Our welcome of Pope Leo XIV is sparking fresh interest in the heritage of Leo XIII (1878-1903), and for a range of reasons! So here, gentle reader, are a few of them to consider.

First is a remarkable meeting. May 17 marked the 100^th anniversary of the canonization of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. There was a time, though, when the Little Flower, as she came to be known, was petitioning the pope to allow her to enter the Carmelites. It was to Pope Leo XIII that she made her case. Later, in a letter to her sister Celine, she reported her words: “Holy Father, in honor of your Jubilee, permit me to enter Carmel at the age of 15!” She added, “The good Pope is so old, one would think he is dead.” The meeting took place in 1887. At the time, Leo was 77. Though his health was precarious, when Thérèse died in 1897, Leo was still living in Rome.

Next comes a prayer. In 1884, Pope Leo authored the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. For many decades it was recited after Mass, and both St. John Paul II and Pope Francis would later encourage its use. The prayer asks Archangel Michael to be our safeguard “against the wickedness and snares of the devil.” Already in the early years of the Church, the Apostle Peter had warned that the devil, “like a roaring lion, seeks those whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5: 8). In some American parishes, Pope Leo’s prayer was offered after Mass in response to the sexual abuse crisis.

Now comes our country. How, in his pontificate, did Pope Leo XIII address the Church in America? His early Aeterni Patris (1879) calls for a renewal of Thomistic philosophy. His best known encyclical, Rerum Novarum (1891), discusses the condition of workers. Only later did he issue Loginque Oceani (1895) on Catholicism in the United States and Testem Benevolentiae (1899) on true and false Americanism in religion.

In his wide-ranging letter on Catholicity in the United States, he notably calls attention to the positive role of synods, including the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), in securing the “happy state” of the Church. He recalls, too, the successful inauguration of the Catholic University of America (1887). Remarking that “he cannot personally visit” everywhere that his ministry extends, he asks for the collaboration of the American bishops with his apostolic delegate. Leo had established the Apostolic Delegation in 1893 to expedite communication with then-president Benjamin Harrison.

But only a few years later, in his letter on true and false Americanism in religion, Leo turned to disputed questions that persist to this day. He wrote, he said, not to further praise a nation “so eager for what is great” but “to point out certain things which are to be avoided.” Perhaps he was reacting to French priests who were distorting the work of Isaac Hecker, the American founder of the Paulist order. In any case, Leo criticized the mentality that the Church should adapt “to our advanced civilization” and “pass over certain heads of doctrine…or to so soften them that they may not have the same meaning which the Church has invariably held.” Here he cites Vatican Council I: “That sense of the sacred dogmas is to be faithfully kept which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and is not to be departed from under the specious pretext of a more profound understanding.” Allow me, then, to repeat that the problem of the true and the false which Leo addressed persists to this day. It is all the more challenging in a culture that is often closed to the dignity of life and the destiny of the human person.

What we need, surely, is the contemplative heart of the Little Flower, the resolve to reject the works of Satan, and the need to call things by their real names. This last, to be sure, is not to be confused with mere name-calling! In 1879 Leo XIII named John Henry Newman a cardinal. Perhaps Leo XIV will name him a Father of the Church. As a recently canonized saint, Newman is a model of discerning and eloquent orthodoxy for these “interesting times.”