“The peace of the risen Jesus is disarmed, because disarmed was his struggle, within precise historical, political, social circumstances. Of this newness Christians must become, together, prophetically witnesses, mindful of the tragedies of which too often they have made themselves accomplices. The great parable of the universal judgment invites all Christians to act with mercy in this awareness. And in doing so, they will find at their side brothers and sisters who, by different paths, have known how to listen to the pain of others and have interiorly freed themselves from the deception of violence,” Leo XIV wrote in the Message for the World Day of Peace 2026. “This is the peace of the Risen Christ, a disarmed peace and a disarming peace, humble and persevering. It comes from God, God who loves us all unconditionally,” he had said in the first Urbi et Orbi blessing, just after being elected. “The opposite of dialogue is not silence, but offense… a war of words,” he recalled in recent days to diplomats.
Clear words, even mercilessly straightforward. And they are not slogans: from the beginning, they outline a path that Leo XIV is pursuing first and foremost within the Church. The Pope - he has also confided it to his most trusted collaborators - is convinced that, before summoning the world to peace, the Church must regain its own internal peace. This is not a strategy of government: it is a question of credibility.
In recent years, in fact, extremist positions have hardened on both fronts, to the point of making the ecclesial air heavy, at times unbreathable. And here the Pope’s diagnosis is difficult to contest: this polarization has produced an unbearable climate, a permanent conflict disguised as zeal, an identity militancy mistaken for faith. Hence the choice of a sober language: few words, measured, never shouted. Not out of fear, but out of conviction: witness, when it is authentic, weighs more than proclamations. But witness itself demands a preliminary condition: it must be credible. And credibility, in these years, has been worn down by the exhibition of factions, by the rhetoric of the “pure,” and by the hunt for the enemy of the moment. This has been seen even in recent weeks: aggressive pseudo-theologians, ready to attack and defame anyone who does not align with their theses, as if theological innovation were measured by insinuations against those they identify as enemies. And, in parallel, “psycho-blogs” proliferate that turn faith into a war against brothers: not a path of conversion, but a ring; not discernment, but a permanent tribunal.
Leo XIV and the Governance of the Universal Church
But these words are also an effective interpretive key for understanding the decisions matured in these months by Leo XIV. Among them all, the appointment made known today: it is not only the смена at the helm of a major U.S. diocese, but a signal of his style of governance. An act consistent with a clear trajectory: disarm languages, cool internal tensions, cut off the logic of factions, and bring ecclesial confrontation back onto the ground of unity and credibility. The Holy See has announced that the Pope has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan from the pastoral governance of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of New York and has appointed as Metropolitan Archbishop His Excellency the Most Reverend Ronald A. Hicks, transferring him from the Diocese of Joliet (Illinois).
The profile of the new archbishop is that of a pastor who grew up in the ecclesial fabric of Chicago, with solid formation and not improvised governance experience: born in 1967, studies in philosophy at Loyola University, theological formation at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake / Mundelein Seminary, a significant period in the charitable work Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos between Mexico and El Salvador, then assignments in formation and, above all, a long path of responsibility up to the role of Vicar General. Subsequently, the appointment as auxiliary bishop (2018) and then as bishop of Joliet (2020).
This appointment must be read in parallel with another choice that directly affects the governance of the universal Church: the designation of Mons. Filippo Iannone, O. Carm., as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, coming from the Dicastery for Legislative Texts (an office assumed on 15 October 2025).
A shift in priorities
Two different choices—a major metropolitan see, a node of the Curia—and yet a common criterion: identifying figures who do not enter the scene as banners. And this is not a negligible detail, if one considers that in past years it has often been preferred to promote men “friends of friends,” coming from environments contiguous to the ideology of those in power, profiles built to appear “likable” to the Pope of the moment, with a curriculum calibrated on what would most fascinate him.
Thus we have witnessed a weary and repetitive liturgy: pastoral assignments displayed as stamps of authenticity—for a few months parish priests, for a few months directors of Caritas, for a few months prison chaplains. A few months, sometimes even a few weeks, just long enough to package a presentable profile and to be able to say, with a contrite air: “he is a man with the smell of the sheep.” The result? A permanent act, a staging that replaces discernment with narrative, and competence with the ability to put on, at the opportune moment, the right garment. The results have been seen and they are being paid for by parish priests, the real ones, who have at the head of dioceses adolescent bishops who play at sowing discord between one priest and another.
Times, however, have changed and Prevost does not want fake flatterers but men of communion. In his interventions in these months, the Pope has insisted more than once on the need to break the logics of division and polarization, asking for “agents of communion” capable of stitching back together what separates. And when he has prayed and preached, he has translated the same objective into a clear lexicon: not “dividing the world into irreconcilable factions,” not letting hate and lies dictate memory and belonging, because “within the Church… we cannot be divided.”
And it is good to dismantle a recurring temptation: mistaking the absence of a label for the absence of a line. There is no “empty” neutrality. Every appointment indicates a direction. The direction that emerges is not “traditionalist” or “progressive,” but more radical: communion as a priority of governance. Recently the Pope has even invoked “extinguishing the hearths of factions” and “recomposing mutual disputes,” recalling that ecclesial discernment is not the affirmation of a “personal or group” point of view.
New York, in this framework, is not only an important diocese because of the media and cultural weight of the United States: it is a permanent laboratory of plurality, conflicts, languages. And the Dicastery for Bishops, with Iannone, is the place where that same logic of “disarmament” can become a stable criterion of selection: fewer pastor–faction-leaders, more pastors able to govern without fueling ecclesial civil war. Leo XIV asks to “disarm proclamations and speeches” and to choose words “that build understanding,” and at the same time places in strategic points people who, by biography and style, can lower conflict and make possible a patient work of recomposition. He does not want to avoid problems, but he wants to prevent the Church from consuming itself in commenting on them like a fan base, while outside—and inside—the thirst for peace, healing, credibility grows.
Marco Felipe Perfetti
Silere non possum