An American pope for the global south

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Roula Khalaf, publisher of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is the author of “Hitler’s Pope”, “The Pontiff in Winter” and “Earth to Earth”

What was He thinks? Leo XIV! A tribute clearly to Leo XIII, a pope from 1878 to 1903, an important boy for Catholics during the first half of the 20th century. As a Catholic School in the 1950’s, I learned from the whole heart of Leo’s celebrated encyclical Of the revolutionary – New things.

This papal letter to the world emphasized the rights and dignity of workers, a living salary, even the right to strike, while condemning socialism and capitalist greed to the same extent. It has been the foundation of Catholic teaching on “the common good” to date.

Leo’s name indicates the focus of the new pope in the working situation worldwide. But few hoped that the cardinals choose an American pope, born and raised in Chicago.

Obviously, and with a wide justification, they see the Church in the United States as the great coal face: a huge Catholic community in a deep crisis. While more than 40 percent of the Church resides in Latin America, the United States Church, 7 percent of the Church, has more than 50 million adults. Catholicism without the weight of the faithful of North America is unthinkable.

However, the relatively large size of US Catholic affiliation by baptism does not mean that everything is well. According to a survey by Gallup, 23 percent of Catholics attend weekly Mass. 19 percent of Americans self-identify as Catholics, dropping down from 24 percent in 2007. In the meantime, in a survey carried out by the crisis of the Catholic Magazine, for every 100 people who are currently joining the Catholic Church of the United States, 840 are leaving. If it is half true, even the trend is catastrophic.

Catholic communities are divided. Traditionalists want to adhere to the ancient liturgies and the condemnation of divorce, abortion and homosexuality.

The so -called “great tent” Catholics, the progressive wing of the United States Church, advise humanist sympathy for the way people live, a Pope Francis of the tendency. And in the midst of the inconvenience of American Catholicism, there has been a reduction in donations to the Church, aggravating a deficit in Vatican’s finance.

Cardinal John Henry Newman, converted from the 19th century, wrote an influential essay, the “grammar of the assent”. He argued that it was through a holistic experience of traditions, writings, liturgies and ministers that people were attracted to a religion.

The impressive effect of the clerical abuse scandal in America, reinforced by the media and films such as Dissemination reveal that at the same time a great “yes” to a faith can become a great “no”. It is already a nefarious cloud in the dawn of Leo’s papacy is the vindication of three Peruvian women, who, as a bishop, did not investigate their abuse reports by two priests in Chiclayo, Peru, dating back to 2007.

The Cardinals, however, believed that a pope who spoke with North -American Catholics with a North -American accent, endorsed by pontoon authority, could turn the North -American Catholic ship to the benefit of the entire Church.

Leo will certainly show who shouts the doctrinal traits. A third of Trump’s Cabinet is Catholics of a differently traditionalist tone: the most demanding is Vice President JD Vance, which became 2019.

Vance recently sought to take the mantle of the Exeget deed to say that Jesus taught us to put our closest and loved one to the neighbors and strangers. The Vice President ordered Americans to stop being charitable in illegal migrants. It was then Cardinal Robert Prevost who instantly Published Ax That Vance had done everything “wrong”.

But this is not the United States. On the world scenario, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping can see a North -American Pope as the “Caper” of the “West”, confirming the Vatican as a spiritual representative of his enemies.

But a further look at his career and the record locates him in the south of the south. Leo spent a decade working as a missionary in Peru among the natives. He has acquired Peruvian citizenship and the faithful of Latin America see him as one of his.

Francis’s dissemination will continue to develop in the world of development, while also truly north -American born and raised. An apparent reconciliation of the incompatibles, is an inspired choice and their compatriots are ecstatic: “We are floating, stunned and full of hope,” says Shawn McKnight of Archbishop Shawn McKNight of Kansas City-L’Ultimate Prelate designated by Francis.

Leo’s opening speech from the balcony spoke of peace and peace: if he can use his obvious skills to reconcile the incompatible to help the perspectives in the Middle East and Ukraine, the cardinals will have chosen well.