This morning, folks from across Loyola Marymount University – staff, students, and campus ministers – gathered in the Cave beneath Sacred Heart Chapel to witness the historic moment as white smoke rose above Rome’s Sistine Chapel around 9 a.m. Los Angeles time. All eyes were fixed on the screen, waiting for the first glimpses of the new pope on the balcony in St. Peter’s Square. When the name Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was announced — in Italian — I thought I’d misheard it. An American?!
Just yesterday, at Wellness Wednesday XXL, Campus Ministry hosted a booth inviting the LMU community to share their “Hopes for the Pope.” Cardinal Prevost, a Chicagoan, didn’t even make our list.
But the Spirit moves in surprising ways, disrupting expectations with holy renewal, and today’s luminous interruption has sent shockwaves through the Church and beyond.
Campus Minister Allie Holmquist reflected on the legacy of Pope Leo XIII, wondering about the significance of Cardinal Prevost’s name choice. At the turn of the 20th century, Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum, a groundbreaking encyclical that articulated Catholic social teaching and offered an ethical critique of modernity through the lens of human dignity. Pope Leo XIV, an American by birth who spent only a third of his life in the U.S. and has ministered primarily in the Global South — including in Peru, where he holds citizenship — brings with him a pastoral heart formed among the poor. His ministry and leadership in Latin America will undoubtedly shape his papacy.
During his first urbi et orbi address, he invoked Pope Francis several times and has already been named a champion of Francis’ synodal vision for the Church.
In the Gospel from the Second Sunday of Easter just two weeks ago, Jesus greets the disciples huddled in the upper room, bracing themselves against a fraught and uncertain world: “Peace be with you.” Today, Pope Leo XIV opened his papacy with that same greeting. In a fractured world aching for hope and thirsting for reconciliation, how will that greeting manifest in his papacy, in our Church, and across humanity?
We wait in hope.
Until then, the Campus Ministry team will gather for lunch — Chicago deep-dish pizza on the menu in honor of the Holy Father’s roots — our spirits lifted by surprise, curiosity, and joy.
