Leo’s brand emerges during first foreign trip as pope

After a quiet start, the first American pope seems to be finding his voice.

On his first trip abroad, to Turkey and Lebanon, Pope Leo XIV projected a more reserved and less polarizing papal brand than that of his predecessor, Pope Francis.

But many Vatican watchers were nevertheless impressed by his ability to deliver powerful messages – notably on issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, poverty and immigration – albeit in a more subtle way than the man he replaced.

“Pope Leo is certainly growing into this role,” said Massimo Faggioli, a world-renowned Vatican expert and professor at Trinity College Dublin. “He resisted the temptation to give an easy tone to use as a title,” but “when he speaks, he says some pretty brave things.”

For all the warm criticism, some Vatican observers have sounded a note of caution: Leo has yet to take concrete positions, let alone sharp criticism, on any major issue. That would almost certainly mean disappointing at least one faction of the 1.4 billion-strong church he has so adroitly kept on his side.

Raised in Chicago, Leo, 70, spent much of his professional life in Peru, before being a surprise choice for the pope at the April conclave after Francis’ death. His lower profile meant “he was a bit of a mystery” to many Catholics, and he had “a very quiet summer” of study and preparation, Faggioli said.

That began to change as the colder months arrived, with more outspoken comments including his call last month for “deep reflection” on the treatment of migrants detained in the United States.

On Tuesday, while celebrating a mass in Beirut attended by about 150,000 people, Leon honored a promise made by Francis, who was prevented from visiting him due to his late 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 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the fallout from a colossal port explosion in 2020 that killed more than 200 people, and the country’s teeming economic crisis.

Although more than half of Lebanon’s population is Muslim, nearly a third is Christian and 5% Catholic, according to 2022 census data. Before Lebanon, Leo traveled to Turkey to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Nicene Creed, the standard statement of what all Christians – Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox – believe, including the assertion that Jesus was the son of God.

This highlighted one of the themes of the six-day trip, which was aimed “both at other Christian groups, but also at the Turkish government and, by extension, at Muslims,” according to Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church who teaches at the University of Oxford.

That’s just one way Leo followed Francis’ relatively progressive politics and views — “but he did it with a very different tone and in a different way,” Pattenden said.

Although both men have warned of the risks associated with AI, the tech-savvy Leo is the first pontiff “who seems comfortable with the modern world” and pop culture, Pattenden added.

His down-to-earth vibe makes his papacy seem like “a sitcom where a nice geek from the American Midwest suddenly discovers he’s become pope,” Pattenden said. “He has this smile that suggests he himself can’t believe it.”

Leo is known to read his speeches verbatim, which is a radical departure from Francis’ habit of going off-script. This led to several high-profile missteps that sent his staff into damage limitation mode.

“Their gestures and their action are similar,” said Stan Chu Ilo, a professor of Catholic studies at DePaul University in Chicago. “But Pope Francis was obviously gregarious and outgoing by nature, while Pope Leo, reserved, seems quite effective in his communication and has clear thinking.”

Even as he stuck to his lines, Francis’ pointed and specific statements led to clashes with other world leaders, such as when he challenged the United States on climate change and called for an investigation into whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

Leo said he supported 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, Léo “spoke and acted with great caution, as if each sentence had been carefully weighed and invented, to avoid any misunderstanding or harsh statements,” said Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute.

And the new pope has been welcomed by many in Lebanon, a country still bombarded 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 others, and injured 28 others.

“We believe he will bring us peace, love and hope,” said Pascale Azaz, a nurse who watched Leo’s speech near Beirut’s glittering waterfront on Tuesday, the last day of his trip. “We have been waiting for this day for years.”

Nearby, Moussa Abdayem, a yoga teacher, said he hoped the pope would “encourage us to live more peacefully” in a country where “everyone is angry” over the swirling crises besetting his country.

They’re not the only ones impressed by Leo’s approach. His centrist stance appears to have healed divisions between liberal and conservative Catholics, with some of the latter furious at what they saw as Francis’ abandonment of liturgical traditions such as the Latin Mass.

However, occupying such middle ground is not without risks.

The closest Leo came to criticizing or censuring anyone or anything was to issue “a heartfelt appeal to those who hold political and social authority, here and in all countries scarred by war and violence.”

He said to them: “Listen to the cry of your peoples who call for peace! »