MORNING GLORY: Pope Leo XIV (and President Trump)
Pope Leo XIV arrived in the papal summer retreat of Castel Gandolfo on Sunday, July 6 to start a six-week vacation, giving the hilltop town back its most illustrious resident after Pope Francis stayed away during his 12-year pontificate.
It has been widely reported that Pope Leo will be using part of his vacation to begin drafting his first encyclical. These are important teaching documents for the Roman Catholic Church and sometimes they teach that the current pontiff can be very right, very wrong, very smart or simply not very good at this particular part of his duties. Most Catholics have high hopes for this first missive. Still, who doesn’t need editors to help with my suggestions?
The new pope has been very measured, calm and careful in the months since his election on May 8. It has to be the most dizzying of ascents and upon arrival as head of the Vatican, a confrontation with the broadest range of problems for any religious leader, and most political ones, on the planet. So Pope Leo taking things slowly and cautiously is a relief.
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An encyclical is a big deal for practicing Catholics who assume encyclicals are intended to be read, studied, and the occasion of a prayer for discernment. The audience is assumed to be primarily Catholics everywhere, but Pope Leo has to be aware that the secular press —from supportive to hostile— will also be looking the first one over very carefully.
Here are some suggestions from an American Catholic his age which means we share a lot of culture, from network television, movies and music to the transition that followed Vatican II. (If Leo had to learn the Mass in Latin in order to be an altar boy only to have that chore tossed out as soon as it was accomplished and replaced with the English script, he will have perfect pitch for millions of Catholic seniors —young and old seniors alike.)
When he does begin to do interviews, if he chooses long form sit-downs with respectful journalists, the pope will go a long way to making the promise of his papacy real. Those interviews should focus on the encyclical if one issues before he does his sit-downs with reporters at least a few of whom, American Catholics hope, will be American. Curiosity about a new pope is always acute. It is off the charts about the first American pope.
So will curiosity be about the encyclical, which is a reason to hope that it is (1) written in clear, concise English and then translated by the Vatican’s best Latin scholars into the official language of the Church and (2) relatively short.
If the pope writes in English, not only will he be using his native tongue and thus be as certain as he can be that he’s conveying his meaning, it will be a huge hit with the English-speaking peoples of the world, especially the Americans, especially Midwesterners, and most especially Chicagoland Catholics. Some inside baseball phrases for Americans would be a nice touch.
The more concise the encyclical, the less susceptible it is to misleading excerpts and agenda-driven reporting. Even with the reach of the internet, hundreds of millions of people who have not read it will be told by others what it says and what it means.
As with discussions of Supreme Court decisions, the second-hand reports are usually at best incomplete and at worst intentionally misleading. In this new age of AI-driven deep fakes, don’t be surprised if subtlety-altered encyclicals instantly appear. The Vatican press office might want to assure that the real deal has arrows pointing to it. Simultaneous distribution to many of the world’s major outlets would be another guardrail.
So in English and relatively concise. I hope as well that it is not overtly political in the sense of the left-right spectrum that dominates most of the West where Leo’s letter will not be subject to suppression. If he encourages religious liberty, great! If he speaks to the need to care for life from conception to natural death, great! If he wants to encourage the flock to read and reflect on the Beatitudes, great!
If he wants to encourage Catholics to renew their commitment to the confessional, bravo! (The decline in the practice of this Catholic sacrament is pronounced, but its revival would have to begin with the direction to bishops and priests to make it a priority above all but the other Sacraments.
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Pope Leo XIV could even begin with an appeal for vocations to the religious life which are needed everywhere, but especially in his homeland.
But pray he has already decided he’s not going to do immigration and especially that he’s not going to disparage capitalism or America as his predecessor was fond of intimating.
Catholics believe the Church is divinely ordained and can never fail. But it can and frequently does stumble. The road back from a divided and disillusioned Church in America begins with finding the good in the United States and praising it. Now that would be a welcome change from the past dozen years.
And please, nothing about President Trump. Read the room Pope Leo, please. You don’t need to single out the president. Lots of Catholic commentators like to do so. You don’t have to. At all.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives America home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.