What Pope Leo XIV Has Already Said About 5 Key Issues| National Catholic Register

In the weeks and months ahead, the world will be watching to see where Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, leads the Catholic Church on any number of controversial issues.

But as the bishop and cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, the man who is now pope has already spoken out on everything from Church unity to the possibility of ordained women, transgender ideology to ecclesial reform.

In his past remarks, Prevost often combined a concern for fidelity to the Gospel and apostolic tradition with openness to doctrinal development and pastoral adaptability in various settings.

Here’s what our new pope has previously said on five key issues facing the Catholic Church.

Synodality and Church Reform

In his first address as Pope Leo XIV from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, the new pope spoke of the Church as “synodal,” indicating his intention to carry Pope Francis’ signature reform efforts forward.

As a cardinal, Prevost participated in both the 2023 and 2024 sessions of the Synod on Synodality, even delivering a talk on the connection between the local and universal Church during a theological-pastoral forum this past October.

He has stressed that synodality is not about “discussing a political agenda” or promoting self-interested issues, but about listening “first of all to the Holy Spirit.”

In a 2024 talk at St. Jude’s Catholic Church in New Lenox, Illinois, he noted synodality’s roots not only in Vatican II, but also the early centuries of Catholicism, and described it as a way of helping all Catholics understand that they are a part of the Church. He spoke positively of parish and diocesan assemblies, and said synodality does not take away from the authority of those who are called to lead, such as bishops and priests.

In the same talk, he noted that Catholics, like members of any large institution, “can become set in our ways.”

“One of the risks of that is that we miss the presence of the Holy Spirit. That breeze that may go by that says, ‘Yeah you always did it that way, and maybe for six centuries it was wonderful, but maybe it’s time to change. Maybe it’s time to look at things differently.’”

Church Unity and Diversity

The question of unity and diversity within the Catholic Church is a central one, undergirding current debates on everything from the Traditional Latin Mass to the German Synodal Way, and the man just elected to the papacy has spent considerable time reflecting on it.

Cardinal Prevost’s episcopal motto, In Illo uno unum, means “In the One, we are one,” and is taken from a treatise on Church unity by St. Augustine, patron of the now-pope’s Augustinian religious order.

He gave an extended response on this topic in a 2023 interview:

Some misconstrue unity as uniformity: ‘You have to be the same as we are.’ No. This cannot be. Nor can diversity be understood as a way of living without criteria or order. The latter lose sight of the fact that from the very creation of the world, the gift of nature, the gift of human life, the gift of so many different things that we actually live and celebrate, cannot be sustained by making up our own rules and only doing things our way. These are ideological positions.

Women in the Church

The former Cardinal Prevost is clear on his opposition to the attempted ordination of women, stating in October 2023 during the Synod on Synodality that “clericalizing women” is not the way to answer concerns about women’s role in the Church.

“The apostolic tradition is something that has been spelled out very clearly, especially if you want to talk about the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood,” he said. “It isn’t as simple as saying that, ‘You know, at this stage we’re going to change the tradition of the Church after 2,000 years on any one of those points.’”

The then-prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops also added that though women can take on leadership roles in the wider world, the Church “needs to be different” and is not a mirror image of society.

At the same time, the then-cardinal gave his support to Pope Francis’s changes that allowed for women, and non-ordained men, to serve as heads of Vatican dicasteries.

“I think there will be a continuing recognition of the fact that women can add a great deal to the life of the Church on many different levels,” he said.

Sexual Morality and Identity

Prior to his papal election, Cardinal Prevost spoke out rarely, but forcefully, against disordered sexual practices and ideologies.

At the 2012 Synod on the New Evangelization, he raised concerns among his fellow bishops that Western media and pop culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel,” including the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

As the bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, he opposed a plan to teach transgenderism in schools.

“The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,” he told local news media, according the New York Times.

However, in a 2023 interview after becoming a cardinal, Leo XIV indicated that Pope Francis’ outreach to people who identify as LGBTQ led him to experience “a development in the sense of the need for the Church to be open and to be welcoming.”

“Pope Francis made it very clear that he doesn’t want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make whether it be lifestyle, work, way to dress or whatever,” he said to CNS. “Doctrine hasn’t changed and people haven’t said yet, you know, we are looking for that kind of change.”

Then-Cardinal Prevost expressed a somewhat neutral position on Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican’s 2023 guidance that allowed for blessings of people in same-sex couples, emphasizing the need for bishops to apply it selectively in their own cultural context.

The Selection of Bishops

Pope Francis brought then-Cardinal Prevost to the Vatican in 2023 to carry forward his vision of more pastorally minded bishops, one that the now-Pope Leo XIV shares.

In an interview with Vatican News after receiving his curial assignment, he said that bishops must connected to the universal Church, close to members of their community, and able to impart the Gospel not just through their authority, but through their witness.

“We are often preoccupied with teaching doctrine, the way of living our faith, but we risk forgetting that our first task is to teach what it means to know Jesus Christ and to bear witness to our closeness to the Lord,” he said. “This comes first: to communicate the beauty of the faith, the beauty and joy of knowing Jesus. It means that we ourselves are living it and sharing this experience.”

In a 2024 interview, he stressed, “The bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom.” He has also said that the “one trait above all others” for a bishop “is that he must proclaim Jesus Christ and live the faith so that the faithful see in his witness an incentive to them to want to be an ever more active part of the Church that Jesus Christ himself founded. In just a few words: to help people come to know Christ through the gift of faith.”

He has also stressed that the People of God, including the lay faithful, should have a say in who is selected to be their local bishop. However, he noted that this does not mean that bishop election should take place through “a democratic vote,” but through consultation, and indicated that this already takes place in some settings.