After a quiet start, the first American pope appears to be finding his voice.
During his debut foreign trip, to Turkey and Lebanon, Pope Leo XIV projected a papal brand more guarded and less polarizing than that of his predecessor, Pope Francis.
But many Vatican watchers have nonetheless been impressed with his ability to deliver powerful messages — particularly on issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, poverty and immigration — albeit in a subtler way than the man he replaced.
“Pope Leo is certainly growing into the role,” said Massimo Faggioli, a world-leading Vatican expert and professor at Trinity College Dublin. “He has resisted the temptation to give a sound bite that’s easy to use as a headline,” but “when he speaks, he says things that are quite courageous.”
For all the warm reviews, some Vatican watchers have sounded a note of caution: Leo has yet to stake out concrete positions, let alone sharp critiques, on any major issue. Doing so will almost certainly mean disappointing at least one faction in this church of 1.4 billion that he has so deftly kept onside.
Raised in Chicago, Leo, 70, spent much of his working life in Peru, before he was a surprise choice for pope at April’s conclave following the death of Francis. His lower profile meant “he was a bit of a mystery” for many Catholics, and he had “a very quiet summer” of study and preparation, Faggioli said.
That started to change as the colder months arrived, with more outspoken comments including his call last month for “deep reflection” about the treatment of detained migrants in the United States.
On Tuesday, as he held a Mass in Beirut, which was attended by an estimated 150,000 people, Leo honored a promise made by Francis, who was prevented from visiting by his late-life illness.
Leo asked “God for the gift of peace for this beloved land, marked by instability, wars and suffering,” likely a reference to the recent Israel-Hezbollah war, the fallout from a colossal portside explosion in 2020 that killed more than 200 people, and the country’s roiling economic crisis.
Though more than half of the Lebanese population is Muslim, nearly one third are Christian and 5% Catholic, according to 2022 census data. Before Lebanon, Leo visited Turkey to mark the anniversary of the foundation of the Nicene Creed, the standard statement of what all Christians — Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox — believe, including the affirmation that Jesus was the son of God.
That highlighted one of the themes of the six-day trip, which was reaching out “both to other Christian groups, but also to the government of Turkey, and, by extension, to Muslims,” according to Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church who teaches at the University of Oxford.
That’s just one of the ways Leo has followed Francis’ relatively progressive policies and views — “but he’s done so with a very different tone and in a different way,” Pattenden said.
Though both men warned against the risks associated with AI, the tech-savvy Leo is the first pontiff “who seems at ease with the modern world” and pop culture, Pattenden added.
His down-to-earth vibe makes his papacy seem like “a sitcom in which some nice geek from the Midwest in America suddenly found that he had become pope,” Pattenden said. “He’s got this smile that suggests he himself can’t quite believe it.”
Leo is known to read his speeches word-for-word, a drastic departure from Francis’ habit of going off script. That led to several high-profile faux pas that sent his aides into damage limitation mode.
“Their gestures and outreach are similar,” said Stan Chu Ilo, a Catholic studies professor at DePaul University in Chicago. “But Pope Francis was quite evidently gregarious and extroverted in nature, whereas the reserved Pope Leo seems quite effective though in communication and has clarity in his thought.”
Even when sticking to his lines, Francis’ pointed and specific pronouncements led to clashes with other world officials, like when he challenged the U.S. on climate change and called for an investigation into whether Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
Leo has said he supports the two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian territories but told reporters on the plane to Lebanon that “we are friends with Israel.”
During his trip this week, Leo “spoke and acted very carefully, as if every sentence had been carefully weighted and coined, to avoid misunderstanding or blunt declaration,” said Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute.
And the new pope was well received by many in Lebanon, a country still being bombed by Israel. Just a week before Leo landed in Beirut, an Israeli airstrike on the city killed Haytham Ali Tabatabai, a senior Hezbollah commander, and four other people, while injuring 28 more.
“We think he will bring for us peace, love and hope,” said Pascale Azaz, a nurse watching Leo’s address next to Beirut’s shimmering waterfront Tuesday, the last day of his trip. “We have been waiting years for this day.”
Nearby, Moussa Abdayem, a yoga instructor, said he hoped the pope “will inspire us to live in a more peaceful way” in a country where “everybody’s angry” at the swirling crises besetting his nation.
They aren’t the only ones impressed by Leo’s approach. His centrist stance appears to have calmed divisions between Catholic liberals and conservatives, some of the latter enraged by what they saw as Francis’ abandonment of liturgical traditions such as the Latin mass.
However, occupying such a middle ground does not come without risks.
The closest Leo came to criticism or censure of anyone or anything was making “a heartfelt appeal to those who hold political and social authority, here and in all countries marked by war and violence.”
He told them, "Listen to the cry of your peoples who are calling for peace!”
So despite the wide admiration, “we are yet to see what compromises or solutions Leo would propose on any of the issues that really matter,” Pattenden said. “If you just talk in platitudes, people stop listening because, you know, it’s not a real contribution to debate.”
