Well, that was unexpected.

[aadler]

Susan and I have been praying daily for a godly choice of the next pope, ever since Francis died. We didn’t anticipate a choice on the second day of the conclave. (First full day? Don’t know.) We certainly weren’t prepared for the announcement of the first ‘American’ pope; since he has both U.S. and Peruvian citizenship, he’d be both the first North American and second South American to hold the papacy.

Initial searches say he’s regarded as a centrist candidate. I’ve heard that before, and when someone says ‘centrist’, my immediate question is, “Okay, who’s defining where the center is?”

Still a lot up in the air. John Paul II was the first pope I paid any attention to, as he was in place when I first entered the Catholic church. I liked John Paul; I liked Benedict; I had hopes for Francis, given that my previous experiences had been positive overall, and then saw those hopes incrementally diminished by statements and actions that seemed designed more to signal his kinship with progressive globalism than to preserve and extend the faith of the Church.

Where will thing go under (now) Leo XIV? I have no way of knowing. I hope for good, but that hope isn’t based yet on anything solid. We’ll just have to see.