John L. Allen Jr.

You may want to consider that the cautious, careful and measured façade, in the end, is the real pope.

In other words, he’s saying that no matter what you may have thought of Francis personally, you can’t dismiss synodality without rejecting much deeper, widespread and essentially non-ideological currents in the church.

Pope Leo XIV made two points, which, frankly, many Catholics probably have thought at one point or another, but which most of us have become too gun-shy to pronounce.

The Court of Appeals in the Vatican’s “Trial of the Century.” (Credit: Vatican Media.)

ROME – One of Catholicism’s leading experts in the fight against sexual abuse has said that in his recent Crux interview, Pope Leo demonstrated the same “authenticity” that characterizes his broad approach to the church’s abuse scandals.

ROME – Channeling his inner Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Leo met a “Working Group on Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue” yesterday sponsored by the European Parliament and extolled what he called “healthy secularism,” a core concept for the late German pontiff which he elaborated and advocated in a variety of venues.

Given that the elderly are disproportionately likely to take religion seriously and to practice their faith, the “graying” of the population actually represents a potential “boom cycle” for the Catholic Church.

The plain fact of the matter is that Catholic cultures in most other parts of the world simply aren’t as obsessed with abortion as in the United States.

A more ample understanding of what it means to be pro-life is actually among the numerous points that unite the last four popes, as opposed to the relatively rare matters which divide them.