Archbishop José H. Gomez.
By Archbishop José H. Gomez | New World of Faith
Habemus papam! We have a pope!
It has been beautiful to watch how all the world’s attention has been focused on Rome these days.
It seems that even in our highly secularized technological societies, people still sense that the church is more than a human institution; they seem to know that the church is at the heart of God’s plan for the world and the human race.
Every pope is a new beginning along the ancient path that started at Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus established his church on the “rock” of the apostle Peter’s confession of faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Our new Pope Leo XIV now walks on the path that Peter and his successors have walked down through the centuries, following in the footsteps of Jesus and carrying on the mission that he commanded: to proclaim the good news of God’s love to every person on earth, teaching them how to live, calling disciples from out of all the nations and uniting them into one family of God.
Leo is the first American pope, descended from immigrants to this country. He is also the first missionary pope, having spent years in Latin America before coming to Rome.
And in his inaugural homily, he called us to be “a missionary Church that opens its arms to the world.”
He said, “We want to say to the world, with humility and joy: Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome his Word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to his offer of love and become his one family: In the one Christ, we are one.”
I’ve been listening closely to our new Holy Father’s words, and I am excited by his vision.
I’m especially encouraged by his desire to proclaim the church’s social teaching in response to the challenges we face in the world today. I’ve long believed that our social teaching is the church’s best-kept secret.
Leo rightly sees that we are living in a world where people are deeply divided, and where a new industrial revolution, driven by digital communications technologies and artificial intelligence, is creating new threats to human work, human dignity, and human freedom.
Our task now, all of us in the church, is to deepen “our personal relationship with the Lord … our commitment to a daily journey of conversion.”
He also understands that this is a time of great confusion about the reality of God and the true meaning of human life.
In his first Mass with the cardinals, he described the “crisis of the family” and the “loss of meaning in life” caused by the growing secularism of Western societies.
Many people in our societies entrust their lives, not to God, but to “other securities … like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure,” he said. Even many “baptized Christians” are living “in a state of practical atheism.”
Leo is deeply concerned about the challenges facing our young people.
He spoke of their loneliness, about the “isolation caused by rampant relational models increasingly marked by superficiality, individualism, and emotional instability,” and “the spread of patterns of thought weakened by relativism.”
He said, “There is a widespread thirst for justice, a desire for authentic fatherhood and motherhood, a profound longing for spirituality, especially among young people and the marginalized.”
In his address to diplomats to the Vatican, Leo reminded them that government leaders have the duty to promote “the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman,” and to protect “the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.”
What comes through in all these early talks and homilies is our new Holy Father’s confident hope and serenity.
Pope Leo XIV introduces himself to the world.
Pope Leo believes in the power of the Gospel, and the power of God’s love.
As he said in his first blessing: “God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail! All of us are in God’s hands. So, let us move forward, without fear, together, hand in hand with God and with one another! We are followers of Christ. Christ goes before us. The world needs his light.”
He knows that only in Jesus, the Son of the living God, do we find the peace and happiness that our restless hearts are seeking.
“Jesus showed us a model of human holiness that we can all imitate, together with the promise of an eternal destiny that transcends all our limits and abilities,” he said.
Our task now, all of us in the church, is to deepen “our personal relationship with the Lord … our commitment to a daily journey of conversion.”
Pray for me and I will pray for you. And let us continue to pray for our new Pope Leo XIV!
May holy Mary, mother of the church, keep our Holy Father, and all of us, in her tender care.
(Featured image: Pope Leo XIV, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, smiles as he celebrates his inauguration Mass at the Vatican Sunday, May 18, 2025. [Our Sunday Visitor News photo/Claudia Greco, Reuters])
