What we feared from the beginning is starting to be confirmed. Leo XIV is not a break with Francis’s pontificate, far from it, nor a return to the doctrinal and liturgical clarity we longed for. It is the consolidation, the digestion, the Hegelian step that turns into “normal” what was still being discussed yesterday.
From the beginning, it was foreseeable: a discreet Pope, with a mozzetta, without ostentation, with a Marian air that seems to restore normality. But beneath the surface, the script is clear: consolidate the conquered ground and wait for the next screen. We warned about it: if a Pope identical to Francis in form had emerged, the rejection would have been immediate. So they present us with an apparently calm successor, who takes refuge in symbols of continuity with tradition, while in the interview with Elise Ann Allen he makes it clear that he plays by the rules of the Overton window: no setbacks, forced calm, but with the starting point of Fiducia supplicans already assumed.
And he says it without beating around the bush: that is what is given, that is what is inherited, that is not to be touched because it is the minimum accepted. From there, everything is waiting. Waiting for those who resist to age and disappear. Waiting for the polarization to subside when Sarah, Burke, Müller, Schneider die. Waiting for time to pave the way.
Is anyone surprised? It was evident. Leo XIV was brought to Rome by Bergoglio to be prefect of the bishops. No one reaches that position without the most personal endorsement from the reigning Pope. To believe that that man, placed by Francis at the heart of the episcopal appointment machinery, was going to be the restorer was to deceive oneself. We thought we had pulled it off. The reality is different: in the conclave, someone scored a goal on us. And the goal was scored on us.
This Pope speaks of unity, of avoiding polarization. But at what cost? What he calls “unity” is nothing but domestication. A Church that resigns itself to living with Fiducia supplicans as a starting point. A Church in which the German and Belgian experiments are criticized half-heartedly, but tolerated in practice. A Church in which Francis is cited as an authority, to say “I will not do more than he did”… but also “I will not undo anything he left established.”
The tactic is transparent: preserve what has been conquered and normalize it. Consolidate in silence, without ostentation, wrapping everything in a pious and Marian tone. Hegel applied to ecclesiology: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. What was radical yesterday becomes the accepted today, and the field is prepared for tomorrow’s radicality.
The serious thing is that many, perhaps too many, wanted to deceive themselves. They clung to the gesture of the mozzetta, to the rosary in hand, to the pious phrase. But the interview lays it bare: Leo XIV is pure continuity, without setbacks, without undoing anything. There is no turning back.
That is why this pontificate will not be a parenthesis, but the logical step in the domestication of the Church. It is not the axe that uproots tradition at once, but the cement that fixes the cut already made. And the most painful thing is to recognize that we knew it. That the evidence was there. That there is no betrayal, but naivety on our part.
The conclave did not give us a Pope who “wouldn’t be so bad.” The conclave gave us the continuation of Francis, disguised as calm. And now the only clear thing is that we are in the next phase of the plan.