Does pope rhyme with hope?

Pope Leo XIV could have chosen Francis II as his pontifical designation as the second name of Cardinal Robert F. Prevost but is generally believed to have opted for identifying himself as a successor of Leo XIII (1878-1903), author of the encyclical Rerum Novarum pioneering the Church’s social doctrine.

Yet might he not also have drawn inspiration from the very first of the 14 Leos – Saint Leo Magnus (the Great), pope from 440 to 461, the first 40 years of whose life overlapped with the founder of the current pontiff’s Augustinian order, whose theology very likely guided his beliefs. That Leo is most famous for standing up to Attila the Hun, whose hordes were threatening to put the final nail in the coffin of the civilisation then known (the Pax Romana) just as today’s precarious Western civilisation is endangered by the Artificial Intelligence which this Leo has confronted. Nobody knows what was actually said in that historic encounter between Pope and Hun in 452 AD but Attila desisted from attacking Rome – what was said between Pope and President far more recently this week has not gone public but the Javier Milei administration is having second thoughts regarding its legislation on the handicapped.

There have now been 14 Leos among the 267 popes thus far (not counting the five antipopes) – the most common name so far after John, Benedict and Gregory although there were also 14 Clements – and this sheer weight of history surely adds to the authority of the institution. The Church has accumulated more than its fair share of problems and scandals (the latter discreetly addressed by Leo XIV with his private encounter with victims of clerical sexual abuse) but it must be doing something right to last 2,000 years. The greater the scale of a historical development, the wider its margin of error, Catholic and Stalinist apologists alike have argued.

As widely highlighted, Leo XIV is the first Augustinian pope (his life for almost half a century) and he clings to the story of Saint Augustine in order to brace himself for the grim statistics of decline in the world’s most Catholic continent – if around 97 percent were baptised Catholics in 1900, this had dipped to about 82 percent at the start of this century and is now estimated at 55 percent (only a third in the first Uruguayan stopover of this current South American swing and a minority in the most populous Latin American country, Brazil). Saint Augustine (354-430) showed zero interest in religion during the first 33 years of his life to the despair of his pious Christian mother Saint Monica – in his Confessions Augustine himself implies that the divergence between reprobate sinner and saintly theologian was more apparent than real because in both these contrasting phases of his life, he was only doing what made him happy. On this basis the Pope can hope that the Church could be in for a long wait of three decades like Saint Monica but the true faith will eventually shine through.

Did that joyful moment arrive much sooner than expected last Monday when some two and a half million people flocked to his Palermo Mass? Far too early to tell. Some journalists erroneously reported that this was the biggest multitude ever in this city but around twice that number poured out into the streets less than four years ago to greet the World Cup champions of Qatar with that euphoria long forgotten and the trophy already in other hands. Even more recently over a million people descended on Avellaneda last June to bid farewell to the singer Indio Solari and at the time several pundits were knowingly assuring us that this popular outburst was an electoral game-changer yet how many people even remember it today with next year’s elections still up in the air?

Without claiming any ability to read the papal mind, this columnist strongly suspects that the Pope would not select the Palermo Mass as the key chapter of his Argentine sojourn but rather his visit earlier that morning to the Cottolengo Don Orione home in Claypole for the disabled and those with special needs. This institution began almost two centuries ago when the Piadmontese priest, Saint Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo, founded in Turin in 1828 what was to become the Piccola Casa della Divina Provvidenza housing just one elderly cripple at the outset – today, it is a global charity network spanning 34 countries in all five continents and caring for over 200,000 people worldwide.

Leo XIV is on the right track if he believes that the future does not lie so much in one-off events like the Palermo Mass but in planting such seeds to grow over time by pursuing the social doctrine of the previous Leo – in small steps like making the government reconsider its policies towards the people cared in Cottolengo homes rather than any overnight revolutions. The Church best lays down roots by penetrating society at multiple levels – education (however counterproductive a Catholic schooling can be), hospitals, orphanages, retirement homes, soup kitchens, refuges for the homeless, addiction treatment centres, etc. – as its form of incarnation. Nor need this clash with the government’s libertarian ideology – it is significant that the prayer for the poor at the Palermo Mass did not demand a welfare state but spread the responsibility to people as a whole. Milei would have no problem if poverty were the concern of Caritas in particular and society in general.

This week we have seen an explosion of enthusiasm which an impassive Pope did little or nothing to fan – almost as if he were here as Francis II paying a past debt of the Argentine pontiff’s absence from his homeland, rather than as a Leo XIV looking to the present or the future. Because the times of the Church like the times of the Lord have a different wavelength from the social networks.