I wasn’t sure what to think when the man we now call Pope Leo XIV walked out onto the loggia in Saint Peter’s Square. I, like many Catholics, had spent probably too much time on websites like the College of Cardinals Report trying to analyze who was most likely to become Pope and where they would stand on key issues. When the Cardinal Protodeacon Dominique Mamberti announced that the Conclave had elected American Robert Prevost, I’ll admit I had almost no idea who he was talking about.

But then, Leo XIV walked out and smiled, and waved, and said “Peace be with you all!” I watched a man who had just felt the weight of the world and the Church placed onto his shoulders seem to hold back tears as he spoke to the crowd of our need for peace, unity, and fraternity. At that moment, I sensed that despite my unfamiliarity with the man who is now our Pope, the Holy Spirit had been at work among the Cardinals, and perhaps, through the ministry of this man, could also do some real work in me and in my community.

I’ve felt the tensions of being a Catholic over the last decade just as much as any other practicing Catholic. I’ve felt the pain of being a member of a 2000-year-old institution with deeply rooted traditions and ways of doing things in the midst of a world undergoing constant and rapid change. 

I’ve felt the tension between my desire to preserve the good of the Church’s past while also finding new ways to push Her into the future so that She might participate in the New Evangelization. I’ve struggled with how to reconcile my love for ancient and beautiful Liturgy with my love for the Charismatic renewal and the praise and worship meetings I grew up with. I’ve wrestled with the question of whether to focus on defending and upholding the truth of the Catholic faith or working for justice and the poor through Catholic social teaching. None of these pieces are in opposition to each other but in a moment of rapid change, it can feel impossible to hold them well.

If you’ve been a Catholic in the modern world, you know how difficult it’s been.

And just like many others, I’ve been feeling the temptation to Google the Chicagoan Robert Prevost to figure out how he votes, what he thinks about this Church issue and that one, and how he likes his hot dogs at a baseball game. Amidst the difficulties of keeping the faith in a Church experiencing so much deep division and tension right now, it can be easy to fall into the trap of trying to understand how “Pope: The Man” will handle it all.

But as Leo himself has reminded us, the papacy is not about the man at all. One of the chief roles of the Pope is not to work as a politician advancing the agenda of the bloc that brought him to power, it’s to serve as a sign of unity for the whole Church. We all experience our tensions, frustrations, and disagreements, but at the end of the day we are united under the Bishop of Rome.

In the Catholic tradition, the role of the Pope (or any cleric for that matter) cannot be separated from the celebration of the Eucharist. Both function as signs of unity for the Church. Just as the Church must put aside Her differences around the Table of the Lord, She must be willing to let Her differences come second to her relationship with the one who ministers at that Table.

This is difficult for us as we’ve been so shaped by our broader culture to see leaders as primarily polarizing. We need to practice distinguishing the way we relate to the Pope from the way we relate to world leaders.

This starts by being willing to find in the Pope, a point of unity with over a billion other Catholics around the world. We might have different ideas about missiology, ecclesiology, and even basic Catholic doctrine but we all share the same Holy Father.

I don’t mean that we need to agree with everything the Pope says - history has given us many terrible Popes who’ve left egregious legacies. I do mean though, that instead of pontificating (pun intended) on his various activities, we start by acknowledging him as a brother in Christ and a sign of unity for all Catholics.

I have great hope for the pontificate of Leo XIV. He’s prepared to carry on the excellent legacy of the saintly Popes that came before him, has already spoken profoundly on the need for unity and peace in the life of the Church, and selected a name that evokes another Pontiff who led the Church extraordinarily well in a similar cultural moment to ours. I also can’t help but feel deeply moved when I hear him speak in English, my native tongue, in an American accent; I never thought I’d have the gift of hearing the Pope celebrate Mass or give a homily in a tongue I could so easily understand.

That said, regardless of how the (hopefully) many years of his reign play out, we as Catholics have the opportunity to follow a leader who is a source of unity. As the world becomes more and more divided, now is a time for us to pray that the Holy Spirit would protect our hearts and minds against a spirit of division throughout this Papacy and help us grow in the virtues that promote unity and steadfastness in our faith.

If we practice this unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ through the Pope, we’ll be an evangelistic sign in a broken, polarized, and divided world.