Curia appointments may provide insights into Leo’s pontificate

He held a meeting with the College of Cardinals and individual meetings with the heads of Vatican offices shortly after his election in May. Like his predecessors, Pope Leo then confirmed the heads of Curia offices on a temporary basis. One of the upcoming appointments will be Leo’s replacement as Prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops.

His choices for members of his team, and whether he decides to have an international Council of Cardinals to advise him, will send signals not only about what he wants to do but also how he wants to do it.

Pope Francis set up the Council of Cardinals early in his pontificate to help him with the reform of the Roman Curia and to advise him on other matters, but he did not make the council a formal body.

September also should bring an announcement about where Pope Leo will live. Several cardinals have said that in the days before the conclave they encouraged the future pope – whoever he would be – to move back into the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace. The move would make security easier, saving the Vatican money and allowing the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where Pope Francis chose to live, to return to full operation as a guesthouse.

In his first public address, moments after his election, Pope Leo said: “We want to be a synodal Church, a Church that moves forward, a Church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close above all to those who are suffering.”

Pope Leo went deeper when he spoke about the key objectives of his ministry – in a pontificate that easily could last 20 years – during a meeting with the College of Cardinals two days after his election.

He asked the cardinals to join him in renewing a “complete commitment to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council”.

That path had six fundamental points that, Pope Leo said, “Pope Francis masterfully and concretely set it forth” in his first exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the Gospel. 

The six points highlighted by Pope Leo were: “the return to the primacy of Christ in proclamation; the missionary conversion of the entire Christian community; growth in collegiality and synodality; attention to the sensus fidei (the people of God’s sense of the faith), especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety; loving care for the least and the rejected; (and) courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities.”

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Pope Leo’s first 100 days: Leaning into his new role | USCCB (By Cindy Wooden/CNS)