When the world screams and God whispers

And now, a fast-paced world full of certainties is interrupted for a few weeks by a Church that insists on speaking the language of signs, silence and reflection. Like its Founder, who wrote in the sand and answered questions with parables, the Church continues to operate in the register of mystery, metaphor and slow revelation. Nothing in it is immediate and everything in it is density, symbolism, amazement and discernment.

At the end of these weeks, we met the new Pope, whose choice, as usual, defies the logic of men and the odds of the “bookmakers”. The new Pope Leo XIV is American by blood, but Andean by vocation. Formed in the bosom of the American Catholic Church, he confirmed his position in a missionary Church, in the vast and diverse territory of Peru, where, for example in Iquitos, in the heart of the Amazon, life is still measured by rhythms closer to the pulse of the earth than to the notifications on a screen.

It is precisely this man who chooses to inherit the name of Leo XIII, the father of the Social Doctrine of the Church, as if he were drawing a line between the cry of the poor and the heart of the Church. Alongside this choice, there are other signs: Cardinal Prevost, appointed by Francis to the Dicastery of Bishops, seems to be a figure of continuity, as if Providence were discreetly weaving a tapestry whose patterns are only revealed when viewed from afar. And how can we fail to see an echo of Francis of Assisi, the man who stripped himself of the world to embrace Jesus Christ, and who had – surprisingly – Brother Leo as his companion and disciple, to whom he wrote words of tenderness and advice. It is no coincidence that the name “Leo” is now resurfacing as an ancient, renewed breath. There are codes that only the heart can read.

Even in the first words of the new Pope, we hear “peace”, “building bridges” and “unity”. Words that leave us in suspense regarding his pontificate, like seeds thrown into the ground that we want to see germinate.

Today, in times of wars, conflicts and polarization, of political leaders who emphasize trenches instead of reconciliation, these are the urgent and necessary words.

For Catholics, the presence of the Holy Spirit is very clear, blowing where He wills and how He wills. Not according to our expectations, but according to His will. And how the Holy Spirit has a sense of humor and a fine taste for irony! Only He could have imagined that the answer to our time of noisy certainties would be given by a symbol so ambiguous, so full of meaning, so poetic and so disconcerting as this new Pope.

Perhaps this is, after all, the miracle: in an era that no longer has time for mystery, mystery still has time for us.