Leo XIV: The Pope of Thermidor

The Moment Leo Inherits

With the (seemingly surprise) election of Robert Prevost to the Chair of Peter as Leo XIV, there has been a lot of Catholic commentary. We have somehow managed to have biographies of Leo released within one week of his election to the office, and people across the ideological spectrum are joining symposiums on the thought of Leo XIV and what his agenda will be for the Church. I watched this with amusement, and then went and played video games. I buried myself in the world of Expedition 33 (often by repeated dying!) and didn’t read any of the commentary, and I think I came out of that with a better understanding of the Church than someone who digested all the commentary. We’ve now had roughly one month since his election, and there are at least some things that we can talk about.

The first thing to talk about is that almost all commentary on Leo has nothing to do with Leo, but rather the ideological persuasion of the person giving commentary. Most of the acts he has done so far have, at most, minimal symbolic value. There’s not a lot you can draw on from those acts, yet the desire for fresh content (and subscription fees!) cares little about accuracy. When you read this kind of commentary over the next few months (myself included), keep that in mind.

With that in mind, what can we say about the commentary? I think there is a certain trepidation among many commentators who were big fans of Francis. They have adopted a mentality of “Read Leo through Francis”, as if every statement of Leo’s should be parsed in light of what Francis had said before. This kind of approach was tried in 2013, with Fr. John Zuhsldorf even trying to sell merchandise of “read Francis through Benedict”, when the esteemed Father was very worried that Francis not only did not care for such continuity with Benedict, but viewed rupture with Benedict (and everyone before him) as a strong selling point of his pontificate, a fear which turned out to be relatively well founded. You see this a lot with Austen Ivereigh, Rich Raho, and several others who were “popesplainers.” Mike Lewis (of the website Where Peter Is) has expressed his frustration on social media where he quotes Leo sounding like Francis, and gets enraged when a lot of the former pope’s critics don’t object. (Let that sink in, Lewis is mad that people aren’t mad at the current pope.) Whether or not it is likely Leo will contradict his predecessor is not as relevant as their fear he may, and that they will be powerless if he does. There used to be a worry that a Pope who contradicts his predecessor will soon find himself contradicted. That fear went out the window when Francis publicly contradicted his predecessor, and in the case of Traditionis custodes and Fiducia supplicans, reveled in it.

I believe another fear (or hope) when it comes to Leo is that on almost every issue, Pope Francis will mean whatever Leo says he means. Francis was a man not too concerned with details. The signature drive of his pontificate was synodality, and to this day nobody can actually define what synodality is or isn’t, other than true synodality being the friends we met along the way. He laid out ambitious legal proposals into law he would then immediately ignore. Many decisions were in theory delegated to local authorities, with the condition that they could not take any position or stance that was not what Francis wanted. Whether it is how the Church approaches the Synodal Way in Germany, synodality globally, or the status of the Latin Mass, Leo enters his pontificate with an extraordinary amount of freedom to define not just his own vision, but his predecessors as well. That is a very dangerous thing for gatekeepers who have spent a decade acting (and profiting) as the definitive voice and key to understanding someone who is now dead and leaves precious little by which to define himself.

While we have not seen a major act yet in this pontificate, we have seen a pope who is willing, at least in small ways, to break with his predecessor. Whereas the Pope would routinely accuse Vatican workers of being bloodsucking parasites and careerists, Leo began his pontificate by giving them a bonus that was rescinded by Francis. While no final word has been given, Leo seems poised to return to the modest apartments in the Apostolic Palace, rather than attempting to send a message by living apart from everyone in his own floor of an apartment complex in the Vatican. Traditional (well, John Paul and Benedict era traditional) papal attire has returned. Sex abuser allies of the deceased pontiff have found their fortunes changed, as Marko Rupnik’s art is no longer promoted by the Vatican, and Gustavo Zanchetta suddenly found a Vatican no longer willing to argue he needs medical treatment in Rome, rather than serving out his sentence for sex abuse in Argentina. Whereas the final year of Francis’ pontificate showcased a cruelty towards traditionalists being its own reward, suddenly Bishop Martin in Charlotte is considering actions he originally thought impossible in delaying proceedings. Almost as if he received a phone call from someone acting on the Pope’s behalf. A nuncio maybe?

None of these are substantial or significant breaks with Francis. I think they show, at least originally, a Pope who realizes that certain excesses of his predecessor must be curbed. Francis had a stubborn streak, and a streak where personal loyalty trumped anything, including common sense. His actions surrounding Zanchetta, McCarrick and Rupnik were indefensible, which is why every defense rested not on the actions, but on a belief that bad actors were behind the criticism. On these, the Pope has decided that addition by subtraction is the best remedy.

I think a useful way to understand the moment Pope Leo inherits is by the (obviously imperfect) historical analogy of Thermidor during the French Revolution. In about as non-ideological a way as possible, the Revolutionaries faced an inevitable tension when attempting to build a perfect society based upon liberty, equality, and fraternity, three things that were in inherent tension with each other. As a result, different revolutionary epochs emphasized different things. The Jacobins emphasized building a new fraternity at the expense of liberty and equality, culminating in the quasi-dictatorship of Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. This epoch was overthrown (in rather violent fashion) by various conspirators, and in its place we have what historians have called the Thermidorian Reaction, based upon the government being formed during the month of Thermidor on the Revolutionary calendar.

This government is often portrayed as “counter-revolutionary” or “conservative”, but that is a misreading. Those who led the government in this time were all committed revolutionaries. All were regicides, having voted to execute the King. They were instead guided by a belief that liberty and equality had to be emphasized, lest the fraternity of the revolution be replaced by the returned monarchy and the old ways. As a result, the Thermidorians took action against the worst excesses of the Jacobins (that revolutionary society that had become so identified with Robespierre in the end), and began allowing those with opposing viewpoints to stand for election, albeit under some regulation and with a belief that they’d never actually win. Thermidor was a revolutionary government attempting to end the Revolution and return the nation to stability.

I think there are some things that might describe the present pontificate that one can find in this moment. Leo is not some conservative, yet he is not at war with the past either. Like almost every prelate (even those who might be viewed “conservative”) he is likely to be in alignment with Francis’ views on immigration and the environment, and while he might have some greater appreciation of markets (a byproduct of his American DNA), he will not be a capitalist. Yet his pontificate will not likely be defined by how much he can get a rise out of those who do hold those views. The point of this pontificate will not be to own the conservative chuds, something which you could wonder aloud if that was the point of his predecessor’s pontificate. He will likely try to lead a Church in a broad direction Francis did, without certain Franciscan characteristics that caused friction. Subject to the limits of analogy, he may be a Thermidorian pope.

Those who think this is a bold and hopeful vision should probably look at how Thermidorian era ended.