[This week’s book review title doesn’t come from a song. Instead, it’s the Latin phrase which is delivered to the assembled in the Square at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. After the white smoke has risen from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, this is the phrase that announces the success of the latest conclave of cardinals in selecting a new leader for the Catholic faithful - “Habemus papem”, or, “we have a pope”. Those words were spoken from the loggia above the Square on May 8th of this year by the Cardinal Protodeacon Dominique Mamberti of France as he introduced the new Pope Robert Francis Provost, to be called Leo XIV, the first American ever selected for the role. You can see the event unfold in this YouTube video. Look for the famous phrase at the 1:40:30 mark.]

WHAT I’VE BEEN UP TO

Tony and I are enjoying being homebodies for a change, and getting back into our daily routine. We’ve also been helping to drive my sister to appointments following her hip replacement surgery. Her recovery has gone very well and she has now “graduated” to being able to drive again! She is walking now with much more strength and ability than she’s been able to for several months, which is fantastic to see.

Anyway, on to this week’s book review —

We’ve done quite a bit of travel this year, starting with a trip to the Vatican at the end of May, which included attendance at the weekly Papal Audience held on Wednesdays at St. Peter's Square where we got a chance to see and hear from the new Pope Leo XIV. In August we went to Spain to walk the Camino Primitivo, one of the pilgrimage routes which end at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, where the Apostle James is buried.

I’m not a religious person. I consider myself at best agnostic. However, I was raised Catholic, attended Catholic school, and still to this day understand the appeal of Catholic tradition and Catholic rituals. The purpose of the trip to Rome was to accompany my 90-year-old mother-in-law who had never been to the Vatican and wished to go before she died. The walk to Santiago de Compostela was a chance to experience the history and culture of what had started as a medieval tradition, and retrace the steps of the many who had gone before me - this was a walk that perhaps some of my distant ancestors may have taken.

Both of these recent experiences, along with my own background and the American-ness of the new Pope, put me in a “Catholic-curious” frame of mind, and open to reading Christopher White’s biography of Pope Leo XIV. I will confess that I’d never heard of Christopher White before picking up this book, nor did I expect too much from a biography that has been produced so quickly after the new pope’s assumption of the role.

But to my surprise this is not an “insta-biography” but instead a thoroughly researched and well written short book that explores not only the life (to date) of the new pope, but the context in which the conclave to elect the new pope took place. I now know that author White has been a Rome-based correspondent for the American newspaper National Catholic Reporter for several years and is recognized for being well-connected while objective in his reporting. Some of his personal interactions with those covered in this book (including the new pope) are included, and they add a verisimilitude and “you are there” feel to the book.

The book starts out by exploring the papacy of Pope Leo’s predecessor Francis. Francis had a missionary fervor and a strong belief that the church should be open and welcoming to all. When asked what he thought of gay people early in his papacy, Francis famously replied “Who am I to judge?”. He also famously responded to a reporter’s question about who he was by saying, “I am a sinner”. The notion of humble service and outreach to all was fundamental to the direction Francis wanted to take the church.

Francis’ leadership also challenged the Vatican power structure directly and indirectly. Perhaps most notably in that regard, he moved the leadership of the Catholic church toward “synodality”. Synodality is the notion that leading the direction of the church should be a role shared with all the people of the church and not restricted to the priesthood.

Francis used the general synod, held roughly every three to four years in recent papacies, as a vehicle to expand the range of voices heard in decision-making within the church. Some of these new voices from outside the priesthood (including women for the first time) Francis also chose for responsible roles within the Vatican. Many in positions of power within the Vatican were not happy with the changes that Francis was bringing about because it meant that their power centers were being disrupted and their power challenged.

With Francis’ demise those unhappy voices began to assert themselves, and as White describes, going into the conclave to elect Francis’ successor there were perceived to be three camps - those who wished to continue to move forward with the changes Francis was making, those who wished to do away with them altogether, and those who found Francis’ emphasis on outreach and a church open to all worth keeping, but not the synodality that threatened the Vatican power centers.

With all that as background it’s kind of amazing that the conclave took only two days to select Robert Francis Provost as the new pope. It was clear from his opening remarks that the first camp - those who wished to move forward with all of Francis’ changes - had easily prevailed. In his opening remarks Provost, now Pope Leo, explicitly said “we want to be a synodal church”.

And of course there is also a biography of Provost in this book. Concise but thorough, it outlines who Robert Francis Provost is, and what propelled him through his career as priest, then bishop, then head of the Augustinian order, and finally the Prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops (the head of the body that reviews church leaders and recommends to the Pope those worthy of being promoted to the role of Bishop). We learn that Provost’s Catholic upbringing in the suburbs of Chicago led him to the priesthood in the Augustinian order, an order that emphasizes service and community, but it was his role as priest and then bishop in the Peruvian diocese of Chiclayo that solidified his service and leadership style.

I ended this slim book (less than 150 pages) with a better understanding of the new pope, along with a new found appreciation for the direction that Francis has set for the Catholic Church, and that Leo appears certain to continue.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: A worthwhile read for Catholics, lapsed Catholics and those of other denominations and faiths interested in the current state of Catholic leadership. The book gives an inside view of Catholic leadership, and of the direction the Church will take under the new Pope.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I received an advanced reviewer’s copy of the book through NetGalley and the publisher Loyola Press. The book was published July 15th of this year.