During his 12-year pontificate, Pope Francis urged Catholics to shake up their church and “make a mess” if they had to. It seems he took his own advice a bit too literally, because he left a mess for his successor, Pope Leo XIV, whose inaugural Mass will take place this Sunday.
In today’s Catholic Church, confusion reigns on core teachings, conservative and liberal factions are at war, the Vatican is on the verge of a liquidity crisis, and corruption infests the bureaucracy.
The good news? Leo might actually be the man to clean it all up.
A pope’s No. 1 job is to secure doctrinal and ecclesial unity. But Francis prioritized outreach to the unbelieving and half-believing, and he regarded Catholics who adhere firmly to Catholic dogma as mere impediments.
His strategy of condemning churchgoing Catholics and their hardworking priests — always a pope’s most faithful followers — as Pharisees was not exactly a master class in leadership. Then he issued documents that appeared to contradict settled Catholic teaching on gay relationships and remarriage after divorce, and the Church was thrown into chaos.
Liberals crowed, conservatives howled, and everyone argued over what on earth his ambiguous statements were supposed to mean.
The papacy has a practical side, too, and Francis’s record here was no better. After some promising early moves, he abandoned his effort to reform the Vatican’s murky finances.
An audit by Pricewaterhouse Coopers was ordered, then canceled. At the Vatican, business as usual means endless accounting games, asset mismanagement, and a deepening sea of red.
Donations fell off, and it’s easy to see why. There was an undeniable air of incompetence and corruption.
And there was the fact that conservative American Catholics, an important part of the church’s donor base, were the pope’s favorite punching bags. No wonder they closed their wallets. The result? The Vatican has a structural budget deficit of $112 million and a $2.2 billion unfunded pension liability.
Pope Leo seems to be a very different man. Born Robert Prevost of Illinois, the longtime White Sox fan is viewed as a unifying figure after more than a decade of chaos and controversy. A former diocesan bishop and head of the global Augustinian order, Leo is an experienced administrator.
In 2023, he was appointed prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. In this role, he made connections with bishops around the world and gained firsthand knowledge of where the talent is (and isn’t).
What he should do with this knowledge is obvious: Clean house.
Then he should order an audit, stop the bleeding, and find ways to increase revenue. If he allows conservative American Catholics to regard him with pride, fundraising should see an immediate and perhaps lasting improvement.
Conservative Catholics around the world are eager to like the pope again — and so far, Leo is letting them. He speaks thoughtfully and sparingly and has kept a low profile in the church’s culture war, so he seems well-positioned to bring peace to the warring factions.
But compromise cannot be the agenda. On doctrine, the church needs a firm hand. Leo must stabilize the teachings that Francis unsettled, by clarifying Francis’ statements in such a way that they become consistent with unchanging dogma.
As part of the drive toward unity, Leo should revoke Francis’ suppression of the Latin Mass, the ancient liturgy beloved of traditionalist Catholics.
Francis declared the Latin Mass illicit, in a move widely criticized as punitive toward a small group that resisted Francis’ liberal agenda.
Rumor has it that Leo has long celebrated the Latin Mass in private. Whether that is true or not, he did recite Latin prayers with perfect fluency on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica after his election. “Trad” Catholics are optimistic that he will give them a hearing.
If he does, it will be part of a broader embrace of tradition, not as a retro style choice, but as a way of putting the church above the person of the pope.
Leo’s first days in the papacy were full of traditional symbolism. He wore traditional regalia on the balcony, just like every other pope for centuries — except Francis, who insisted on plain white. And the Vatican has announced that Leo will move into the Apostolic Palace, residence of every pope for centuries — except Francis, who preferred the Vatican guesthouse (which sounds humble but is actually nicer).
In each instance, Leo has submitted to convention and declined the attention-getting “humility” of Francis.
The Catholic Church will always be messy. With 1.4 billion members, it can hardly be tidy. But the pope’s job is not to make the mess worse. Many Catholics suffered for 12 years under a pope who was given to strange and spiteful remarks, whose documents were often studied in double-talk, and whose official acts were unpredictable and sometimes vindictive.
Leo, by contrast, appears to understand that the pope’s job is not to subject Catholics to his whims, but to subordinate himself to his office. That’s why Georg Gänswein, a conservative archbishop who served as personal secretary to Benedict XVI, told an Italian newspaper last week: “I sense a certain widespread relief. The age of arbitrariness is over.”
Julia Yost is a senior editor at the religious-affairs magazine First Things.