Letters

White smoke began to billow as bells started ringing at 6:07 p.m. on May 8, signifying the start of the next pontificate. While this was not the first conclave during my lifetime, it was the first since I became a religious studies major at Elon University.

The late Pope Francis’s legacy is one that is largely defined by a bottom-up approach that valued religious practice that took inspiration from the laity as opposed to prioritizing church doctrine. I found myself incredibly invested, as there would be no greater barometer that would clue the world into the ideological direction the Catholic Church wanted to head.

At a time where the current presidential administration in America is taking aim at migrants and looking to abolish birthright citizenship, among other offensives (though this trend is not exclusive to the United States), this papal election would reveal if the largest religious institution in the world would fall into step or push in a different direction.

With the election of Robert Francis Prevost, who adopted the name of Pope Leo XIV, the Catholic Church appears to have chosen the former. Ideologically, it appears that as a member of the Augustinian Order (making him the first Augustinian pope), Pope Leo shares many of the same values as his predecessor, Pope Francis.

Augustinians place a great deal of emphasis on community service and spiritual contemplation that, in my view, is needed now more than ever. Interestingly, while born in the United States, Pope Leo has spent about two decades doing missionary work in Peru (of which he is a naturalized citizen), and the church has opted to frame him as a pope from the Americas, as opposed to the United States.

While Pope Leo is not the outgoing and gregarious personality that Pope Francis was, this may be the right choice for the Catholic Church for a number of reasons. Most significant is a change from Pope Francis’s penchant for stirring the pot, which caused uproar at times, particularly among more conservative Catholics. Pope Leo’s comparatively reserved demeanor offers stability while continuing the legacy that so many American Catholics and non-Catholics alike gravitated toward.

Pope Leo is calling for unity and compassion at a time when that feels ever harder to find in the current geopolitical climate, both at home and abroad. Regardless of religious affiliation, the new pontificate appears to be offering a beacon of hope for those who are worried about the direction the world seems to be going at the contemporary moment — something that I, for one, welcome with open arms.

Jackson LaRose

Southampton