May 8th, 2025. Today, on the second day of the papal conclave, the Cardinal electors,

133 members of the College of Cardinals, who were under the age of 80 when Pope Francis died on

April 21st, elected a new

pope. They chose 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago, thus making him

the first pope chosen from the United States. But he spent much of his ministry in Peru and

became a citizen of Peru in 2015, making him the first

pope from Peru as well. New popes choose a papal name to signify the direction of their papacy,

and Prevost is chosen to be known as Pope Leo the 14th. This is an important nod to Pope Leo

the 13th, who led the church from 1878 to 1903 and was the father of modern Catholic social teaching.

He called for the church to address social and economic issues and emphasized the dignity of individuals, the common good, community, and taking care of marginalized individuals. In the midst of the

Gilded Age, Leo XIII defended the rights of workers and said that the church had not just the

duty to speak about justice and fairness, but also the responsibility to make sure that such

equities were accomplished. In his famous 1891 encyclical

Rerumnovarum translated as of New Things, Leo the 13th rejected both socialism and unregulated capitalism

and called for the state to protect the rights of individuals. Prevost's choice of the

name Leo invokes the principles of both Leo the 13th and his predecessor, Pope Francis. In his own

lifetime, he has aligned himself with many of Francis's social reforms, and his election appears to be a

rejection of hard-line right-wing Catholics in the U.S.

and elsewhere, who have used their religion to support far-right politics.

In the U.S., Vice President J.D. Vance is one of those hard-line right-wing Catholics.

Shortly after taking office in January, Vance began to talk

of the concept of Ordo Amoris, or Order of Love, articulated by Catholic St. Augustine,

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