Just days into the papacy of Leo XIV, the new pope has begun to lay out his vision for how he will lead the Catholic church.
Like his predecessor, he plans to embrace the poor and the marginalized. He wants to continue Francis’s effort to fling open the doors of the Vatican and listen to many voices outside the church hierarchy. And in a clear sign that this is a pope keenly attuned to the biggest tests of modernity, he said the church would address the challenge that artificial intelligence will pose to “human dignity, justice and labor.”
As the leader of close to 1.4 billion followers, a population that equals the size of China or India, Pope Leo’s words matter to nearly one out of every six people in the world. He also has a powerful global pulpit, so the issues he chooses to focus on can resonate far beyond the Catholic brethren.
Francis’s energy, charisma and compassion reminded not just Catholics but those of other faiths and in secular circles that a pope can be a public voice in ethical life.
Francis took up the mantle of the poor and migrants, as well as the urgent need to respond to climate change. He was a man of potent gestures, such as making his first official trip to Lampedusa, the tiny Mediterranean island where thousands of desperate asylum seekers and migrants sought to enter Europe, or visiting prisons to kiss the feet of inmates. Just before he was admitted to the hospital in February, he took on the mass deportation policies of President Trump, calling them a violation of the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families.”
Leo takes over the papacy at a tumultuous time in global affairs. Wars are being fought on several fronts, the political sphere in many countries is polarized, economic inequality is rising and people are struggling to make basic human connections through a sea of disinformation and diversion on social media.
