Why Pope Leo XIV probably isn’t that liberal

Frankly, most people knew little about Robert Prevost before his election as pope, so there’s been a scramble to unpick Leo XIV’s past record to judge where he might take the papacy.

We know already that he’s not terribly keen on the President’s repatriation of illegal migrants, nor on J.D. Vance’s particular take on social issues. And he’s got the whole Francis program on putting the poor center stage. There are other Francis touches; when he did visitations to Augustinian communities as head of the order, he’d help with the washing up after dinner. He seems, in fact, a genuinely humble sort.

But it would be a mistake to take from this that Robert Prevost will be another Francis, excitingly disruptive and liberal on the usual matters, such as gender and homosexuality.

Au contraire! There’s been some digging in his previous pronouncements for clues about his views and they’re really not that surprising.

‘The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,’ he told journalists

Crucially, in a 2012 address to bishops, Prevost took a dim view of the popular culture that fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.” Two cases in point being the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.” And as a bishop in Chiclayo in Peru, he opposed a government plan to add teachings on gender in schools. “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,” he told journalists.

Granted, he may have changed during Francis’s pontificate, but all that sounds to me like normal Catholic teaching, not the kind of approach that progressive Catholics might favor. Let’s see what he actually says in the job.