The echoes of the requiem for Francisco and enthusiasm for the next pontiff was already boiling throughout Christendom. During the conclave, we all, in public and in private, heard repeated the prayer that "the Holy Spirit will choose whoever he chooses.
What seemed, however, to be an authentic prayer ended up revealing itself as a hidden vow: may the one God wants come out, yes, but may it be mine, or if not, at least may the other one not come out. Showcase piety, directed prayer, ballot-box faith.
And I say this because now that Leo XIV -The veil of neutrality seems to have been lifted, with an air of controlled restoration and a certain recovered liturgical gravity. One begins to perceive, and not in an isolated way, the tone of "now yes", as if at last the Church had a legitimate Pope, as if the previous had been nothing more than a long parenthesis in the magisterium. And then begins, of course, the unbearable litany of comparisons: "Francis said this here and Leo there", "at last he speaks clearly", "this is how a Pope dresses".
It will not be superfluous to remember that Francis was also chosen by God, that he was not an interference in the system or a failure in the matrix. That in the history of the Church, Popes do not succeed one another by correction of errors, but by pure divine providence; and that to compare one with the other is to put the gifts of the Holy Spirit in competition.
I wish for a long papacy, of course, because I wish the Supreme Pontiff a long life. What I do not wish is for it to be long because I have to put up with, for years, this whole legion of professional opinionators who feign piety and obedience while it is clear - because it is obvious - that their fidelity was never with Peter, but with their own idea - often flat, capricious and reduced - of what the primacy should be.
I am enthusiastic about the election of Leo XIV, but honesty with my own faith obliges me today to say out loud that believing in apostolic succession implies believing that God does not improvise, that he leaves nothing to chance and that the Pope of yesterday is, like the Pope of today, a gift and a mystery. Whether he likes it or not. Whether he fits in or not. Whether or not he is the one we would have chosen.
