Pope Leo XIV proclaims 'evil will not prevail'
The new pope is the first from the U.S. & the first Augustinian friar to serve as spiritual leader of the Catholic Church. In first remarks, he calls for a missionary church focused on service.
The new leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV, is a graduate of Villanova University. That is a point of joy and celebration for me, on a personal level — not just for the bragging rights, but because I believe the Augustinian culture of Villanova offers a real opportunity to bring more good into the world.
As an Augustinian center of learning, Villanova emphasizes that learning is a necessary part of doing good for others. This is not about power or privilege, but about reasoned clarity and freedom of moral choice. Augustine of Hippo (commonly known as St. Augustine) observed that one cannot make virtuous choices if one does not know they are choosing right over wrong. Knowledge cannot come from indoctrination; knowledge comes from engagement with evidence.
Augustine wrote that “the truth is fragrant”; it calls you to it. Access to evidence is engagement with a trail of breadcrumbs that are elements of divine truth. They lead you to knowledge, and from there, you can rightly determine that a given choice is virtuous. By contrast, refusing to follow those breadcrumbs is a decision to renounce moral choice.
In the Augustinian tradition, evidence, truth, learning, and knowledge, are tied to service. We are bound to each other by a fundamental ethical obligation. Science is an ethical duty, for all of us. We have a duty never to stop asking questions, lest we let assumptions and prejudices do violence to the innocent.
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost is an example of this teaching. His own learning led him to his vocation of service. He served as a missionary, a local parish priest, and a bishop in Chiclayo, Perú. He is known by those he served among not as a patriarch, but as a servant leader who was always grateful for the opportunity to live and work among them, to walk the moral journey of faith with them.
In his first remarks as Pope Leo XIV, he thanked those he served with in Chiclayo for always accompanying him, and he called on all Catholics to walk together, to be allies of those in need, and to be part of the joyous work of ensuring that “evil will not prevail.”
In his first mass, in the Sistine Chapel, today, he tackled the thorny question of power versus service head on, calling for “a missionary church” that aligns with and uplifts “ordinary people”.
He warned that in today’s world, many institutions and individuals treat this true Christianity as “absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent”.
The passion for unabashed hard power seems ascendant, and this poses a moral and practical crisis for peoples in all regions of the world.
He warned that faith does not seek or prefer “other securities… like technology, money, success, power or pleasure.”
He framed faith not as rigid enforcement of doctrine, but as moving one to dignified action and service to others, and said the missionary work of an open-hearted community of faith is “desperately needed”.
In all of this, Pope Leo XIV is communicating a core Augustinian principle, and the founding spirit of Villanova University: Each of us is responsible for seeking knowledge, for the purpose of informing our ability to be of service, to reduce the opportunities for evil to spread and to expand the space for grace and justice.
We should celebrate the fact that Pope Leo appears committed to continuing the message of Pope Francis — that all people deserve decency and dignity and that the powerful should make themselves small while uplifting those who do not hold institutional power.
In my view, his personal history and his opening messages tell us he will continue Pope Francis’ message about the need to care for Creation. It is a fundamental moral duty to consider evidence and to prevent irreversible damage to life-giving systems we did not create and cannot replace.
In choosing the name Leo, Cardinal Prevost evoked the example of Pope Leo I, who in the year 452 persuaded Attila the Hun not to slaughter the people of Rome, urging him to “Conquer yourself” and show that he was big enough to show mercy.
In the 1840s, when Villanova University was established, a surge in terrorist violence was targeting immigrants, Catholics, and centers of learning. The ‘Know Nothings’ burned the St. Augustine Church in Philadelphia. Pope Leo is calling for moral courage from all — for the powerful to make themselves small, to be decent and merciful, for the intolerant to conquer themselves and open their hearts, and for those without power to stand against evil, work to prevent atrocities, and bring grace into the world.