CIVICUS discusses the election of Pope Leo XIV with Paul Elie, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His third book, The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s, is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 27 May. He is the author of two previous books, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003) and Reinventing Bach: The Search for Transcendence in Sound (2012), both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists.
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected Pope on 8 May, choosing the name Leo XIV. Born in Chicago and a naturalised Peruvian, he makes history as both the first American pontiff and the first from the Augustinian order. His papacy begins amidst urgent global challenges, including rising authoritarianism, collapsing global governance, intensifying conflict, accelerating climate change and increasing threats to the rights of women, LGBTQI+ people and migrants and refugees. While expected to continue Pope Francis’s broader priorities, observers anticipate Leo may take a more measured, centrist approach, particularly regarding LGBTQI+ rights and women’s roles in the Church.
