Pope Leo’s battles begin

Quiet in demeanour and self-deprecating, the “first American pope” has been enjoying a media honeymoon. It is unlikely to last. Robert Francis Prevost must soon openly face critical issues confronting the Vatican, as well as opposition coming from the wider global Catholic community. These include longstanding challenges, such as the continued fallout from clerical sexual abuse cases, and pressure for the Church to begin ordaining women as priests.

But the most insidious opposition to Pope Leo XIV may, ironically, come from his own back yard. The re-election of President Trump has emboldened ultraconservative bishops and other prominent Catholic figures in the US, many of whom opposed Pope Francis’ drive to reform the Church, and who regard Leo as an heir to this liberalising tendency. Prevost’s particular background, in both the US and Peru, may have uniquely prepared him to stand against these ultraconservative currents in the Church – and against autocrats, including Trump.

The Holy See represents the only faith community recognised as a state, with global reach and diplomatic influence. How this dynamic plays out matters not only to the 1.4 billion Catholics globally, but also to the wider world.

Across the Americas

Robert Francis Prevost, the first pope born in the United States, became the man he is today largely because of his decades serving among the poor in Peru at a key historical juncture. Latin America was aflame with violence and political repression when Prevost arrived in 1985 at age 29, as a priest. Walking amid the faithful in slums and shantytowns, he saw the way much of the world lived – on the economic edge, threatened by war and often by strongmen.

The young cleric was primed to embrace the intense Peruvian experience from his earliest days as a Chicago schoolboy during the post-war population boom, when Catholic parochial schools educated tens of millions. Daily life was entwined with the parish and Catholic societies. Prevost’s mother, Mildred, a librarian and mother of three, was president of the Altar and Rosary Society at their local church; all three sons served as altar boys. Prevost’s was a religious-cum-social upbringing, the same kind of all-encompassing existence lived around faith that he would encounter among the Peruvians.

If Prevost was formed in the United States by his Catholic boyhood – and later by his Augustine order’s theology and spiritual practice – he was deeply influenced by listening to those around him in Cold War Latin America. In the 1980s, Latin Americans often told you that they admired – even envied – the good life that people enjoyed in the United States, or loved its music and movies.

But Prevost also would have heard that many regarded his country as the enemy, for having historically exploited their labour and resources, and for its gunboat diplomacy that invariably supported dictators backed by the wealthy. In Peru, he likely heard of the period during the Second World War when Lima collaborated with Washington on a then-secret kidnapping operation that took 1,800 Peruvians of Japanese ancestry to concentration camps in the US, where they were held for years pending exchange for US prisoners of war. The idealisation of his native country taught by Catholic schools during Prevost’s childhood would meet a contrasting narrative in the reality he then came to know.

In Peru, he experienced horror and war. Seventy-five percent of the 70,000 people who died in Peru’s internal conflict (1980-2000), which raged while Prevost was there, were indigenous Quechua. Prevost spoke Spanish, and learned Quechua to communicate with many in his care, who lived at a time of unease, not knowing when they might be detained or dragged from their homes at night. Risk came from several directions – from armed rebels as well as brutal soldiers and other agents of state authority.

The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission report (2003) showed that the conflict touched virtually every corner of the country. In Chiclayo, where Prevost was once based, according to the report, a police and military suspicious of rebellion had tortured children to make their parents confess to crimes, and held girls as young as 14 for months in government facilities where they were raped.

Meanwhile, the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso shot victims in the head. In a nationwide outrage that eventually became public, some 200,000 women and more
than 20,000 men, mostly from Indigenous communities or rural areas, were sterilised without their consent between 1996 and 2000, part of a family planning programme under President Alberto Fujimori, who made himself a dictator by dissolving Congress and the Supreme Court.

As a pastor, Prevost would have been concerned by the danger faced by those in his care, but his own life was also at risk. Four hundred thousand people, mostly civilians, were killed or disappeared in Latin America in political conflict between 1970 and 1990; nuns and priests – even bishops – and other religious workers including US missionaries were not exempt. Some were violently eliminated because they had been identified as defending reformists or rebels or because they supported government targets such as peasant leaders. The cry of the El Salvadoran far-right resounded in Guatemala, Argentina, and other countries: “Be a patriot, kill a priest!”

Vatican diplomacy

Critics may argue that the Church has too much power on the global stage. But even they may wish to see Pope Leo putting his armoury of tools for diplomacy to good use, in the service of peace. The Holy See is historically considered a broker with the power to intervene in conflict or disagreements at the request of one of the parties. It denies having an official spy agency, but is widely thought to engage in intelligence gathering across the globe. Parties desiring mediation may choose to trust Vatican intercession because its diplomatic approach doesn’t carry traditional political, military or trade interests.

Leo is bound to carry in his mind what armed conflict and political crises, as well as government by autocracy, mean to ordinary people en carne propio, as the Spanish term has it, in their own flesh. A pope with such first-hand experience may be more likely to fight for peace. And Prevost has already shown he will engage with world crises. He singled out Gaza and Ukraine during his first Sunday address in a wider call for ceasing global hostilities. He emphasised that he was speaking not only to the tens of thousands before him in St Peter’s Square, but to “the world’s great powers by repeating the ever-present call, ‘Never Again War’!” He soon held a phone call with Vladimir Putin focusing on Ukraine.

But Leo will also have to contend with crises closer to home. These include continued fallout from a wave of grievous clerical sex abuse cases that first arose more than three decades ago; there remains a need for support for abuse survivors and attention to unresolved accusations of mishandled cases and cover-ups.

As a bishop, Leo said he did not favour female ordination. But the clamour from women who believe they have vocations to the priesthood, or who desire to participate in the life of the Church as deacons, a consecrated office now limited to men, is growing apace. He will not be able to close his ears to that burning issue.

Prevost will also be lobbied by more conservative elements in Vatican City. Disgruntled members of the Curia – the administrative body of the Holy See – may push for a return to the days before Francis demanded stricter transparency and named women to important positions. But pressure on Leo is likely to fail, as his own appointment to an important Curia position was part of the reforms, and he has signalled a desire for continuity with Francis and the broader liberalising tradition within the Church. In his first speech to cardinals, Leo positioned the initiatives of Francis as an authoritative interpretation of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican (1962-65), known as Vatican II, called by Pope John XXIII to modernise the Church and “let in the fresh air”.

Taking on Trump’s Catholics

This reformist spirit will provoke fierce resistance not only from within the Vatican, but also from ultraconservative groups in the US, many of which have links to President Trump. Take the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the US. Its 274 active members include New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a longstanding Trump supporter.

Archbishop José Gomez, another member, also belongs to the ultraconservative Catholic movement Opus Dei. Their centre near the US Capitol is a gathering place for conservative Catholics in Congress and the administration, where priests offer the Traditional Latin Mass, symbolic for those who want a return to the Church before Vatican II and the modernisation of the 60s. These include Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and an architect of Project 2025, considered a blueprint for the current Trump administration. Its subjects include consolidating presidential power, curtailing immigration and eliminating access to abortion.

The USCCB is now actively lobbying to further undermine the right to abortion in the US, as well as the rights to contraception, same-sex marriage and sexual relations between couples of the same sex. The ultimate aim of the most conservative members is to instill their particular vision of Catholicism into all aspects of US law and society. But this vision doesn’t always align with that of the Vatican. For example, the USCCB’s teaching document for Catholic voters continues to call the abortion issue “pre-eminent,” although Pope Francis maintained that abortion is no more pre-eminent than other pro-life concerns such as care for the poor or the death penalty.

Leo’s role on critical global issues such as climate change is also likely to attract attention and opposition. He is certain to follow Francis, who emphasised the risk of global warming. His years in Peru have shaped his concern for the environment, and also for the welfare of Indigenous people. In December, as a cardinal, he told a seminar in Rome that it is time to move “from words to action” on the crisis. In contrast, US bishops virtually ignored Francis’s call for action on the environment, formulated in his encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015), which condemns extractive industries and unregulated markets insofar as they harm the poor and contribute to social injustice.

Leo is also concerned by the existential threat of AI. A mathematics major at university, he has echoed Pope Francis’s disquiet about certain rising technologies. Even as he accepts the potential of AI to improve lives, he believes the Church has a role to play in drawing attention to its dangers and abuses, insisting on governance and warning against job displacement.

Immigration, abortion and aid

Alongside resistance from inside the Church, these views are likely to meet opposition from a group of ultra-conservative US lay Catholics, relatively small in number but politically well connected. They include another Leo: Leonard Leo, known as the “court whisperer” for his influence on US judicial appointments. Leonard was instrumental in overturning Roe vs Wade, with the support of Trump. He helped to usher six justices onto the Supreme Court, all of whom were raised Catholic – including its five-member super majority, which is decisive in close cases. This ensured that there was a majority to effectively end the constitutional right to abortion in the US.

Then there is Tim Busch, a business partner of oil billionaire Charles Koch and founder of the Napa Institute. Based in California’s wine country, this 15-year-old institution facilitates the meeting of minds between laity and conservative clergy, and grooms new ultraconservative apostolates like those who reach out to youth on non-Catholic university campuses. They also provide a podium for ultra-Catholic politicians such as JD Vance. Busch is also a supporter of the Opus Dei movement.

During the Conclave in May that elected Leo, hundreds of these wealthy, ultraconservative Catholics descended upon Rome to celebrate “America Week” (planned before Francis’s death) with balls and lavish dinners. The Napa Institute, the Papal Foundation (membership fee: $1 million) and other groups invited like-minded European aristocrats and Catholic members of hard-right political parties.

The idea was to network with each other, and with Vatican officials. As populism rises in Europe, US traditionalists touted America Week as part of an effort to spread the successful fundraising and outreach techniques of the ultra-right US Catholics to the continent. With a Christian nationalist orientation, the traditionalists are comfortable with the global ascendancy of autocratic rule.

In December 2024, Trump named one of these figures, Brian Burch, as his choice for ambassador to the Holy See. Burch is president of the right-wing advocacy group CatholicVote and is credited by Trump with helping him to win over 54 per cent of Catholics in the last election.

A friend of JD Vance, Burch was a fierce critic of Pope Francis. The director of the Catholic Theological Union’s Bernardin Center in Chicago has described him as “an agitator, mostly, the opposite of a diplomat”. As ambassador, he will have to defend Trump’s massive foreign aid cuts, which affect Catholic food and assistance projects in poor and war-torn regions. He represents a country with increasingly draconian immigration policies – opposed by many US bishops – and has personally launched lawsuits demanding to know the role of Catholic border charities in a “record surge of illegal immigrants”.

Opposing visions of Christianity

As the first pontiff with a social media history before his elevation, we have seen Prevost’s critical reaction to harsh US immigration policy in real time. His years in Latin America provided first-hand experience with an influx of newcomers. Beginning around 2015, some eight million people fled economic and political mayhem in Venezuela, about 1.6 million of them to Peru. Prevost advocated for the arrivals, had housing built and founded social and job programmes for them.

As pope, he has identified with migrants: “My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate.” In his first address to Vatican ambassadors, he insisted on respect for the dignity of the migrant, pitting himself against Trump, who has slandered immigrants to the US as rapists, and said they are “poisoning the blood” of the country. Of Leo’s first four appointments of US bishops, three are immigrants – from Uganda, Vietnam and Nicaragua.

On immigration and other issues, Pope Leo and the US administration have very different visions of what it means to be a good Christian. Trump and JD Vance had hardly stepped away from the Bibles on which they swore their oaths of office when the new administration dismantled the massive US foreign assistance apparatus, the Agency for International Development. Since the 1960s, the agency had saved millions of lives, financed food and health programmes, supported research on world diseases, provided education and cultural opportunities in places unable to sustain them and backed democracy efforts.

Defending the move, Vance explained that the US government henceforth would follow “the Christian view” of responsibility. “We should love our family first, then our neighbours, then love our community, then our country, and only then consider the interests of the rest of the world,” he said in a television interview that went viral, claiming authority from the ordo amoris, a theological construct of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The soon-to-be Pope Leo wasn’t having it. “JD Vance was wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” he tweeted.

Holding the Church together

But while Leo may be a reformist on some issues, he is still head of a Church that does not allow female priests, does not recognise same-sex marriage and condemns abortion in all circumstances.

Prevost opposed teaching gender studies in Peru and has been consistent in regarding a family strictly as “founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman”. In 2012 he said that “the homosexual lifestyle” was at odds with the gospel, and lamented media sympathy for “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children”. In 2023 he appeared to temper his words, referring to Pope Francis, who “does not want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, the way they dress or whatever.” However, doctrine has not changed.

This early in the papacy, Catholic women who want access to consecrated roles restricted to men are giving themselves room to hope. As bishop, Prevost gave a definitive “no” to female priests, but the 50-year-old Women’s Ordination Conference, an advocacy group based in Rome with members around the world, has taken a positive approach to the new pope with his “emphasis on bridge-building and dialogue”, as they wrote in their plea to Leo to recognise their “baptismal equality”. Some women aspiring to the diaconate have expressed hope that Leo, who attended theology classes at Villanova University alongside women and has praised the work of women at the Vatican, will listen to them. Others are less optimistic.

Meanwhile, the clerical sex abuse crisis remains an open wound, with many seeing the steps to defrock clergy and compensate victims as too little, too late. In June, Pope Leo reiterated that priests must be celibate and demanded “firm and decisive action” in dealing with abuse reports.

No one has accused the new pope of knowingly keeping abusers in public ministry. Prevost was key to exposing sadistic psychological and sexual abuse in an influential 50-year-old Peru-based religious movement, the Sodality of Christian Life (SCV), with 20,000 members worldwide, including the US. Reporters who published details of the scandal in 2015 suffered harassment, and the Peruvian Church of the time ignored them except for Prevost, who sided with the victims. Arriving at his Vatican post in 2023, Prevost facilitated access for the whistleblowers to Pope Francis, who launched a major investigation and dissolved the SCV shortly before he died. But critics including the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests contend that Prevost could have done more or acted earlier on reports of sexual abuse in several cases, including when he led a diocese in Peru.

Battles ahead

It is too soon to say how Leo will shape the papacy. His first concern will be for the unity of the Church. During Francis’ papacy, differences between the Vatican and ultraconservative US Catholics had some fearing schism. So far US bishops have expressed only joy at Leo’s election, but we don’t know what they may be planning in private. Early indications are that Leo will forge ahead, even as he prepares for pushback. He told the cardinals that the Church will resort “whenever necessary to blunt language that may initially create misunderstandings”. Rooted in concern for the “life and well-being of every man and woman”, he said, “truth [enables] us to confront all the more resolutely the challenges of our time, such as migration, the ethical use of artificial intelligence and the protection of our beloved planet Earth.”

Strong and coherent political forces that engage with global crises, some of them existential in nature, are slow to appear. Meanwhile, the president of the US is looking to remodel the world in his own image, influenced by a very particular brand of US white Christian nationalism, in ways that aren’t likely to benefit “the well-being of every man and woman”. While constrained by his duty to preserve the unity of the Church, Pope Leo XIV may still prove a crucial source of leadership beyond it.

But this may also depend on his ability, and willingness, to oppose and resist the conservatives, and ultraconservatives, within the institutions of the Church and its influential followers.

This article is from New Humanist’s Autumn 2025 issue. Subscribe now.