🇪🇸Leer en español
🇮🇹 Versione italiana
Vatican City - With the election of Leo XIV, the first American pope, the Catholic Church truly enters a new phase in its history. This is not merely a historical fact — never before had a successor of Peter come from the United States — but what stands out most is the name the new pontiff has chosen for his ministry. As soon as I heard the name “Leo XIV” pronounced, my thoughts turned instantly to Leo XIII, and the origins of the Augustinian cardinal Robert Francis Prevost brought to my mind those words, Longinqua Oceani, with which Leo XIII himself looked toward America.
To understand the weight of this expression, we must return to 1895, when Leo XIII wrote the encyclical Longinqua Oceani. In that text, addressed to the bishops of the United States, the pope expressed a deep admiration for the vitality of the American Church, which at the time was young, rapidly growing, and supported by an extraordinary ferment of initiatives: schools, parishes, religious vocations, charitable works. Leo XIII regarded with respect the fact that, thanks to the religious freedom guaranteed by the American Constitution, Catholics could thrive without suffering the discrimination that still, at that time, afflicted the Church in many European countries.
But Leo XIII did not merely celebrate successes. He also issued a warning, one that remains relevant today: the risk that the Church, in adapting too readily to the liberal and democratic principles of American society, might end up calling into question its own hierarchical and doctrinal structure. What the pope referred to as “Americanism” was the temptation to transform the Church into an institution modelled on the political values of liberalism: the exaltation of private initiative at the expense of ecclesial obedience, the downgrading of religious vows (such as chastity, poverty, and obedience), and a tendency to soften the harsher truths of the Gospel to make them more palatable to modern sensibilities. According to Leo XIII, the matter was clear: the Church can dialogue with modernity, but it cannot submit to its criteria. It cannot become a democracy, it cannot renounce its hierarchy, it cannot transform itself into a social agencyor a mere moral community. The heart of the Church is not popular consensus, nor is it adapting to the times; it is the proclamation of the Gospel and fidelity to the mandate received from Christ.
Today, more than a century later, those dangers have not disappeared. On the contrary, we might say they have become even greater. We live in an era marked by a more radical individualism, by a widespread relativism, by a global culturethat tends to marginalise absolute truths and to value only what is functional, useful, profitable. The temptation for the Church is to become media-friendly, to strive to please everyone, to erase the uncomfortable words of the Gospel simply to maintain visibility and approval. The danger is no longer just American, but global: the belief that, in order to survive, the Church must become a moral NGO, one voice among many in the world’s chorus.
But Leo XIII also offered a way out of this risk. His solution was not nostalgic retreat, nor sectarian withdrawal, but a solid formation of the faithful, an authentic sacramental life, a deep communion with the Magisterium and the pope, a capacity to be in the world without being of the world. For Leo XIII, the Church had to be capable of facing the challenges of modernity while remaining faithful to its identity, finding ways to bring the Gospel to the “new things”of the age without losing its soul. When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, yesterday in the Sistine Chapel, chose the pontifical name Leo XIV, he seemed to be saying that he still feels that admonition is relevant. It is not enough to come from America to bring something new: one must also bring with them the awareness that the universal Church cannot be shaped by the political criteria of any one nation, however powerful. Today, those “distant oceans” Leo XIII spoke of are no longer peripheral: America is now central, no longer at the margins. But precisely for this reason, Leo XIV seems intent on reaffirming that Catholicism must not become American, European, African, or Asian. It is Catholic, that is, universal, that is, rooted in Christ.
Perhaps Leo XIII would never have imagined that one day, more than a century later, a successor would come precisely from that distant world he had once observed with both curiosity and concern. But it is likely he would have been pleased to see that this pope bears his name in order to revive the great mission of the Church: to remain faithful to its identity, to cross the seas and oceans of the world, never losing its course.
“I am a son of Saint Augustine, an Augustinian, who said: ‘With you I am a Christian, for you I am a bishop.’ In this sense, we can all walk together towards that homeland that God has prepared for us.” — Leo XIV
Marco Felipe Perfetti
Silere non possum