8 May 2025

Pope Leo XIV’s centrist papacy

The election of Robert Prevost is a plea for temperance in a turbulent Church.

“May peace be with all of you” were the opening words of Pope Leo XIV. This was the least interesting thing about his first appearance on the balcony above St Peter’s Square, just after 6pm on 8 May 2025. Of far greater note was his attire.

When the late Pope Francis was elected as spiritual leader of the Catholic Church in 2013 his dress was conspicuous in its humility. Gone was the papal ermine and gold embroidery, the religious maximalism of his predecessor Benedict XVI. Instead, Francis preferred a plain cassock. He swapped out a throne for a wooden chair, too. In those early minutes of his papacy, the normcore Argentinian Jesuit shifted the entire tone of the office: this is a Church committed to the poor and the lay.

If we are supposed to read so much into godly vestments, and I suspect Francis wanted us to, then Pope Leo XIV is heralding another vibe shift. As the first ever American to lead the Vatican (born in Chicago in 1955) he blessed the 40,000 strong crowd and made a call for global unity. But Leo XIV looked far more like a pope of the old model than Francis ever did. Red, gold, finery – and all that.

Given the task he faces, and that old mandate from heaven, this is precisely what he needed to do. The Holy See is a divided place – the liberal Francis clashed bitterly with conservative rivals and he had a reputation for private spikiness. Ahead of this week’s conclave some cardinals were anxious that the new pope would need to unite the institution between its competing traditions, to offer a salve to a tense atmosphere.

But there seemed to be equal appetite for a papacy that furthered the happier parts of Francis’s legacy: his modernising lilt, his ability to reach out to those in the margins, his concern for the poor. Cardinal Robert Prevost – now Pope Leo XIV – was touted as the man who could do both, who could bridge the ideological gap, who could be a continuity and a change candidate at the same time. His clothes and speech made exactly that case: I look like Benedict, I sound like Francis.

When Pope Francis was elected, the liberals in the church were exultant. This would signal the end of an old idea: after the trenchant conservatism of Benedict XVI and John Paul II, in Francis they saw a Pope willing to adapt to the demands of the secular 21^st century, to wrest Catholicism out of decline. Francis was open open to debating the values of the Church, willing to push the needle on questions of homosexuality and abortion, sceptical on the primacy of Latin mass. Prevost is more moderate – particularly on questions of doctrine – but still considered a reformer in the Franciscan model when it comes to social issues.

“Fat pope, thin pope” is a Catholic adage that describes the trend in conclaves to counterbalance the preceding pope’s ideological emphases with new ones. That is not quite what has happened here. The election of Pope Leo XIV is a gentle gesture to the importance of moderation, not an ideological handbrake turn (the most radical thing about the appointment is that he is American). After all this handwringing about the battle between liberals and conservatives, it was the centrists at the gate after all.