the issues in Pope Leo XIV’s in-tray

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has inherited a raging battle for not only the soul of the Catholic Church, but also its place in the geopolitical world.

The new pope will have to decide whether his global pulpit will continue Pope Francis’ broadly progressive legacy, or revert to a more conservative approach. The first American pontiff will grapple with the spiritual decline in the church’s European power base, coupled with its rise in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. And he will be forced to confront the legacy of the decadeslong sexual abuse scandal.

“Usually the most important thing that the pope has to take care of is the Catholic Church — but right now it’s much more complicated because we are in a time of global disruption,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor and world-leading expert on the church’s inner workings, based at Villanova University. “The church is much more global than ever before, so the cardinals will have to consider what it means to elect a global leader of the Catholic Church in this situation.”

Here’s a look at what’s in the ecclesiastical inbox:

Sexual abuse scandal

After hundreds of thousands of cases emerged in dozens of countries over the past century, the church’s endemic sexual abuse scandal is far from resolved.

Cases continue to be uncovered, and although Francis went further than his predecessors in addressing this, campaigners said he did nowhere near enough.

“The next pope must institute a zero tolerance law for sexual abuse that immediately removes abusive clergy and leaders who have covered up abuse from ministry,” Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, a Chicago-based watchdog, said before Leo was elected.

“He must use his authority to enact fundamental, institutional changes to end the systematic practice of sexual abuse and its concealment,” it said.

Ideology

Francis was widely seen as a progressive force, at least compared with predecessors and peers. He allowed priests to informally bless same-sex couples, asking, “Who am I to judge?” And over doctrinal dogma he favored topics such as global capitalism and the climate crisis.

Though this was not cut-and-dried (he likened abortions to “hiring a hitman”), his message enraged conservative traditionalists, including those on the American hard right, who would like to see Francis’ successor revert to what they believe are the church’s core teachings.

“In a time when illiberalism is gaining ground internationally,” Francis’ “messaging was an unexpected oasis for many, and unwelcomingly out of step for others,” said Effie Fokas, a research associate specializing in geopolitics and religion at the London School of Economics and Political Science before Thursday’s election of Leo.

“So there is great anticipation over whether the church will, on the one hand, choose to be an oasis or, rather, in step with the waves of right-wing conservatism sweeping over the United States and much of Europe and beyond.”

Geopolitics

Whether Leo likes it or not, the new leader of 1.4 billion Catholics will become a leading voice in an upended world. Francis chose to use that platform to pontificate against the war in the Gaza Strip, for example, and even rebuked President Donald Trump’s stance on immigration.

The next pope can choose to continue these fulminations, or not. But even a less outspoken pope would be notable by his absence on the world stage.

“Francis has been a beacon of hope in the world, probably the only ethical helm in the (sinking) ship of global politics,” said Sara Silvestri, a senior lecturer in international politics at City St. George’s, University of London, in an email.

She hoped the new pope wouldn’t “fall in the trap of siding with” any one political faction, but rather “bypass this by emphasizing the universality of the Christian message, and its core values of justice and mercy that are non negotiable and cannot fit into the narrow box of a political party or political ideology.”

Geography

A key element of how the new pontiff navigates these roiling waters will be his approach to the rapidly changing demographics of the church.

Europe’s Catholic population fell by nearly half a million in 2022, according to the Vatican’s most recent figures, released late last year. Meanwhile, the Catholic population grew by 7.3 million in Africa, 5.9 million in North and South America, and about 900,000 in Asia.

The number of priests tracks the European decline and rise elsewhere, the figures show.

So a big issue for the new pope will be how to address the needs of a church whose followers are increasingly based in the Global South.

“We need a pope who understands the issues facing the Third World,” Piere Domerson, a priest from Haiti who is studying in Rome, told NBC News shortly before Leo’s election was announced. 

“We always remember how Pope Francis understood this universality of the church,” he said in St. Peter’s Square. “And because he appointed more cardinals from outside Europe, we have seen that become more universal, too.”

Néstor Medina, a professor of religious ethics and culture at the University of Toronto, said people in the Global South are “becoming more actively vocal about the church’s involvement with colonization.”

That means if the new pope wants “to keep people in the church, then social justice, ecology and critique of capitalism will still have to be front and center of the new papacy,” he said.

Managing these changing currents will not be straightforward — the developing world is not a monolith. While many progressive Catholic voices have come from Latin America, a number of African bishops, also for example, can be among the most conservative when it comes to same-sex couples, divorce and cohabiting outside of marriage.