Believers and non-believers, right-wing, left-wing ,center and bewildered, are all united by one hidden feeling toward this pope: the hope of being, at last, faced with a true leader, with a head on his neck, with a brain that reasons and does not spit out judgments, with a heart that pumps the blood of humanity, a now rare commodity of which we have lost track in the world dominated by hatred, divisions, and the retreat of each person back onto himself in the noisy and vacuous enclosure of his own tribe.
Today there is a harried and unconfessed search for a guide who knows how to set fixed points without asking each person to give up his or her identity, an identity moreover that is increasingly fragile, volatile, exposed like a twig to the storms of an age in which those values, loudly proclaimed and trampled upon with cynical destructive glee, have been destroyed.
The Pope today is this: a symbol to look to in order to find oneself, without necessarily having to convert or make a profession of obedience to his supreme authority
It is as if the world is looking for an authority who is gentle but reassuring, firm but understanding, a dispenser of security but ready to understand doubts and torments: a father who is also a mother, brother and sister, friend and friend, a companion on the road so as not to get lost and not to give up at the first stone that stands in the way.
All this is both sacred and profane mixed together, without the latter outraging the former and without the former suffocating the latter.
The orgy of bosses and ringleaders who come and go like clowns in the circus of politics, TV, and social media has now saturated othe contemporary man's capacity to tolerate an army of influencers, skillful calculators of their own interests and puppeteers of straggling individuals.
The human being of the first quarter of the 21st century is tired of voting for the self-styled leader on duty who proclaims himself to be a man-strong and then proves himself to be strong only by his arrogance, his ability to deceive, to abuse the consensus he gathers by manipulating minds.
There is a need for authenticity. And everyone hopes to find it in the one who was chosen by a mix of men navigated and used to power but inspired by the most neglected and least considered component of the Trinity in which the complicated Christian divinity is articulated. A vindication of the Holy Spirit that may appeal even to those unfamiliar with Theology who perceived in the election of Leo XIV something beyond what men alone can manage.
Leo XIV is perceived this way today: a missionary of hope who can help people feel better and worthy of the life they have been given.
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