Is the new Pope woke?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cardinal Robert Prevost made history earlier this year, when he became the first American pontiff to lead the Catholic Church. And when he stepped out onto the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica as Pope Leo XIV, dressed in traditional papal robes, some conservatives in the church took it as a sign of a symbolic shift away from what they saw as the liberal drift of his predecessor the late Pope Francis.
Francis, who had put social justice at the heart of his papacy, divided opinion. Some Catholics praised his stance on issues like same-sex blessings, whilst others claimed that he had abandoned tradition for wokeness.
Now six months into his papacy, Pope Leo XIV is also coming under similar scrutiny, he’s already been criticized by some Catholics from the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement in the United States for blessing a block of Greenland ice. Whilst on the issue of same-sex blessings, his stated intention is to continue the same course as Pope Francis, that the Church’s teaching is not going to change on this issue.
But though he may also be advocating diversity, equity and inclusion, Pope Leo XIV may not necessarily be a carbon copy of his predecessor. As he prepares for his first apostolic visit to Turkey and Lebanon, Pope Leo XIV already appears to be charting a more nuanced path, grounded in pastoral instincts rather than divisive politics.
So, on The Inquiry this week we’re asking, ‘Is the new Pope woke?’
Contributors: Dr Massimo Faggioli, Professor in Ecclesiology, Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Inés San Martín, Vice President of Communications, The Pontifical Mission Societies, New York, USA Christopher White, Author ‘Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of New Papacy’, Associate Director, Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA Elise Ann Allen, Senior Correspondent for Crux, Author ‘Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the 21st Century’, Rome, Italy
Presenter: William Crawley Producer: Jill Collins Researcher: Maeve Schaffer Production Management Assistant: Liam Morrey Technical Producer: Craig Boardman Editor: Tom Bigwood
(Photo: Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican in May 2025. Credit: Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.1 | Welcome to the inquiry from the BBC World Service. I'm William Crawley. Each week, one question, four expert witnesses, and an answer. |
| 0:16.7 | In May this year, the Catholic Church made history. For the first time, the keys of St. Peter were handed to a cardinal born in the United States. |
| 0:26.4 | It marked a striking departure from his predecessor, Pope Francis. |
| 0:31.5 | Francis put social justice at the heart of his papacy. |
| 0:35.6 | To some, it was the gospel in action. |
| 0:38.7 | To others, it looked like the Vatican had become woke. |
| 0:44.8 | So when Pope Leo stepped out onto the balcony at St. Peter's Basilica for the first time, |
| 0:50.6 | dressed in more traditional papal robes, |
| 0:53.5 | many conservatives in the church breathed a quiet sigh of relief. |
| 0:58.8 | Would the new Pope steer the Vatican away from what some saw as a liberal drift under Francis? |
| 1:05.5 | Or would he be more of the same, dressed differently? |
| 1:09.7 | Now, just six months into his papacy, as Leo begins to reveal his |
| 1:15.2 | own priorities, that question has become more urgent. So this week on the inquiry, on the eve of |
| 1:24.2 | Leo's first international tour, we're asking, is the new Pope woke? |
| 1:31.4 | Part 1, going woke. |
| 1:34.7 | Before we go any further, we need to understand what it means to be woke. |
| 1:40.2 | Massimo Fagioli is an Italian academic, |
| 1:43.5 | a professor of church history and theology at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and at Villanova University in the United States, with the future Pope Leo was once a student. |
| 1:54.6 | Walkness means that there are certain structures of power that affect especially racial relations and gender relations |
| 2:05.6 | that have numbed us. |
| 2:08.6 | And so we need to wake up and recognize these structures of oppression |
... |
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