Fr. Roger J. Landry
National Catholic Register Print Edition
May 14, 2025
There has been a lot mentioned about how Pope Leo XIV is a pope of “firsts.” He’s obviously the first Pope born in the United States, which is a great joy for every American Catholic. He’s the first member of the almost 800-year-old Augustinian order to be elected. Perhaps the most surprising first of all, however, is something that has not yet gotten enough attention: he is the first true missionary to be chosen pope since Christ chose St. Peter.
Every pope — and indeed every baptized Catholic — is supposed to be a missionary. As Pope Francis wrote in his exhortation on the Joy of the Gospel, “I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world.”
We have seen this missionary dimension of the papacy on display in the indefatigable apostolic journeys of St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. We have witnessed it in several popes with burning missionary zeal, like Gregory XV, who founded the Society of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in 1622, and Gregory XVI, who led that Congregation for five years before the Cardinals elected him in 1831.
We have had popes from missionary lands — until the establishment of Christianity as a majority religion in various countries, every place was properly missionary territory. We have also had popes serve in places far from their country of origin before their papal election, like Pope Urban IV, the French-born former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem before being elected pope in 1261.
Somewhat shockingly, however, until May 8, 2025, we have never had a Pope whose vocation in the Church had been to serve in the Church’s missions to the nations: leaving home and traveling to a far different part of the world to share the Gospel in places where people have not yet heard it or where the Church is too young, too poor, or too persecuted to be self-sufficient.
That was the vocation of Robert Francis Prevost. As a child, he nourished a priestly vocation through celebrating “Mass” at home on an ironing board, preaching to his forbearing older brothers. He entered an Augustinian high school seminary and continued his formation at the Augustinians’ flagship university, Villanova, before officially becoming a novice and making first vows. Living in community with fellow Augustinians, he met several friars who had returned from the Order’s missions in Peru, established in 1551, and developed a desire, should God want it, to dedicate himself to that work. He visited them first as a seminarian and served there for a year in between advanced studies in Rome. After completing his doctorate, he was delighted to be assigned full-time to the missions in Peru for the next decade.
He left because he was elected by his fellow Augustinians in the United States their prior provincial, or superior, and two years later, the prior general of the nearly 3,000 Augustinians across the globe. The latter position was a different type of missionary work, traveling half the year to the 50 different countries where the Augustinians are trying to reap the Lord’s harvest, including the DRC, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, India, Korea, Indonesia, the Antilles, Philippines, and more, strengthening the Order’s missionary work and her missionaries.
After 12 years of that service, he returned for a short stint serving his Province in the United States before Pope Francis sent him back as a missionary to Peru, as Bishop of Chiclayo and later apostolic administrator of Callao. After nine years, Pope Francis summoned him to Rome to serve as Prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops. When he was selected the 267th Peter earlier this month, he was only just over two years removed from having been a missionary bishop. Emerging on the Loggia of Blessings, he arrived having dedicated basically half his life — 22 years in Peru and 12 years crisscrossing the globe visiting the Augustinian prior general — to the Church’s missionary work.
That’s far more than a piece of trivia. It’s likewise far more than a missionary “perspective” or series of “experiences” on which he can draw in his new petrine ministry. It means that, subjectively, he has a deep missionary identity. He could have served the Lord in many beautiful ways close to his family, like so many diocesan and religious priests in Chicago. Instead, out of love for Jesus Christ and his people, he had made the choice to dedicate his life to leaving the comforts of his native place to travel far afield to bring Jesus as Way, Truth and Life.
Much was made in 1903 when St. Pius X was elected the 257th Pope, because he was the first since the Middle Ages to have spent lengthy time as a parish priest. His parish experience made a huge difference in his papacy, as he reformed music at Mass, sacramental preparation, catechesis, and the Church’s law to help strengthen the faith of typical parishioners he used to serve.
Similarly, when St. John Paul II was chosen in 1978, he was not just the first non-Italian pope in 455 years but the first Pole, whose experiences trying to fortify the faith of those behind the Iron Curtain absolutely influenced his papal service, as he sought to promote an adequate anthropology and help the whole Church learn how to “be not afraid.”
It’s therefore inevitable that Pope Leo XIV’s missionary vocation and experiences will impact profoundly the way with which he now exercises his papal ministry. As the successor of the Galilean fisherman whom Jesus called to be a fisher of men and put out into the deep waters and lower his nets for a catch, Pope Leo’s proclamation of Christ as the Messiah and Son of the Living God, his feeding and tending Christ’s sheep and lambs out of love for Jesus, and everything else he does, cannot help but flow from his missionary identity and training.
What are the likely ways we will see those apostolic priorities?
First, he will presumably focus the Church’s attention much more on the missions and missionaries. Two thousand years after Christ’s incarnation, birth, public ministry, passion, death and resurrection, 5.5 out of the 8 billion people alive still do not know Jesus Christ. The Great Commission had no expiration date, but relatively few Christians take Jesus’ imperative as personal marching orders, not just in terms of life choices but even in terms of prayer and prioritized financial support. Leo is likely to focus on the modern heroes who every day are following in the line of Paul and Barnabas, Francis Xavier and Francis de Sales, Isaac Jogues and Junipero Serra, Frances Cabrini and Rose Philippine Duchesne. During his opening words as Pope, minutes after his election, he said, “Together, we must look for ways to be a missionary Church.”
Second, he will give a clearer sense of the stakes involved in the Church’s missionary work: the salvation of vast multitudes. Not all roads lead to heaven. Jesus is “the” way and calls us to follow him along the narrow path leading to life. False eschatology, which pretends that all or most probably end up in heaven no matter what they believe or do, has enervated the Church’s missionary work and makes Paul’s, Francis Xavier’s, and Robert Prevost’s sacrifices look naïve and foolish. His first homily in the Sistine Chapel underlined that Jesus Christ is “the one Savior” and that all of us are “called to bear witness to our joyful faith in Jesus the Savior.”
Third, he will likely strive to actualize Pope Francis’ “dream” of a “missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that [everything in the Church] … can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for [the Church’s] self-preservation” (Evangelii Gaudium 27). For the last 50 years, the Popes have tried to spur the faithful to commit themselves anew to the mission ad gentes (to those who have not yet heard the Gospel) as well as to the new evangelization of those given up the practice of the faith. Now, the Church’s chief missionary begins his papacy with 34 years of experience putting that summons into action. He will, therefore, be able to lead the Church’s worldwide fishing expedition with even greater credibility, conviction and confidence.
Together with our new missionary pope, let’s get ready to lower the nets.
