The resemblance is striking and profound!!

And so we have a new Holy Father, who is carrying on the name from Leo XIII very interestingly, and he has also implied well, within the contents of his inaugural speech¹ that he is astutely following on from where his predecessor, the beloved Pope Francis has left off.

So many beautiful adulations about Pope Francis from our new Leo XIV 🦁 that there is no doubt we can be assured of a rather streamlined follow-on. I just have to love and remark about the correlative resemblance between him, Pope Paul VI, and Archbishop Oscar Romero! There is just something so uncannily overlapping that I cannot withhold stressing this correlation here. Of course there’s the Latin American connection with our new Holy Father, who was, prior to his election known as Cardinal Robert Francis Provost, having served missionally for a time in the slums of Peru! Now, his living amongst the poorest of the poor in a Latin American nation is also something of another interesting similarity – apart from physical appearance – with Oscar Romero.

The other wow-some thing about our newly elected pontiff is that he is a monastic! An Augustinian to be precise. It wouldn’t surprise me if it were the case that we have not seen a monk rise to the Chair of Peter since the Middle Ages 🤣 I am inclined to think that the vast majority, if not all the successors of St Peter at least in our more recent times, have not come from religious orders. In some senses, Pope Francis being a Jesuit was probably the closest to monastic we have had for some time only because he, was from a religious order, whereas most if not all the more recent installations have been from diocesean backgrounds.

I am also amazed that our newly elected bears some semblance to Pope Paul VI. Now, Paul VI has an awesome legacy because he really challenged so many things that needed confronting, things that were standing in the way of the Church bearing more fruitful witness beyond the bounds of what I will call the more familiar. He sowed generously into previously uncharted areas and overturned the McCarthyite reluctance to really put Nostra Aetete into practice. And there is that inkling discerned from Pope Leo’s inaugural speech, that he too, intends to carry on this legacy, albeit to reach further horizons whilst rekindling those fervers that have perhaps been burning a bit dimly not for lack of care so much as having been set aside temporarily for the sake of timeliness, alongside continuing those others still, which his predecessor faithfully bolstered and maintained.

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Further Reference:

¹ The inaugural speech of our newly elected Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV – see the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/S5R8nrdUBSY?si=EcVxxYvjZA_szN3A