1. Pope vows every effort to work for peace in regions where Christians persecuted, forced to flee, By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press, May 14, 2025, 6:39 AM
Pope Leo XIV vowed to take “every effort” Wednesday to work for peace in the Middle East and Ukraine and to actively promote the spirituality and traditions of the eastern rite churches, those Catholic communities with origins in the Mideast and eastern Europe that have been decimated by years of conflict and persecution.
“The church needs you!” Leo told a Holy Year audience of eastern rite pilgrims.
Eastern-rite Catholics accept the authority of the pope but have many of their own rituals and liturgy. They include the Coptic, Chaldean, Maronite and Eritrean Catholic churches, as well as the Syro-Malabar church in India and Greek Catholic communities that are found across Eastern Europe and the Americas. Unlike Orthodox Christians, these Catholic churches fully recognize papal authority.
In his remarks, Leo acknowledged that many eastern rite Catholics have been forced to flee their homelands because of “war and persecution, instability and poverty.” It was a reference to the exodus of Christians from the Middle East, Iraq and Syria especially, where entire communities have been displaced by years of Islamic extremist violence. Many of these communities in northern Iraq were some of the oldest of the faith, where the dialects of Aramaic — the language of Jesus — are still spoken.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/14/pope-leo-eastern-rite-christians-persecuted-protect/2b812d58-30a6-11f0-8498-1f8214bba2d2_story.html
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2. Hopes for a New Pontificate, By George Weigel, First Things, May 14, 2025
Within a few hours of the election of Pope Leo XIV and his masterful presentation of himself to the Church and the world from the central loggia of the Vatican basilica, I received an email from an old friend, a member of a prominent Catholic family in Nicaragua:
Dear George: Praise God for Pope Leo XIV, Papa León! He [visited us several years ago]. There is a sense of renewed hope. May God bless him and bless us. I hope you are well. Sending much love-*****.
I can’t name my correspondent; doing so would put my friend’s family at greater risk from the odious Ortega-Murillo regime, which is viciously persecuting the Catholic Church in long-suffering Nicaragua. My friend is a realist who knows that popes in the twenty-first century lack power, as the world understands power. Thanks to the example of John Paul II, however, this devout Catholic and Nicaraguan patriot also knows that popes can wield immense moral power, summoning oppressed people to fearlessness and forming new coalitions of conscience to resist tyranny.
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Nicaragua is not, of course, the only venue where the Vatican should step up its game in the face of persecution. There is Venezuela. There is Cuba. There is Nigeria. And there is China, where the Xi Jinping regime marked the death of Pope Francis with a blatant violation of the accord the late pope made in 2018, by “electing” and “installing” a new bishop without a papal mandate-there being no pope to issue such a mandate. There was less discussion of current Vatican China policy than I had expected in the General Congregations of cardinals preceding the conclave. But since it is now pluperfectly obvious that the policy is a failure, I wouldn’t be surprised if a complete reassessment of it were ordered up by the new pope. There certainly should be.
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As the great Chesterton once noted, “An open mind, like an open mouth, should close on something.” Pope Leo is an experienced man of governance, so he knows that. And it is entirely reasonable to hope that he will govern in such a way that Catholics are reminded of a basic truth: Solidity, not liquidity, is the hallmark of “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).
https://firstthings.com/hopes-for-a-new-pontificate/
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3. Can Pope Leo XIV be a compassionate pastor and a hard-nosed administrator?, By Thomas Reese, National Catholic Reporter, May 14, 2025, Opinion
The Holy Spirit surprised us on May 8 by electing Robert Prevost, an Illinois native who is also a citizen of Peru. For Vatican observers, Pope Leo XIV is the biggest shock since the last conclave, when an Argentine Jesuit who was on (almost) nobody’s list became Pope Francis.
How did this happen?
Prior to the 2013 conclave, there were, in my mind, two certitudes about papal elections: No Jesuit would be elected, and no American would be elected. The election of Francis proved me wrong about the first, and this one proved me wrong about the second.
Historically, the cardinals tried to keep the papacy out of the hands of the reigning superpower. The one time France got it, they carried it off to Avignon in 1309, and it took almost 70 years to get it back to Rome. In today’s world, I always feared that if an American were elected, the Global South would think the CIA fixed the election or Wall Street bought the election. But the cardinals who gave us Leo thought otherwise.
https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/can-pope-leo-xiv-be-compassionate-pastor-and-hard-nosed-administrator
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4. Pope’s Family History Offers a Glimpse Into the American Creole Journey, By Campbell Robertson, The New York Times, May 14, 2025, Pg. A6
The news that Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born cardinal who became Pope Leo XIV, had family roots among New Orleans Creoles has enthralled few people as intensely as those who share his heritage. While members of the pope’s immediate family identified as white, various records from New Orleans from just a generation earlier describe his maternal grandparents as “mulatto” or Black. Such a story is a curiosity for many who are unfamiliar with Creole culture. But for those with Creole roots, there is something immediately familiar about it.
“Anyone who looks at me outside of New Orleans sees my street race, which is white,” said Mr. Roudané, now 73, using “street race” to describe the perception of a person’s heritage that people draw from a quick glance. “Anyone who looks at me in New Orleans looks at me and goes, ‘OK, I see where you’re coming from.’”
“Creole” and its more specific variant, “Louisiana Creole,” is a complicated term. It was historically used to describe any child born in the New World colonies to European parents and, at times, to anyone of mixed race. In modern-day Louisiana, it’s most commonly used to describe people of mixed European, African and Native heritage, and the culture they share. Louisiana Creoles are usually Catholic, often but not always with French or Spanish last names. And many are light-skinned; some are fair enough to be perceived as “only” white.
The roots of Creole New Orleans run into the 18th and 19th centuries, when the city was a French and Spanish colony, then a French Catholic-suffused city within the United States. It was populated by Europeans, early Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and Africans, people enslaved and free, forming a distinct society that, while hardly racially equitable, was decidedly more tolerant of racial mixing than the British colonies or the young republic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/us/creole-identity-history-pope-new-orleans.html
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5. Pope Leo XIV is back on social media, with a message of peace, The Associated Press, May 13, 2025, 9:38 PM
Pope Leo XIV has taken over the Vatican’s official social media handles, with a first Instagram post on Tuesday repeating the first words he said to the world as pope: “Peace be with you all!”
The @Pontifex – Pope Leo XIV post featured some of the photos that have documented the first days of history’s first American pope .
The Vatican said it was archiving the posts from Pope Francis ’ 12-year papacy. On X, the new account didn’t appear to be active Tuesday.
https://washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/13/pope-pontifex-instagram-leo/eabe12a2-3039-11f0-8498-1f8214bba2d2_story.html
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6. A Leonine Revival, By Thomas Joseph White, First Things, May 13, 2025
We are still in the early days of the pontificate of Leo XIV. No one who prognosticates now about the future of his papacy can know for certain what lies ahead. That will be for him and his collaborators to determine. Nevertheless, each papacy brings with it a new cultural imagination, one that builds upon the example of its predecessors, but that also innovates. More importantly, each pontificate is associated with a collaboration on the part of the faithful who participate in its mission and are unified by shared ideals. So, while it is still early days, it is also a timely moment in which to take stock of some initial manifest aspirations of this pontificate, and of some possibilities implied by its reference to Leo XIII and Rerum Novarum in particular.
In recent years, the Catholic Church has lived through three epochal pontificates, that of popes St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.
Each had its own brilliant style, immense spiritual effect on human culture, and inevitable human limitations, these latter being a lasting sign, in God’s mercy, that the mere fisherman chosen by Christ is not Christ himself. The stability in the papacy through time does not depend upon the strength of men but is a gift of God that comes from above. It invites us to perceive in Peter a principle of doctrinal unity and a touchstone of universal communion built up in genuine love. The papacy is also about the missionary character of the Church. Peter and Paul both are apostles to the nations, sent out mercifully to all-including the suffering, the disempowered, the alienated, and the confused. The role of Peter is to proclaim the gospel fearlessly, and to throw open the doors of mercy, so that all encounter Christ.
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May Leo XIV, Augustinian at heart, be empowered by God’s Spirit to speak to the restless hearts of our modern era, and may he find inspiration from both these precedent Leos to meet the great powers of our age with those words of the risen Christ that are of unsurpassed political relevance, even in our own day: “Peace be with you.” And however he should fulfill the responsibilities of his Petrine office on behalf of the Church, may we who are members of Christ’s faithful find ways to collaborate with him and seek together, in that mystical body that is the Church, a genuine Leonine revival, for the good of all and as an emblem of that peace that only God can give.
https://firstthings.com/a-leonine-revival/
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7. Is Pope Leo XIV Leaving Us Clues About Where He’s Headed?, By Father Raymond J. de Souza, National Catholic Register, May 13, 2025, Commentaries
Pope Leo XIV’s first few days have been met with widespread enthusiasm and excitement, not least because the Holy Father himself is confident, at ease, and seems to enjoy being pope.
He told the cardinals they had asked him “to carry that cross and to be blessed with that mission.” At least for now, the blessing is more apparent than the cross.
After the initial impressions of the Holy Father’s first days — and the global reaction — there are now second impressions that suggest where Pope Leo might be headed.
In Rome, the citations matter. Pope Leo XIV has lavished praise on his immediate predecessor, as all popes are expected to do. Pope St. John Paul did so in October 1978, even though Blessed John Paul I had been pope for only 33 days.
Yet Leo XIV has also carefully cited Pope Benedict XVI, as well as John Paul II and St. Paul VI. In taking the name Leo — in honor of Pope Leo XIII, he said — he reaches even farther back into Catholic history.
For those who might set one pontificate against another, Pope Leo is encouraging the opposite, to see continuity across them. And he seems intent on reminding Catholics that the Church did not begin with Vatican II in the 1960s, even as he remains committed to its vision.
The Augustinian order, to which Pope Leo belongs, has an academic specialty in the Church Fathers (“patristics”), fitting for “son[s] of St. Augustine,” as the Holy Father called himself at his first appearance on the balcony. The Augustinian university in Rome specializes in patristics.
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/leo-xiv-second-impressions
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8. German plans for new synodal body advance after papal election, The new body would ‘make fundamental decisions on pastoral planning.‘, By Luke Coppen, The Pillar, May 13, 2025
Members of the German synodal committee will decide in November whether to approve statutes establishing a new national synodal body, in a step that could reignite tensions between the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Germany.
A statement at the end of the synodal committee’s plenary meeting in Magdeburg said the new body would “make fundamental decisions on pastoral planning and future issues of the Church of supradiocesan importance,” as well as advising “on financial and budgetary matters of the Catholic Church in Germany that are not decided at diocesan level.”
Vatican resistance
The creation of a new nationwide synodal body was one of the most controversial proposals endorsed by participants in the 2019-2023 synodal way, co-sponsored by the bishops’ conference and the lay Central Committee of German Catholics, known by its German abbreviation, ZdK.
The initiative, launched in the wake of a harrowing abuse crisis, produced 150 pages of resolutions, appealing for women deacons, a re-examination of priestly celibacy, lay preaching at Masses, a bigger lay role in selecting bishops, and a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on homosexuality.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/german-plans-for-new-synodal-body
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9. Angelicum rector: Pope’s election ‘greatest mercy God has ever shown on Catholic Church in America’, By Paulina Guzik, OSV News, May 13, 2024
On May 8, Father Thomas Joseph White, the American rector of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, was at St. Peter’s Square with hundreds of thousands of people when white smoke rose out of the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel.
When, shortly after 7 p.m., the name of the new pope was announced to the world from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, “I was stunned,” Father White said.
“I had heard (Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost) mentioned as a possible candidate, but I had, as so many others, dismissed it as unlikely for the simple reason that the candidate was an American,” Father White told OSV News in the first interview after the election of a pope who graduated from the university the American Dominican leads. “So when it happened … I was really surprised. And also, of course, it made a great impression on me that the pope chose this name — Leo — which has so many important historic and symbolic connotations.”
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For Father White, “a lot of people want to ignore ‘Leo XIII of social doctrine’ in favor of the ‘Leo XIII of scholasticism,’ or vice versa. But historically speaking, this is a huge error. The pope saw the renewal of the study of scholasticism and the renewal of social doctrine as being deeply interrelated.”
“Leo XIII saw the renewal of the study of Thomas Aquinas and classical wisdom as having a place in the modern world, precisely so as to support the promotion of human rights and the dignity of the human person in Catholic social doctrine,” Father White said.
https://www.osvnews.com/angelicum-rector-popes-election-greatest-mercy-god-has-ever-shown-on-catholic-church-in-america/
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TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association.
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