On Religion: While Calling For Unity, Pope Leo XIV Encounters Divisions
(ANALYSIS) For more than 26 years, Pope John Paul II traveled the world with a silver pastoral staff topped with a dramatic, abstract crucifix crafted by the 20th-century artist Lello Scorzelli.
This symbol of papal ministry was first used by Pope Paul VI at the Second Vatican Council finale and has been carried on occasion by subsequent popes. But, year after year, Mass after Mass, it became a powerful symbol of the life of John Paul II — now St. John Paul II — during the second-longest papacy in history.
John Paul II used this staff during his inauguration Mass and so did Pope Leo XIV, during the May 18 rite that fell on the 105th anniversary of John Paul II's birth. The new pope also wore an iconic chasuble — the outer liturgical cloak — that is now considered a relic of St. John Paul II.
With the fisherman's ring and the lambswool pallium over his shoulders, these links to John Paul II helped Leo XIV stress the need for unity and core Catholic traditions.
“The Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone. Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him,” Leo XIV told the flock of 150,000 assembled in St. Peter's Square.
“Brothers and sisters, I would like that our first great desire be for a united Church. ... This is the missionary spirit that must animate us; not closing ourselves off in our small groups nor feeling superior to the world.”
But Leo XIV faces painful challenges even while calling for unity.
Raymond Arroyo of Eternal Word Television Network and Fox News tweeted: “Pope Leo at his Inaugural Mass, in a subtle reference to his predecessor, says 'Peter [the pope] must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat.' ... He then pledged to be a source of unity.”
British-based journalist Austen Ivereigh, author of two biographies on Pope Francis, retweeted Arroyo, adding: “Dissenters from the magisterium of Francis justified their disobedience by claiming he was an autocrat. Now they are using Leo's election to support their narrative, twisting his commitment to collegiality and synodality to imply he agrees with them. Disgraceful.”
But others saw similar themes in the sermon. Reuters noted that Leo XIV said “unity” or “united” seven times, and “harmony” four times. The wire service claimed he was appealing to "conservatives who felt orphaned under his predecessor, calling for unity, vowing to preserve the Catholic Church's heritage and not rule like ‘an autocrat.’”
The new pope also said church authority is “never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving, as Jesus did.”
Pope Leo XIV also emphasized peace and essential Catholic convictions during a May 16 address to diplomats based at the Holy See. He urged government leaders to “build harmonious and peaceful civil societies” by supporting families “founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman.”
The new pope said “no one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike. ... The Church can never be exempted from speaking the truth about humanity and the world, resorting whenever necessary to blunt language that may initially create misunderstanding.”
Before that address, in an earlier tweet on the @Pontifex X account, Leo XIV offered the Vatican as a safe place for leaders to discuss the world's most painful divisions.
“This is precisely the sort of thing a Pope should do,” tweeted legal scholar Robert P. George of Princeton University. "It won't always work. Indeed, it may work only rarely, if at all. But he should always offer a place for enemies to meet -- face to face -- to see if they can find a way to halt (or prevent) bloodshed. Good for Pope Leo.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.