Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, elected Pope Leo XIV!

Progressive American Catholics are celebrating the selection of the former Chicago native who attended the Augustinian-sponsored Villanova University in Philadelphia and has been a champion of migrants through all his years serving as a bishop in Peru. He also represented the Church at a November conference in Rome that brought together people from Latin America to discuss the global impacts of the ongoing environmental crisis. He warned against the “harmful” consequences of unfettered reliance on technology, and echoed the words of Pope Francis at the conference to “put words into action” protecting the environment. Like Pope Francis, Pope Leo has a background in science, having taught physics as a young man — the first two popes with scientific training in more than a thousand years!

Perhaps most powerfully, his choice of the name Leo connotes one of the towering figures in Church history, Pope Leo XIII, an intellectual figure who first articulated the Catholic Social Justice Tradition — standing up with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum for the rights of workers — including a fair wage through a right to organize, safe working conditions, and limitations on the abuses of capitalism at the turn of the Century. Long live Pope Leo!!