POPE Leo XIV, chosen by fellow cardinals from all over the world in two days of their conclave at the Vatican, is expected to face many issues confronting the nearly 2,000-year-old Catholic Church.
The Chicago-born Robert Prevost, the Catholic Church’s 267th pontiff, faces the formidable task in this international organization plagued by polarization – the Vatican’s financial burdens, disagreements over the place of women and the continuing spiritual abuse scandal, among others.
While his predecessor Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88, instituted steps to tackle clerical sexual abuse, from opening up Vatican archives to lay courts to making it compulsory to report abuse to Church authorities, Vatican observers have said victims’ associations argued he did not do much.
Which makes the issue stinging on the plate of Pope Leo XIV, particularly as the issue does not appear to fade out into oblivion before much too long.
There will be those who look up to the 69-year-old leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, head of the Vatican state, and listen to his statements and opinions, particularly now that conflicts are like smoke billowing out of Ukraine, Gaza in the Palestinian Territories, Sudan too, Pakistan and India, and other areas of the globe as well as migrants being pushed out of their present borders.
How he will confront these issues is something keenly observed by the faithful as well as world leaders – in other lexis, his comments on the conflicts and immigrants will carry significant weight.
Then there is the issue of climate change, which has bothered the world for much too long, and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, which experts have said repeatedly in recent years that its ability to analyze volumes of data and make autonomous judgments have raised concerns about the loss of control, by thinking human beings.
Pope Leo XIV’s predecessor took up the “climate crisis” message to “my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet” and pointed out that the responses made by people have not been sufficient, at a time the world is collapsing and is near breaking point.
The new pontiff, if we go by his previous stand on the climate challenge, has made it clear that mankind should have what he called a “relationship of reciprocity” with the environment, even as he warned against “harmful technological developments.”
The new pope will need understanding and support as he gets to grip with his papal tasks.
