Frankly, most people knew little about Robert Prevost before his election as pope, so there’s been a scramble to unpick Leo XIV’s past record to judge where he might take the papacy.
‘The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,’ he told journalists
We know already that he’s not terribly keen on the US President’s repatriation of illegal migrants, nor on J.D. Vance’s particular take on social issues. And he’s got the whole Francis programme on putting the poor centre stage. There are other Francis touches; when he did visitations to Augustinian communities as head of the order, he’d help with the washing up after dinner. He seems, in fact, a genuinely humble sort.
But it would be a mistake to take from this that Robert Prevost will be another Francis, excitingly disruptive and liberal on the usual matters, such as gender and homosexuality.
Au contraire! There’s been some digging in his previous pronouncements for clues about his views and they’re really not that surprising.
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