When Attila the Hun marched his bristling barbarian horde up to the gates of Rome in 452, unsatiated with the conquest of the Italian countryside left devastated and desperate in their wake, he was met by a man. This man knelt between the Hun and the Eternal City and, according to a blend of history and legend, said these words:
“The people of Rome, once conquerors of the world, now kneel conquered. We pray for mercy and deliverance. O Attila, you could have no greater glory than to see suppliant at your feet this people before whom once all peoples and kings lay suppliant. You have subdued, O Attila, the whole circle of the lands granted to the Romans. Now we pray that you, who have conquered others, should conquer yourself. The people have felt your scourge. Now they would feel your mercy.”
Then, Attila’s disbelieving eyes beheld two resplendent figures flanking the emissary, bearing flaming swords over his gray head as he knelt in humble submission. Drawing back, Attila saw a glorious army ten thousand times greater than his own, ranked in rows of flashing fire above the city. The man’s entreaty echoed in his ears like a command. The warlord swore to a truce and drove his legions across the Po River and away.
The title “Great” was not first given to Pope Leo for small reason.
The title “Great” was not first given to Pope Leo for small reason.Tweet ThisNearly sixteen hundred years later, Pope Leo XIV called out a warlord as well. The whole world heard that Leo XIV was diagnosed with lung cancer, but less proclaimed was that he called Vladimir Putin while recovering from surgery in Gemelli Hospital. Taking the initiative himself, Leo pleaded with the Russian president for a humanitarian ceasefire for the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, in Ukraine’s Kherson region, where some 2,000 civilians are trapped and imperiled by the fighting.
As with his namesake, who also called out an imposing commander at a time when the world was not poised to know all manner of events instantaneously, Leo XIV’s quiet call to Putin bespeaks the caution and initiative of a prudent administrator. Difficult as it is—and perhaps even impossible—Leo is navigating the balance between publicity and privacy that the papacy should have.
Just imagine if Pope Leo XIV had met Putin in person, as Pope Leo the Great met Attila the Hun. It would almost certainly have been emblazoned across the entire world. The majority of people on the globe would’ve instantly known about it, formed an opinion, or had their opinion formed for them. Billions would’ve been edified or scandalized or scoffed at such a wild intersection of religion and politics and all of its insinuations, influences, and instigations. It would’ve been insane.
Then the internet storm of posts and podcasts would settle down to its customary simmer. The trolls would creep back beneath their bridges to spring out another day, and the collective consciousness would move on—but not unchanged. This way that the world now has of immediate public proclamation and public reaction does injury to the character of the papacy, an office that requires more discretion and discernment than modern media allows. The pope is an administrator, not an entertainer, legislator, or personality.
November 10 is the feast day of St. Leo the Great (c. 400-461), who led the Church with remarkable administrative strength and steadiness, making him the patron saint of popes. Like Leo XIV, he negotiated humbly with a warlord of his day… and the world, Catholic or otherwise, did not need to know it in real time—which may be a good reminder for the popes in these days of instant information (which is often incomplete) and instant impression (which is often incorrect).
The pope is an administrator, not an entertainer, legislator, or personality.Tweet ThisThe stability of Leo the Great should be central to the papacy—especially in an age as unstable as this. Pope Leo held the Chair of St. Peter from 440 to 461, and from it projected the holiness of Rome and, by virtue of the See of St. Peter, ruled by doctrine rather than dominion. Rome was, and yet is, the heart of the Kingdom of God on earth, and Leo defended it despite the riches and renown of Constantinople.
Though his might was manifested in meekness with Attila the Hun, Pope Leo’s assertive strength as the Vicar of Christ was a theological force during his pontificate. In 451, he gathered the largest group of bishops up to that point for the Council of Chalcedon: a council to strategize against heresies arising from the East and particularly Constantinople. At the Council, Jesus Christ’s dual nature in one Divine Person was defined and dogmatized in Pope Leo’s epistle, called the Tome, which was read aloud at the Council. Upon this inspired articulation of the hypostatic union, the bishops reported, “Peter has spoken through Leo.”
And Peter speaks through all the popes as much as they work with God’s grace to administer to Catholics with the peaceful security of the Church whose reign will not end. On this feast day of Pope St. Leo the Great, Catholics should unite in prayer that Pope Leo XIV be guided by his original namesake as he administers the Church in an era that has long grown intolerant of the kind of administration that Leo the Great wielded, where heresies Leo could never have imagined are commonplace. And one of the things that hampers the administrative action of the papal office is how so much is cast before the undiscriminating public eye for indiscriminate public consumption.
The pope is not meant to administer to the Church through 𝕏 or to have every word that he may say offhandedly about being pro-life blasted far and wide, or his immediate reaction about a bluster from Donald Trump published everywhere, or his awkward encounter with people like the female Archbishop of Canterbury shouted from the rooftops. The pope is a person and, like everyone else, he will not hold up to constant scrutiny. The pope should administer with some distance, therefore, and not in a spotlight that funnels into the feed frenzy. That is not how the papacy has ever worked or is supposed to work.
The pope should administer with some distance, therefore, and not in a spotlight that funnels into the feed frenzy.Tweet ThisThe pope should be an anchor—steady and unseen. Catholics should feel the fixedness of the Church in procedures that diplomatically eradicate the wishy-washy, the weird, and the wicked. As Pope Leo the Great abolished heresies and schisms arising in the East, and defended the rise of Rome, the likes of Fiducia Supplicans and Traditionis Custodes should be shelved firmly and unceremoniously. As Pope Leo the Great dismissed the errors of Eutyches and Nestorius, the likes of Cardinal Victor Fernández and Fr. James Martin should be quietly and respectfully relegated into obscurity. Catholics should hear a clear, calm pronouncement about salvation, peace, and life and not associate the pope and Church teaching with soundbites.
This trend is damaging because it degrades the office of the Supreme Pontiff, who is not a secular figure. Nevertheless, Catholics are all too used to hearing from the secular organs about how the pope voted in the midterm elections, or that he weighed in cheekily on the Notre Dame vs. Villanova basketball game, or that he had an audience with Bob Dylan. The pope should not be subject to internet twittering. He should appear as what he is: the rock—simple, solid, and largely silent on secular affairs.
Pope St. Leo the Great was a regal saint, a Doctor of the Church, a kingly pope serving the King of kings, and a lion of God who roared for His glory. It’s hard to imagine how he would have dealt with social media and news stories about his encounter with Attila, but today, the fourteenth of his name has done a similar act with Putin and avoided broadcast. He also stepped forth as the pope in addressing the threat of AI, insofar as it is a threat, with Magnifica Humanitas.
Time will tell how the pope continues to circumnavigate the online tractor-beams, but there is a similarity brewing between him and his saintly namesake. May the administrative spirit of Pope St. Leo the Great be with Pope Leo XIV in these days of flitting news cycles and reactionary viral influence. The pope is to call out the warlords that threaten the peace of the Church, as these Leos did, but the administration of the Church is properly done on knees and in cabinets and not over the internet. Pope St. Leo the Great, pray for us and for Pope Leo XIV.
The author makes some valid points, and some good suggestions, but Pope Leo brings the problems of communications on himself, as did Pope Francis.
If you are going to hold press conferences on airplanes and just sort of wing the answers to reporters questions, you are not is a position to complain about it being transmitted world wide.
I believe that MB makes some valid points about Ukraine that we never hear in our news media. Prior to the war Ukraine was listed as the most corrupt country in Western Europe
Please stop parroting left wing propaganda, comparing Putin to Attila the Hun, and calling him a warlord. Is he a nice guy? Probably not. Is he a friend of the Catholic Church? Certainly not. Is his a champion of conservatism and some kind of hero? No. But he is someone who has Russia’s best interests in mind, and the Russian people’s.
I suggest watching Shawn Ryan’s “Delta Force Commander Explains the Origins of the Ukraine War” on Youtube, if you want to know how things really went down in Ukraine. The Obama and Biden administrations and the CIA and other western intelligence agencies were 100% responsible for the war in Ukraine – not Putin. They orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected pro-Russian Ukrainian government of 2014, installing the Zelensky government, who then began shelling ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. This prompted Putin to invade, to protect them and prevent literally ethnic cleansing from happening. If preventing a genocide makes Putin a monster then you and I have very different values.
The West and its intelligence agencies, particularly those of a left-wing bent, since the time of the Clinton administration, has been trying to undermine and destroy Russia, to break it up into smaller nations that are more susceptible to western left-wing influence. The goal behind the war in Ukraine is to sacrifice Ukraine in a brutal war of attrition, to wear down Russia to the point where civil disorder inside Russia breaks out, which they can take advantage of. Early on the Ukrainians wanted to reach a peace agreement with Russia but the Biden administration would not allow it. The West will not allow any peace agreement, because they are using the war as a proxy to inflict as much cost/damage on Russia as possible. The UK is most especially culpable here.
The amount of propaganda in the West concerning this war is incredible, even to the point where many conservatives have swallowed all of it. Here are some things the western media won’t tell you: 1. Zelinsky’s alliance with Ukrainian Azov neo-Nazi groups, 2. Forced conscription and press gangs that beat and even kill men trying to avoid enlistment, 3. The Azov torture-prison, for dissenters and people trying to avoid enlistment, 4. Ukrainian drones deliberately targeting Russian civilians, including children, 5. Confiscation of passports of foreign mercenaries, essentially pressing them into service forever or until they die, 6. Selling their drone expertise and technology (which we and Europe gave them) to Latin American drug smugglers, 7. Billions and billions of dollars of fraud, and money just gone missing.
I am not trying to make Putin into a clear-cut “good guy” here, but he is also not a monster. The real monsters are here in the West.
Trump’s biggest foreign policy mistake was not Iran, but rather not trying to deescalate this situation and cut off all support of Zelinsky. The escalation of the Biden administration here was taking us on a path to WW3, and should a Democrat become president again we will be back on that path. Putin has said that he will not use nukes in Ukraine, because of the large number of ethnic Russians there. But he will not hesitate to use them against the West, should they continue escalation. The best thing that could happen before the next Democrat presidency is for Russia to capture all of Donbas, break through the Ukrainian lines, besiege Kiev, and force surrender on their terms, with no one in the West having a say so. That is if we want to avoid WW3.
I have no idea how much reading you’re likely to do, but you might see if your local library has “Harvest of Sorrow” by Robert Conquest to fill in a few blanks in your historical knowledge of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine (and Poland, and Lithuania, and Romania, and more) owe Putin and his Soviet-slobbering thugs nothing but resistance. Stalin never died for the likes of Putin and his toadies; one of mankind’s greatest scourges lives forever in their hearts as a symbol of Russian greatness. Sorry if you share that affection. Okay to hate on Zelensky if that makes you feel better but please limit your propaganda to that and spare us from believing in Putin’s “manifest destiny”. =
I am indeed familiar with the Holodomir and the horrific events that Stalin and the USSR perpetrated in Ukraine back in the 1930’s. And yes, Stalin was the most monstrous leader of a powerful, modern day nation ever. But I don’t understand how events of 90 years ago, no matter how horrific, justifies a modern day, USAID/Soros-funded CIA backed action to overthrow a popularly elected government in Ukraine, the installation of a puppet government there, and ethnic cleansing against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine for the obvious purpose of starting a war? How can any Christian be ok with something like this, regardless of the past? I get it, almost everyone in Eastern Europe, and a significant number of people in western Ukraine hates Russians and has good reasons from the past to do so and I am not going to question that animosity, but does that justify stuff like this? There are 10k’s, if not 100k’s of Ukrainian men in their 20’s living as refugees in Europe now. If it is such a worthy cause then why are they not back in Ukraine fighting for it? At least from a western standpoint, the USSR was evil because it was communist, not because it was dominated by Russians. The irony is that the modern EU is getting closer and closer every day to what the USSR once was, while modern day Russia is not.
I don’t like Putin, and he is not an ally of any westerner, whether conservative or liberal, but he simply does not fall into the same category as the old Soviet leaders. And if you want to accuse me of historical ignorance, one thing I suspect you are unaware of is that it is considered extremely taboo in both Russian and Ukrainian culture to ever speak ill of the dead for any reason, no matter how terrible and evil the dead person was. This is why you won’t hear Putin condemning Stalin, and rarely ever hear any other Russians doing it. Khrushchev did indeed do that back in the 50’s (very unprecedented) and it backfired on him. You can call this a fault of Russian and Ukrainian culture and people, and it is because it is important to learn from the past and call out evil when it exists, but it is what it is. It does not mean that Putin idolizes Stalin, and wants to rule in the same manner.
If you tell a little girl not to pet a dog because it bites and she keeps petting it and gets bit, whose fault is it?
The Cold War stayed a cold war because neither side went this far in their actions against the other. If the US had done this in an Eastern Bloc country in the 60’s or 70’s it would have unquestionably started WW3. Even the “nicest” of the Soviet Premiers was more of a monster than Putin (and yet, Putin is not a nice guy – I never said he was). Yet the Cold War never went hot, because both sides had enough respect for the other to avoid such extreme provocation. That does not mean that we liked them (well, some liberals did indeed like the USSR), but we at least respected them.
At least modern western liberals have absolutely no respect for modern Russia, and obviously are ok with aggressive acts of provocation against it. This should scare everyone, as the old MAD doctrine no longer applies. Russia has ballistic missiles that can vaporize cities in Europe in less than 3 minutes from their launch, before the launch is even detected by NATO. They travel at supersonic speeds straight up into space, travel through space, and then straight down. They are nearly impossible to detect, and impossible stop even if detected. If Putin was Stalin incarnate then he would have already used something like this, and probably against the US during the second Obama administration.