one people, always in peace,” he said, as world leaders sent pledges to work with him on global issues at a time of great geopolitical uncertainty.
Leo faces a momentous task. As well as asserting his moral voice on a conflict-torn world stage, he must try to unite a divided Church and tackle burning issues such as the continued fallout from the clerical sexual abuse scandal.
As Cardinal Prevost, the new pope defended workers and the poor and reposted articles online critical of US President Donald Trump’s anti-migrant policies.
But Trump nevertheless welcomed his election, calling it a “great honour” to have a pope from the United States.
With the choice of Prevost, experts said, the cardinals had opted for continuity with the late Francis, a progressive who shook up the Church in his 12-year papacy.
Vatican watchers agreed that Prevost’s more soft-spoken style should help him as he faces turbulent times on the international stage, acting as a counterpoint to more divisive voices.
Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi told the Corriere della Sera that Leo was “a very simple person, intensely kind. He is in the vein of Francis, but less spiky”.