This spiritual son of Francis could be the bridge a broken world needs

Vatican City: It began not with thunder, but with a curl of white smoke against a bright blue Roman sky.

For a brief moment, all sound in St Peter’s Square seemed to vanish. Then, as if rehearsed by some divine cue, an eruption of gasps, cheers, almost panic, and hundreds sprinted towards the famed basilica like a tidal wave.

Pope Leo XIV appears on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica.Credit: Bloomberg

The bells began to toll. The window opened, and the roar of thousands echoed against the Vatican’s ancient walls.

A new pope. A new page. And for the first time in 2000 years of Catholic tradition, an American was stepping onto the balcony above us, bathed in the twilight and burdened with a world in desperate need of peace.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with pilgrims, press, and priests – a nun beside me clutched a rosary so tightly her knuckles seemed to turn white. A child near the front waved a small Peruvian flag. And when habemus papam (“we have a pope”) was proclaimed, the square exhaled and then entered euphoria.

For just a moment, in that sea of flags and flashing cameras, it didn’t feel like we were watching history. It felt like we were history.

Pope Leo XIV – born Robert Francis Prevost – is now the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. His election arrives not in an age of triumph, but of turmoil. The world beyond the Vatican’s walls is fractured and burning – literally and morally. From the trenches of Ukraine to the desperate refugee camps of the Middle East, from the cracked earth of sub-Saharan Africa to the migrant crossings of the US-Mexico border, the world is at war – with itself, with its past, and with its conscience.

The arrival of a new pope – the son of a Chicago plumber, the shepherd of Peruvian missions – must be seen not merely as a religious event. It is a political moment. A moral inflection point. A chance for a voice of conscience to rise above the drums of division.

Leo XIV is the first American pope. But he was formed not by US culture wars, but by the theology of the people in Latin America. In Peruvian villages, he helped raise local clergy. He saw the church not as a fortress of doctrine, but a field hospital for the poor.

In that, he is a spiritual son of Francis – not just the man, but the movement: the synodal church, the listening church, the church of the peripheries.

Yet Leo XIV may also be a bridge to the polarised American church. Where Francis seemed distant from US culture, Leo XIV might translate Catholic social teaching into its native idioms. Whether he can – or will – remains to be seen.

But the more urgent question is how he will lead a church in a world teetering on catastrophe. Francis spoke of a “piecemeal World War III”. Increasingly, it feels whole. Proxy wars bleed into direct conflict. Nuclear arsenals expand. Multilateral diplomacy falters.

In his first words as pope, Leo XIV offered a clear response: “Peace be with all of you.” He repeated it – gently but firmly. He called on the world to “build bridges” to “walk together”. The response from the square: thunderous chants of “Viva il Papa!”

Then cardinal Robert Prevost at the funeral for Pope Francis in April.Credit: Getty Images

His diplomacy will be tested early. Will he follow Francis in confronting global powers, even at risk of backlash? Or will he focus first on unity within the church before addressing a burning world?

If this night offered a message, it was not triumphalism. It was urgency. A church rocked by scandal and irrelevance is being asked to speak to a world on fire. The moral voice of Catholicism must be honed again – not to impose, but to inspire.

Francis pointed the way, but now the baton has passed. It’s Leo XIV who must hold the world’s gaze – and its wounds.

He must confront the cries of abuse survivors. He must face calls for inclusion – of women, LGBTQ+ Catholics, and the divorced. He must confront calls to reform a Vatican still marked by opacity.

But above all, he must preach peace – and mean it.

Leo XIV is a man of unexpected humility – a quiet presence more inclined to listen than to speak, according to Brother Mark O’Connor from Sydney’s Parramatta diocese, who met him in Rome just weeks before the conclave.

“He doesn’t have a big ego,” O’Connor says, still emotional from what he’s just seen. “He is more interested in listening to you than talking about himself.”

As head of the Augustinian order, Leo XIV travelled often, including to Australia. He loathes Vegemite but is partial to Tim Tams.

“Normally, they would never pick an American, but in this world with Trump and Putin and Ukraine and Gaza, they were less worried about the nationality, and they were worried about the character and the quality of the person,” O’Connor says.

“They also knew that they could not repeat the performance by Francis in terms of a charisma. But they wanted somebody who would continue that vision. Even though he’s different in style, his essential vision is the same.”

Back in the square, as Leo XIV raised his hand in blessing, the silence returned – not of awe, but of contemplation. A quiet that seemed to acknowledge the burden of the moment.

He has inherited not only the white cassock but a wounded world. His is not a papacy for comfort. It is one for courage.

He wears his humility plainly. His papal name honours Leo XIII, the father of Catholic social teaching. It’s a signal of continuity – and purpose. His life’s work in Peru, and later in Rome as head of the powerful Dicastery for Bishops, shaped him into a careful listener and steady administrator.

He once said: “The bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom.” Now, he is no longer just a bishop, but a symbol.

A vote for Leo XIV was a vote for Francis’s legacy – with steadier hands and fewer surprises. That may be exactly what the world – and the church – needs now.

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