Becoming acquainted with Bergoglio’s successor…

Introducing ‘Pope’ Leo XIV:
Who is Robert Francis Prevost?

Mr. Robert Prevost on May 9, 2025, playing ‘Pope Leo XIV’
image: Getty Images (Simone Risoluti/Vatican Pool)

Now that Robert Francis Prevost has been elected head of the Vatican II Church (stage name: Leo XIV), a lot of information must be processed to understand what his background is, and what his aims are.

In this post, we are featuring three video podcasts and one audio podcast giving first impressions and thoughts about the new ‘Pope’ and what lies ahead:

Panel Discussion: The New ‘Pope’ Leo XIV (Robert Francis Prevost)
with Kevin Davis (host), Fr.… READ MORE

As Friedrich Merz limps into the chancellor’s office on his second try, his term is already starting worse than his predecessor’s ended

It seems long ago already, but politically speaking, it was really only yesterday that the last, deeply unpopular German government collapsed on November 6 of last year.

Based on a fractious coalition and led by the hapless Olaf Scholz, it was a flop from almost the beginning to the bitter end. But what finally imploded Scholz’s cabinet was its finance minister’s refusal to hollow out Germany’s – back then – severe restrictions on public debt, specifically to throw even more money at Ukraine.  

Exactly half a year after this fiasco, the next and current German government produced another one, even before it had really started: On 6 May, its designated leader Friedrich Merz from the mainstream conservatives (CDU) failed to get parliament to elect him as chancellor. This may look like a formality because, after complicated and humiliating maneuvering, Merz managed to find enough votes on a second try.

Yet rest assured, no one in Germany thinks this was a minor glitch. For one thing, unlike a coalition breakdown, this was an entirely unprecedented failure: no post-World War II German chancellor has ever failed to be confirmed in the first round. That’s why, on the day of the disaster, some parliamentarians even spoke of a fundamental “crisis of the state.”

No wonder really, because would-be-chancellors only ask parliament for this vote when they believe they have a majority of deputies securely on their side. So did Merz, too. And that is why his initial dud was so much worse than just a sad historic first: The only way he could fail was by quiet but deliberate mutiny from below and, clearly, arrogant negligence on his side.

His coalition is made up of his own conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD). If every member of parliament from these two parties had supported him in the first round, a second one would not have been needed. Clearly, then, it was deputies from his own party or its coalition allies who refused to comply. We will never know who exactly because the vote was anonymous, but we do know that there were at least 18 rebels. A major conservative commentator was right: This blow below the belt from Merz’s own ranks will hurt for a long time.

This is an awful way to begin a chancellorship. And not only because from now on, right from the get-go, the “partners” – yes, those are scare quotes – now divvying up power and positions in Berlin will always have to wonder which one of them – SPD or CDU (or even both)? – is harboring snakes in the grass. And when might they strike again? Welcome to the all-new coalition: as backstabbing as the last one but faster off the mark.

More fundamentally, if you can’t keep your troops together on confirming you as the boss, how do you expect to get your budgets and laws through? But things are even more foreboding in this case. For Merz could only even have a shot at high office because Germany is in such a comprehensive mess: demography, the economy, infrastructure, the party system, foreign policy, technology, and, last but not least, the public mood. You name it – nothing, really nothing, is okay.

It is against this dark background that a major German economist serving on the government’s own council of experts is already asking the inevitable question: How can this new coalition government fulfill Merz’s key promise to finally address this national misery, if it is so obviously bereft of unity? And, we may add, of discipline and foresight, too, because it takes astonishing sloppiness to prepare a chancellor vote so badly. Another economist notes that the debacle has also sent a “devastating signal” to the rest of the world. Indeed. And good luck for Merz when trying to tell Trump off for his team’s meddling in German politics: Whether Trump will say it or not, it is certain that he has already slotted Merz as a “loser.”

And the American bruiser-in-chief has a point. Not only because of the embarrassing lack of professionalism that came to light in mismanaging this crucial vote, but also because Merz’s CDU and their SPD coalition partners under Lars Klingbeil richly deserved their come-uppance. Between the last elections and cobbling together their coalition, they engineered a crassly foul maneuver: Clearly against the spirit if not the letter of the constitution, they used the old parliament – de facto already voted out by Germany’s citizens – for perhaps the single greatest flipflop in German postwar history.

Remember those strict limits for public debt over which the preceding coalition collapsed? Merz ran his electoral campaign promising that he would not abandon this so-called “debt brake.” As a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, he was in an excellent position to make that claim and get voters to believe it. And yet, it was his first action – even before entering office – to break that promise.

And not in a small, corner-cutting way. Merz did not cut corners but razed the edifice to the ground. Having run and won (barely) as a fiscal hawk, he rapidly made a screeching U-turn to – in CNN’s words – “massively expand borrowing and super-charge military spending.” To the tune of a cool trillion or so over the next decade. Many voters and members of his own party were not only bewildered but aghast. We cannot know for sure, but I and many other Germans are probably right guessing that this massive breach of faith motivated at least some of the rebels during the chancellor vote.

What we do know for sure is that Merz’s personal ratings have crashed even before he almost failed to become chancellor. Never popular to begin with, he has reached a nadir: On the eve of the parliamentary vote, 56% of Germans were against Merz becoming chancellor, only 38% welcomed that prospect.

And Merz is not the only one who has emerged dented from this affair: For complicated procedural reasons, Merz needed the cooperation of the Die Linke party under its shooting star Heidi Reichinnek to get his second chance. For Die Linke, providing this help was probably a very bad move. Reichinnek is to Germany what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is to the US: a social-media savvy lifestyle leftist with hubristic rhetoric (anyone for abolishing capitalism, all of it, right now and with tattoos, please?) and deeply tactical behavior in the real world. By helping out the unpopular arch-capitalist Merz, she may have overdone it even for some of her most devoted TikTok fans.

But it’s not all bad news. At least not for everyone. The AfD – under pressure from Germany’s domestic intelligence service and the possible threat of a complete ban – is likely to profit. It may have missed a superb chance of embarrassing Merz by actually voting for him. But there is another effect: The collaboration of the oh-so-terribly radical Reichinnek and her party, has already made some German observers ask a simple, plausible question: If both Die Linke and the AfD used to be treated as beyond the pale – or, in German parlance, “firewalled” – and yet Merz had no problem relying on Die Linke to get into office (no less!), then, clearly, that whole “firewall” thing is not all it’s cracked up to be. And if that is so, then the firewall against the AfD may well also crumble one day. In fact, as a matter of consistency and fairness, it should, whether you like the AfD or not.

What an odd way of becoming the new leader of Germany’s political mainstream: Limping through the entry gate, badly bruised and humiliated as no chancellor before, while once again de facto strengthening the country’s largest and most threatening insurgent party. Merz’s predecessor Scholz started with much undeserved advance praise and ended abysmally. Merz has managed to start abysmally already.

 From Catholic News Service

Powerful symbols: Vatican releases Pope Leo XIV’s official portrait and signature

By  AC Wimmer

Rome Newsroom, May 10, 2025 / 10:30 am

The Vatican unveiled Pope Leo XIV’s official portrait and signature Saturday, revealing the American pontiff’s embrace of traditional papal elements just two days after his historic election.

The formal portrait shows the 69-year-old pope wearing the red mozzetta (short cape), embroidered stole, white rochet, and golden pectoral cross — traditional papal vesture that present a visual contrast to the simpler style preferred by his predecessor.

This is Pope Leo’s official portrait:

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This is based on the traditional symbol of the Augustinian Order. 

The fleur-de-lis has particular significance in Catholic iconography as a symbol of purity and the Virgin Mary.

The three-petaled lily design has also been connected to the Holy Trinity. It is prominently featured in French heraldry, which may hold personal meaning for the pope, who has French ancestry through his father’s lineage.

Beneath the shield runs a scroll displaying the pope’s episcopal motto: “In illo uno unum” (“In the one Christ we are one”), a phrase taken from St. Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 127. The motto reflects Leo’s roots in the Augustinian order and his commitment to unity in the Church.

These profound presentations of papal symbols — the portrait, signature, and coat of arms — traditionally occur in the early days of a new pontificate and provide insights into the theological priorities and pastoral style the new pope intends to emphasize.

Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, made history on May 8, becoming the first U.S.-born pope.

 On Thursday, you and I received the news: a new pope, Pope Leo XIV.

You and I can only imagine 

the sense of responsibility Pope Leo must feel. 

It may have taken a few hours or even a few days for it to sink in.

The most important response you and I can give, 

beyond our gratitude for having a shepherd, 

is to give him our best help.

Here’s how you and I can help Pope Leo:

First: pray for him!

Second: don’t impose unfair expectations on him. 

Namely, he’s not Pope Francis, 

nor is he Pope Benedict or Pope John Paul.

Third, remember that he is a human being, the same as you and I.

What we believe is that God gives the bishops – 

and the pope in particular – 

help to avoid running the Church “into the ditch,” as it were.

That doesn’t mean the pope is given divine illumination.

Nor does it promise that every decision he may make will be perfect.

We believe that the Holy Spirit protects the bishops, 

in their shared teaching office, from teaching error. 

That is what “infallibility” means, 

and it applies to the bishops when they act together, 

and when the pope acts as our chief pastor.

Today, you and I are also celebrating a special day 

for several of our children, 

who are receiving their first Holy Communion.

Children, maybe you noticed the curious words in the second reading: 

the Apostle John said he saw “a great multitude,

which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.”

Think of how vast a crowd that must be! As far as the eye can see!

This is a promise of what Jesus will do to bring people to heaven.

But here’s something each of us needs to recognize:

Jesus chooses to do this, not all on his own, as he might, 

But rather, to do this through you and me.

He gathers this “great multitude” through his Church. That’s us.

It is your job and mine to tell people about Jesus.

To give everyone a welcome to know Jesus better.

To show in our daily lives, the difference Jesus makes.

Now, this is a good time to recall the first reading:

Paul and Barnabas and other Christians – 

when they did what I just described, in telling others about Jesus – 

did you notice what happened? 

They were insulted and beaten up.

Eventually, Paul and Barnabas and others were killed 

because they were faithful to Jesus!

You and I must not kid ourselves 

or mislead others about the cost of being a disciple of Jesus.

To say yes to Jesus is to say no to other things in life:

It may mean we don’t end up with as much money or stuff;

We may have to give up some fun things on the weekend, 

so we can attend Holy Mass.

Most of the time, the choice to be faithful involves small decisions, day-by-day, 

that maybe no one but God will know about.

It can seem easy to say “yes” one time to Jesus.

Where it gets harder is to keep saying “yes,” day by day by day.

This is why Jesus gave you and me the sacraments, in particular, 

the sacrament of confession, 

where we return to him after we lose our way;

and the Most Holy Eucharist, 

where we are united to him as fully as is possible in this world.

Remember: the Holy Eucharist isn’t just a symbol.

Holy Communion is union with Jesus himself.

He gives his Body and Blood – ALL of himself – to you and me.

He does this so that you and I can be able to make him real to others. 

To be faithful. To be strong. To remember who we are.

I can only imagine the first time Pope Leo offered Mass, 

after becoming our shepherd, 

he focused on how much more strength and courage and help 

he needed from Jesus. To be a witness.

You and I may not be pope. But we need that same help.

Today, second graders, you say yes to Jesus in a new way.

The rest of us are helped by your example: to consider our own “yes.”

Please, children, show us: not just a “yes” today, but every day,

Until one day, you help the rest of us join that great multitude!

(When I heard about this yesterday, a TLM at Mary Major, I had assumed it happened at a side altar. NOPE. High Altar and full glory, courtesy ICKSP! In the video below, you can watch the procession, with the light of Bergoglio’s latrine-tomb in the background. Enjoy. -nvp)

Francis Witnesses the Traditional Mass in Saint Mary Major

While others claim that Prevost wants homosexuals to abandon Sin:

"Leo XIV Wants to Get Homosexuals Out of Sin"

Charity demands a commitment to the Truth, since it is an act of charity to warn everyone that effeminate people (those who rebel against their biological sex, those who choose a gay identity), as well as those who practice homosexuality in any of its forms, are condemned.

 I think Pope Leo XIV will rival St. Pope John Paul II in the way he will relate to the young and the young to him!

“Someone has written The Pope is a Traitor in tar on the green pillar box.  A typical Irish town.” 

Evelyn Waugh, “Bella Fleace Gave a Party (1932)*

Samuel Johnson said that the human mind is characterized by “anfractuosities,” a word he elsewhere defined as “winding, mazy, full of turnings and winding passages.”  Johnson gave as an instance an unwillingness to sit for one’s portrait, a countercurrent to natural vanity that some men and women felt in his day.  A man of less patience (and smaller vocabulary) might have spoken of perversities, since the anfractuosities of the human mind are as often vexatious as droll.

The capacity for personal friendship with a political enemy is an anfractuosity in the mind of many a man.  He will in public matters strain to foil and frustrate the designs of this political enemy, while he is privately fond of that same man’s company and anxious for that same man’s well-being.  We confess this anfractuosity when we say of some public figure whom we loath, that it would no doubt be very jolly to have with that same man “a beer.”

We see a similar anfractuosity in a capacity to hate an institution or collective while enjoying at the same time perfect amity with individual officers of that institution or individual members of that collective.  The “mazy” mind of man can quite easily hate the Chinese, for instance, while at the same time loving some particular Chinamen.  A man confesses this anfractuosity when he tries to soften his political censure of a group with the claim (often dubious) that “some of his best friends” hale from that same censured party.

These anfractuosities permit what Carl Schmitt calls the distinction between a private and a public enemy, inimicus and hostus in the Latin.  The difference is that my private enemy aims to harm—perhaps destroy—my person, whereas my public enemy seeks to harm—perhaps destroy my “way of life.”  It is this difference between public and private enemies that Thomas Jefferson perhaps deliberately obscured when he famously wrote,

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”†

The man who picks my pocket or breaks my leg is most certainly a private enemy, but he may have attacked my person without the slightest intention of injuring my “way of life.”  The man who vociferously attacks the metaphysical foundation of my “way of life” is, on the other hand, my public enemy whom, unopposed, will shatter and destroy my world.

 In the idiom St. Paul, he will shatter and destroy that in which “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Paul was, of course, speaking of man’s ultimate context; but we are no less certainly the “offspring” of our people, our time, and our place.  And the enemy of that local context is our hostus just as certainly as Satan is the hostus of the God.  And the scriptural injunctions to love our enemies do not apply to such public enemies.  As Schmitt explained:

“The often quoted ‘Love your enemies’ (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27) reads ‘diligite inimicos vestros,’ and not ‘diligite hostes vestros.’ No mention is made of the political enemy. Never in the thousand-year struggle between Christians and Moslems did it occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks.”†  

This is true even in cases when the Saracen was such that it might have been jolly to share with him a beer.

* * * * *

Political hatred comports with personal affection in the mazy mind of men, and this anfractuosity undoubtedly serves us well.  There would be civil war if I felt bound to pick the pockets and break the legs of my public enemies.  And there would be another sort of chaos if I indulged my public enemies with the longsuffering forbearance and forgiveness of Christian love.  It is our personal cheeks that we ought to turn for a second slap.   It is not the cheek of that in which “we live, and move, and have our being.”

As I said earlier, political hatred for an institution or collective may comport with perfect amity with individual officers of that institution or individual members of that collective.  This is expressed in my epigraph from Evelyn Waugh.  There are and no doubt always have been Catholics who love their local and personal Catholicism but hate “the Church.”  This is because they perceive “the Church” as hostile to their local and personal Catholic “way of life.”

The irate Irishman who painted that angry slogan on that green pillar box in the town of Ballingar believed that the Pope was a traitor to that.

A similar anfractuosity is today evident in those Americans who love their local and personal America but hate “America” (although few will yet call their public enemy by that name).  This is again because they perceive “America” as hostile to their local and personal American “way of life.”  In their mazy minds “America” is labeled “the government,” the “deep state,” the “cloud people,” or “the elite;” but all of these locutions are means to describe (and disguise) their love-hate relationship with the land for which their fathers died.

* * * * *

George Bernard Shaw wrote an interesting description of mazy-minded political hatred in the Preface to his play, John Bull’s Other Island (1904).  Shaw begins by explaining the “concurrence of human kindness with political rancor” in the relations between the Irish and their priests:

“Just reconsider the Home Rule question in the light of that very English characteristic of the Irish people, their political hatred of priests.  Do not be distracted by the shriek of indignant denial from the Catholic papers and from those who have witnessed the charming relations between the Irish peasantry and their spiritual fathers. I am perfectly aware that the Irish love their priests as devotedly as the French loved them before the Revolution or as the Italians loved them before they imprisoned the Pope in the Vatican.  They love their landlords too: many an Irish gentleman has found in his nurse a foster-mother more interested in him than his actual mother.  They love the English, as every Englishman who travels in Ireland can. testify.  Please do not suppose that I speak satirically: the world is full of authentic examples of the concurrence of human kindliness with political rancor. Slaves and schoolboys often love their masters; Napoleon and his soldiers made desperate efforts to save from drowning the Russian soldiers under whom they had broken the ice with their cannon; even the relations between nonconformist peasants and country parsons in England are not invariably unkindly; in the southern States of America planters are often traditionally fond of negroes and kind to them, with substantial returns in humble affection; soldiers and sailors often admire and cheer their officers sincerely and heartily; nowhere is actual personal intercourse found compatible for long with the intolerable friction of hatred and malice.”††† 

Just so.  Apart from zealots (whom Mommsen tells us were also known as “men of the knife”), no one can long conduct personal life on strictly political lines.  Personal intercourse quickly discovers amiable and attractive personalities on the other side of the barricade (and repellant personalities at one’s elbow); but this does not remove or even palliate political hostility and only scoundrels and simpletons maintain that they do.  As Shaw goes on to say:

“But people who persist in pleading these amiabilities as political factors must be summarily bundled out of the room when questions of State are to be discussed.. Just as an Irishman may have English friends whom he may prefer to any Irishman of his acquaintance, and be kind, hospitable, and serviceable in his intercourse with Englishmen, whilst being perfectly prepared to make the Shannon run red with English blood if Irish freedom could be obtained at that price; so an Irish Catholic may like his priest as a man and revere him as a confessor and spiritual pastor whilst being implacably determined to seize the first opportunity of throwing off his yoke. This is political hatred: the only hatred that civilization allows to be mortal hatred.”††† 

*) Evelyn Waugh, Tactical Exercise (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1936), p. 15.
**) James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, three vols. (London: J. M. Dent, 1901), vol. 3, p. 96.
***) Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (1932; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 27.
†) Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London: J. Stockdale, 1787), p. 265.
††) Schmitt, Concept of the Political, p. 29.
†††) George Bernard Shaw, John Bull’s Other Island: In Four Acts (London: Constable and Co., 1921), pp. xxi-xxii.

 You can see a YouTube video of the black car that Pope Leo used this morning and he is chauffeured by sitting in the back seat rather than the front seat! View the video HERE!

As I reported this morning, Pope Leo met with all the Cardinals that are still in Rome and praised them and sees them as his closest collaborators. I would say that is another shift in papal attitudes and desires!

And then we have this!

This is copied from the Italian Newspaper, I’ll Messaggero along with the photo!

A Shift in Papal Symbols

Pope Leo XIV's choice of a black Volkswagen over a Fiat 500L marks a potential shift in papal symbolism and style.