MAY 2025

ELECTION OF LEO XIV TO THE PAPACY

Written by: D. P. Curtin

Ordinarily, I don't involve myself in, or comment upon, the events happening in the papal curia. I try to maintain a healthy distance from the world of church politics, both sectarian and ecumenical. That said, I am delighted with the election of Leo XIV today, the American, Augustinian Pope from Chicago. By strange happenstance, I am tied to the new pontiff by the circumstances of our lives. We are mutual alumni of Villanova University, the Augustinian institution which remains the intellectual force behind the Augustinians in the United States. Additionally, Leo XIV and my father were present together on campus as undergraduate students in the mid-1970’s, likely in Tolentine and Mendel Halls, then the academic hub for scientific departments at the university. Finally, the new pontiff was a friend of my late mentor, the Augustinian scholar and fellow Chicago native Fr. Thomas Martin, OSA.

Perhaps it is a function of my own cultural or ecclesiological conditioning to view the office of the papacy as something aloof and distant from the operations of local churches. As an ancient institution, the papacy maintains a studied Verfremdungseffekt in its public presentation, even with the recent elections of professed people’s popes (John Paul II, Francis). Perhaps this is an artifact from a different age, when deference was expected and/or demanded, and the papacy was viewed as analogous to that of Europe’s many regnant monarchs. However, this election of a pope, particularly close to my own proverbial backyard gives me a sense of the potential closeness of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to its vast flock. My sincerest hope is that the papal motto of the newly titled Leo XIV—“in illo uno unum” (in one, [we] are one)—can be realized practically, spiritually, and ecumenically.