Feature

OSV News asked George Weigel — the American biographer of the pope from Poland, St. John Paul II — about what the first few days of papacy tell us about Pope Leo XIV, how as an American missionary he can influence the world and about his own hopes for the papacy.

Where Christians are “mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied” is where the Catholic Church’s “missionary outreach is most desperately needed,” Pope Leo XIV said in his first homily as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Pope Leo, 69, formerly Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, is the first pope from the United States. He assumes the chair of Peter with multifaceted leadership experience: He grew up in the Midwest, graduated from Augustinian-run Villanova University in 1977 with a math degree, ministered as a bishop in Peru, and led the Vatican dicastery that helps appoint, form and retire bishops.