Photograph Source: U.S. Department of State – Public Domain

The world of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and similar believers in transactional reality has created a moral vacuum. There is an urgent need to find some moral authority to re-establish a balance. To that end, what can the new Pope do? What moral power can the new Pope use when “popes now have no more than a marginal influence on the opinions and behavior of the faithful,” Fintan O’Toole observed in The New York Review of Books.

The election of Robert Francis Prevost as Pope Leo XIV was a global event. There was worldwide media attention as the 133 cardinals’ deliberated. Hundreds of millions waited for the puffs of white smoke. Given the widespread fascination with the Pope’s selection and inauguration, can the new Pope be a source of global moral authority beyond just being the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics and the Catholic Church? As an American, for example, will he stand up against Trump’s dehumanizing immigrants, attacks on multilateralism, and denial of the climate crisis?

What is the Pope’s power to act? Josef Stalin is reputed to have asked, “Have many divisions does the Pope have? For Stalin, power was based on military strength. The Papal Swiss Guard – the 135 Swiss military elite who make up “the world’s smallest army” – certainly don’t count as a serious military force.

But Pope Leo XIV raised other possibilities of power in his initial public address; the power of the Church to be positively involved in geopolitical realities and the possibility for him to be a force for peace.

This is how the Pontiff began his first public speech: “Peace be with you – Dearest brothers and........

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