Once JD Vance and Marco Rubio and all the news anchors and reporters and podcasters — and anyone else with an excuse or a budget to go to Rome — have gone home, there will still be a market for details about the new pope. There are books being published — at least one of them this week — about the papacy of Pope Leo XIV, at least three by Americans I know. One is a biography. Another is going to tell something from the conclave of cardinal electors (essentially sworn to secrecy) who met in the Sistine Chapel to elect him as the world watched its chimney. I never bothered to count the live-streams that were waiting for the white smoke to billow and indicate that a new pope for the Catholic Church had been chosen, but I saw enough of them to know that the situation was out of control. And isn’t that wonderful? Maybe the world, for all its faults, really wants to know about Pope Leo because it wants to know God. And Leo — new to most of us — may, in fact, know something about Him and may, we pray, even be close to Him.
Sure, you can be cynical and figure that the funeral of Pope Francis and the rituals of succession were simply our latest distractions from our responsibilities and concerns. Or, you can see it for what most of my conversations with people from all walks of life in recent weeks confirm: People were — and are — watching the Vatican because we are all looking for something more. Whether we know it or not. And, goodness, speaking as a Catholic, with every new thing I learn about the new pope, born Robert in Chicago, I feel a little bit as though I’m falling in love. No offense to Leo, but it’s not about him. He had me at hello, because it’s about God.
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