An American Walks Into The Papacy | December 28, 2025

The year handed us a headline few expected: an American chosen as Pope. From the first moments of white smoke and Latin announcements to the weight of global expectations, we explore what this means for a church that must listen beyond its borders. I share why international experience matters in a leader who represents the message of Jesus to the world, and how the name Leo XIV quietly nods to the legacy of Catholic social teaching and the dignity of work.

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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.

Transcript

Setting The Year’s Spiritual Lens

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives, and finding hope in his word. And now your host, Father Don Wolf.

Shock Of An American Pope

What The Papacy Means Today

International Experience And Perspective

Name Leo XIV And Its Echoes

Expectations, Social Media, And Pressure

Archbishop Coakley Leads US Bishops

Why A National Bishops’ Conference Exists

Leadership, Criticism, And Support

The Hidden Web Of Daily Life

Markets, Maintenance, And Meaning

Closing Reflection And Invitation

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Welcome, Oklahoma, to Living Catholic. I'm mine Senior Don Wolf, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Oklahoma City and rector of the shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. As I look back over this last year, as we all do, as the calendar ratchets up to this last week, there are several striking aspects to pay attention to. After all, God moves among us in time, not just in the eternal Elysium. So what happens among us is a portion of God at work in the world, and we ought to be attentive to the divine at work. In this vein, of course, the biggest news of the year had to be the fact that an American was elected pope. And I have to admit, I joined the chorus of those who insisted to everyone that there was no way an American would ever be elected to the papacy. It just couldn't happen. The way I saw it, America leads the world in the economy, the military, science, tech, communications. Adding the Catholic Church to this resume, I thought, wouldn't do the Church any good at all. Besides, we in the U.S. seem to have lost our edge when it comes to excitement about the Church. It just seemed that imagining electing a Pope just couldn't, wouldn't happen, at least not in my lifetime. And as it turns out, I did live long enough. When the white smoke settled over St. Peter's Square, I was preparing to celebrate the daily Mass at the shrine. Several people from the staff were in the sacristy following the news on their phones, and with the mounting excitement of the announcement, the cameringo came out on the balcony of the basilica and made the announcement in Latin, Gaudian Magnum, Habamus Papum. All of that was expected and understood. But when it came to naming the new Pope, I couldn't catch what he said. The camera quickly panned it to a couple in the square who were waving a Salvadoran flag, so I thought maybe the new Pope was from Central America. That surprised me a little, but it made sense. If an Argentinian could become Pope, certainly someone from the Paisitos in Central America could. So I don't follow the politics of cardinals very closely, but I figured whoever was cardinal there had been elected pope. Now all of that went through my mind in a second, but it didn't prepare me to hear the following announcement. And when the announcement was made and the commentators on TV who had understood better than I breathlessly said, the new Pope is an American, I was speechless. Of course, at that moment I had to go into the chapel for Mass, which seemed pretty appropriate. What would there be better to do than to go to Mass and pray for the man who was newly elected to sit in the chair of Peter? Certainly he was going to need it. The role of the Pope has evolved over the centuries. The Bishop of Rome was recognized as the leader of the whole church, and his role eventually morphed into the administrative decision maker for the governance of the entire ecclesial hierarchy. From the one who was elected to become the overseer of the needs of the Church of Rome, several of whom were slaves when they were elected, many of whom were martyred because of their leadership, the Pope became the supreme legislator and executive of the entire church. And more than that, he became the embodiment of the life of the church, a living witness of the supremacy of Christ in all aspects. In our day and time, the Pope is the representative of the message of Jesus to the whole world, a pastor to the nations. Anyone who'd take on this job is someone who needs our prayers. Coming from his experience in Latin America, our American Pope has a good bit more international experience than most of the other American cardinals that I know of. That doesn't automatically make him a good candidate for the chair of Peter, but it does give him a breadth of experience hard to come by, except by the missionary life he led as an Augustinian priest working in a foreign country. Certainly it gives him a wider base from which to evaluate and make decisions concerning what's going on in the world. And that's all to the good, it seems to me. Knowing something of the church in the whole world helps the Pope to steer the church in the correct direction. That is, if all you know is your own experience, it's easy to dismiss the concerns or the inspiration of others. I've certainly found that to be the case here in the U.S. When I came back from my time with the National Federation of Priests' Councils in Chicago, I had had the opportunity to visit dioceses all over the country. And there were some places that were doing remarkably well when it came to promoting and sustaining priestly vocations. Most of those places were doing innovative things in their dioceses, just the sort of initiatives that were successful in identifying and sustaining vocations among the men there. But when I mentioned these alternative strategies to other priests from other places around the country, they had almost no interest. Their evaluation was simple. These other places aren't like we are. So what they do has nothing to do with us. I never found anyone who had the slightest interest in pausing, listening, and then going to find out what was happening in those other places. Additional information, even when it was about their top priority concerns, just didn't get in. They weren't ready to hear because they didn't imagine their way into the information. One might say they couldn't hear the good news even when they were longing for it. That's an especially great temptation for Americans, you know. I say that because I am one, and I've had some experience with the church and the rest of the world, mostly as a visitor, I admit. But our weakness is that we're on top. We've seldom had to face the hard questions about life, faith, or survival, especially in the last couple of generations. As such, we're not naturally comfortable around those who do or who have had that experience. We don't know what to think of them or their concerns. Certainly we don't know what to think of the quality of the decisions they make. Not only that, because our culture is the culture of the world, we figure most people down deep are just like us. Just think about the role English plays in international affairs. If you're Polish, for example, and you want to travel to Thailand, you learn English. It'll be spoken there. You don't learn Russian or Chinese, or simply depend upon the ties who've learned to Polish in order to communicate. Learning English is the only reasonable way to invest your time. And because it is the international measure, we presume everyone thinks just as we do, and wants what we do, and expects their world to be as we would assume it to be. It's difficult for us to get beyond ourselves. Our failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have something to do with our unwillingness to imagine the people there might have wanted something different than we wanted for them. We seem to be continually amazed that there are those in the world who are different than we are. The advantage of the new Pope, the advantage he has is his international credentials. I was amazed to find out that he had actually taken out Peruvian citizenship. He was so committed to his life and mission in his adopted country, he was willing to alter his own self-definition in order to further it. His breadth of experiences and his views of the world gave him a chance to hear and to understand what might not be understood otherwise. Of course, he's not omniscient, nor has he seen all the world and dealt with all the concerns everywhere. That'd be impossible for any man. He still needs the help of his staff and from the cardinals whose job it is to help him govern the church. As they go about their work in this new administration, we should pray for them. And one other aspect of the new of the life of our new Pope is the name he's chosen. The previous Pope Leo, Leo XIII, was an innovator and a prophet. He wrote the first of the Catholic social teaching encyclicals and helped to provide the vocabulary for addressing the problems in the world and the economies of his time. Looking out over the changing landscape of European politics and over the growing unrest there because of the lack of structures and the built-in deficits of describing and understanding the challenges of that day, Pope Leo XIII began to change the church's response. It changed everything. In many ways, Leo XIII was the first of the modern popes, or at least the first pope who responded to the economic and societal changes of the industrial age. No one knows what this precedent will mean in the life and the papacy of Leo XIV. There are no guarantees when it comes to names and lineages. Each Pope is his own man with his own experience and his own gifts when it comes to addressing the problems and the concerns of his time. Our Leo will have to look at the changing world of our time and decide what will be best for the church and how we will be equipped to go about making Christ present to the world. It won't be easy. Already the positive vibes around his selection have begun to waver. Those who are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt are beginning to rumble their discontent that he hasn't interrupted Pope Francis's agenda, or hasn't continued it in the right way, or whatever their current image of good policy might be. Everybody wants the Pope to head in their direction and are impatient to see it happen. When he doesn't, or when he doesn't share their same sense of urgency about particular questions, anxieties arise. And these quickly turn to dissatisfaction. I see some of this arising already. In our age, of course, with the rise of social media, even someone in his private study can arouse the primal ferocity of opposition with scarcely more than a brief meme, and the whole subset of the world defined by that concern is mobilized. Which means the Pope has a tough job navigating the narrow straits of decent governance. That's what the job is, and because it is, he certainly needs our prayers. The second most notable element of this year has been Archbishop Cochley's election as the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. That's a great deal less of a surprise than the election of an American pope. The Archbishop, after all, has been involved in the work of the Conference for many years, basically since he was named Bishop of Salina. This work has allowed him to see the work of the Conference up close and to give him a look inside at what would be necessary to seek and then be awarded the presidency of the Conference. And this is all to the good for him and for the Conference of Bishops. Historically, it's something of an anomaly to have a national body of bishops who go about their work as an organized element in the church. Partly, this is because of nations as we know them, are relatively recent. And partly it's because there hasn't been a need or a function for a nationally organized body of the hierarchs of the church. As the U.S. was founded as a country and the Vatican began naming bishops, there was no national organization set up to direct their ministry as Americans, nor was there any sense that such a thing was necessary. Certainly all the bishops knew they belonged to the same country and were part of the same national dynamics when it came to evangelization and governance. But they weren't all together in one policy, in one policy-making and deliberative body. It was war that changed all that, specifically World War I, which brought about the need for the resources and the deliberations of the American bishops to be directed. Because following the devastation and the ghastly impoverishment of four years of war that happened around the European countryside, it was necessary that the wealth and the potential of American resources couldn't be ignored. It was then the body, the bishops, formed a body in order to deliberate concerning the needs of the international church and the means by which they could be met by American Catholic resources. Our own Bishop Kelly, second bishop of Oklahoma, was involved in these efforts at the time and made a great deal of difference in the structure and organization of this body. From this time to the present, the U.S. Conference has been instrumental in helping to direct and define the concerns of the church throughout its dioceses. Just in the four decades of my priesthood, they've taken on major challenges in the ministry and administration of the church. The growth of lay ministry and the needs of lay ministers, the presence of independent organizations formed to further the life and mission of the church, the recognition of the patterns of abuse and the remedies for abuse in the church, the study of church structures and parish life, the recognition of and the church's policy with regard to societal and political concerns, as well as the implementation of the renewal and revivification of sacramental and parochial life. All of these things have been major aspects of the conference's work. It's hard to imagine the Church of the 21st century in the U.S. without the National Conference. Being president of the conference will put the Archbishop in the spotlight, of course. In many respects, his voice will be considered to be the voice of the bishops in the U.S. That's not technically accurate since each bishop speaks for himself about his own concerns, especially within his own diocese. But since he is the president of the conference and speaks with the voice of the conference, his words will carry real weight. And because they will, he'll be open to criticism and complaint, as well as support and gr and agreement on a great many issues. We can expect to hear his name and to see his quotes all over the Internet and with a great deal of complaint and disagreement, which is all part of the scenery of our day. Everyone not only has an opinion, it can be va it can be validated as easily as clicking the send button on the computer, and there's no end to what people will say, which will make the archbishop's job complicated and difficult. Needless to say, all this happens on top of his position and responsibilities as archbishop. The responsibilities of governance in the archdiocese, they are not easy, nor are the concerns of finance, personnel, and policies. These arise as a matter of course and are always present in the day-to-day process of church life. All of these go on along with Archbishop Coakley's responsibilities with the conference. The terms of presidency is three years. He'll need our support, our understanding, and our prayers for his care and sustainment during this time. The National Conference needs good leadership, and we have to share what we have with the church and the country. That will be an element of our ecclesial life for the next 34 months. And thirdly, I've become more and more aware of how intricate the tendrils of our lives are. I suppose I should apologize for not noticing this aspect of our life and civilization before now, but it's just never seemed so important to me as it does now. Perhaps it's still the hangover effect from COVID, but the complicated and sophisticated network sustaining our lives just amazes me more and more. Just lately, for example, I've been looking at getting a new set of tires for my car. There's certainly nothing revolutionary about needing tires. It's a normal maintenance item for driving. Tires wear out and they need to be replaced. But all I have to do is pick up a is pick a tire place and go buy those tires and have them mounted. But think about it for a moment. I need tires, and all I have to do is drive by one of those places where they're available, go pay for them and have them put on, and all that in a matter of an hour or so. It's not that it's convenient that makes for the amazing part, for the amazing part of getting new tires. It's that this whole aspect of modern life exists at all. How is it the case that such a thing surrounds us and provides for us? That's the amazing part. Because there's no government initiative about having enough tire stores. Nobody sat down and decided how many would be necessary in order to provide the tires we'll need when we finally wear out the ones we're driving on. And nobody has decided what an adequate number of tire-friendly workers there ought to be, and so has organized and staffed the system to put them in place. All these things happened because of the system we've put in place, allowing someone to respond to the marketplace of our needs and wants. Astoundingly, the infrastructure of tire maintenance and service comes about spontaneously. It's all there because a market was identified and was filled by those who wanted to be successful in filling it, and for no other reason. We might also include the fact that the moment that there's no money to be made in participating in this market, it will disappear. It exists because the system to provide a profit exists, and I'm entranced by it all. Not just about tires and not just about transportation and not just about the roots and branches of immediate needs. Simply walking into the neighborhood is enough to marvel at the concatenation of interest and energy going into making where we live livable. From the electric lines and sewer manhole covers to lawn care and shingles, we busy ourselves with the complications of civilization in so profound a way that we hardly even notice them. I've heard that in other languages there is no word for maintenance, because it's not thought of or described as necessary or purposeful, while among us it's a mania. But even as an aspect of our civilization, we tend to forget it and its place in our lives. It's always just there for us. I wonder if it will always be. Will there always be grade school teachers to care for the kids when they take their first steps in learning? Will enough technicians know enough in twenty years to keep the internet up and running? How about the infrastructure and knowledge base to sub to supply answers to the questions about what Bluetooth is and how it functions so seamlessly from one device to another? Will the skills about growing wheat and butchering hogs and sowing clothes atrophy, or will they be sustained in the culture? And will we continue to understand how and and would will and will we commit ourselves to nurturing one another? Will parents continue to invest in their children's lives, or will they deem them to be too expensive, too needy, and too time consuming? All of these questions get to the heart of what it means to be in the midst of the great complications of our day and time. I always wonder when Bill Gates has a leaky roof, what does he think of the guys who come and repair it? Does he look down on them and their simple lives compared to his life? And what does he think of the money they make or the quality of their relationships or their camaraderie? Or does he know his life would be miserable without a core of craftsmen who make their lives by weaving themselves into the world of work to make the world? World as it is. These are good questions for all of us to ask ourselves. Because if there's one vital aspect of our civilization, it is the understanding that we don't just show up in our place and time, supernumeraries to the flow of civilization and outside of the currents of life. Just to the contrary. Everyone has a place in the complications of the world. And more than that, what we do in the world matters. And this isn't measured in the eternal book of life kept in heaven, measured out measuring out the good and the bad and denoting the deserving and the damned. Our contribution to the whole of the world is accounted in the fabric of life. Our place in the concourse of society holds the world in place and gives us all a foundation to stand on. We have a stake in life. The gift of revelation is that our lives matter in the most fundamental way. All we have to do to affirm their value is to imagine a world without what we can contribute. The very intricacy of the webs of presence and influence we generate is, as a matter of fact, our first level of evangelization. If there is one true gift we can offer to the citizens of our society, it is the prospect that their lives matter eternally. When God created, the creation was complete by the presence of the man and the woman. All was made so that they would have a place. And the whole world was entrusted to them as their resource to make their lives good and to give glory to God. By our place in the world, we glorify all of creation and all we were created to be. This is our first vocation. It is to be the image and likeness of God given to us in the creation and entrusted to us from the beginning. God's image is never more sharply drawn than when creation comes into being and is sustained by our participation in it. Our year is coming gone. We're entrusted with another coming. What it will be is yet to be determined. And all it will become has wrapped has us wrapped into it already. God is already ginning up our prospects for what the world will be. And that'll be twenty twenty-six. Back in just a moment. In reality, our days are more than metaphors, and our lives are barely graspable in their greatness. Though they proceed only at day speed and accumulate as calendar wise, they are us, and as such, they mince into tomorrow, carrying their purposes past sorrow, past tears, into years that make for our ever today's. That's this year. I hope you can join us in the weeks in this year to come.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okr.org.