Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost’s choice of name after which he will be addressed, Leo XIV, also points to the policies and style he is likely to follow
The election of a US cardinal who worked in the Latin American country Peru and was an associate of Pope Francis as his successor has come as little surprise to many as the Catholic Church had seen the world acknowledging the late pontiff as a true practitioner of the teachings of Jesus Christ. The Collegium of Cardinals apparently dropped the resistance it has hitherto expressed for a Pope from the mightiest nation on earth due to his political positioning which got fine-tuned while working with some of the world’s poorest communities.
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost’s choice of name after which he will be addressed, Leo XIV, also points to the policies and style he is likely to follow. It has already been pointed out that the last Pope to choose the name, Leo XIII of the last century, had identified himself with the poorest sections and the working classes of the world.
The last Pope Leo's encyclical Rerum Novarum, published in 1891, was acclaimed to be the magna carta of the working class as it advocated the rights of the working class to form trade unions and engage in collective bargaining, terminologies A statue depicting Pope Leo XIV (C) and late Pope Francis (background R) displayed at the shop of Gennaro Di Virgilio in San Gregorio Armeno Alley, a street where craftsmen of traditional Napolitan Christmas Crib figurines have workshops, in Naples, on May 9, 2025. (AFP)found more in Marxian lexicons than in the church’s teachings.
It highlighted, perhaps for the first time, the labour’s right to live with dignity even while it rejected socialism as an ideal to follow. It insisted that private property is a rightful concept and its denial by the state is unfair and unjust.
The new Pope, 69, has already made public his objections to the exclusivist policies of the government of his homeland through his sharp rebuke of the vice-president’s interpretation of the Christian idea of love. While the countries have every right to form their policies including on migration, the moral compass they might have to follow could remain a constant, if the positions of the new Pope are any indication.
