Elyse Raby studies the Catholic Church. We asked her what an American pope means to the world.

The “least American” American pope

I’m quite surprised to see an American pope. There has usually been some reticence toward a pope from the United States, since we are already a global superpower. There has normally been some hesitation to add to that influence by putting an American in the seat of Peter as well. But we have heard in the last two weeks since Pope Francis died that Robert Prevost is “the least [U.S.] American” of the cardinals from the United States, given that he has spent decades as an Augustinian missionary in Peru.

Following in Francis’ footsteps?

When he was appointed head of the Dicastery of Bishops by Pope Francis in 2023, Prevost said that even in this new role, “I still consider myself a missionary. My vocation, like that of every Christian, is to be a missionary, to proclaim the Gospel wherever one is.” This echoes Francis’s emphasis on a missionary church. He has also insisted, like Francis, that bishops be pastors and close to their communities. Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, participated in the Synod on Synodality and has spoken of it favorably. He was also a member of the study group examining the relationship between bishops and other groups within the church. We can hope and expect that Leo XIV will continue the synodal reforms that Francis began.

What’s in a name?

The name of Leo XIV is also a bit of a surprise as well! The Vatican Press Office has confirmed that he chose the name after Leo XIII, who was pope from 1878 to 1903. Leo XIII is considered the ‘father’ of Catholic social teaching, affirming the dignity and rights of workers and the poor in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. The new pope is signaling that he stands in continuity with Leo XIII’s—and Francis’s—broad social justice commitments (the Vatican Press Office confirmed that this was the reasoning behind the choice of his name).

At the same time, Leo XIII also mandated a revival of the theology of Thomas Aquinas in seminaries across the world (“neoscholasticism,” as it has been called), which is a more conservative trend theologically—one at odds, methodologically, with the theology we saw from Pope Francis and most North American Catholic theologians.

Leo XIII also wrote more encyclicals during his papacy (89!!) than all of his predecessors combined. From that perspective, he notably expanded the reach of papal teaching authority in a way that has become normalized in subsequent papacies. Time will tell how, and on what issues, Pope Leo XIV utilizes his new papal magisterium!

An assistant professor in Santa Clara University’s department of religious studies, Elyse Raby researches the study of the Catholic Church and gender.

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