Yesterday Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass to formally inaugurate his Petrine ministry, which began May 8. Cardinals of various theological and ideological preferences in many ways seem to have coalesced around the election of Robert Prevost at least in part because his “record” is more his priestly and episcopal service than a corpus of writings. Perhaps it is indicative of our times. When Karol Wojtyla (on whose 105th birthday Leo’s Mass was celebrated) was elected in 1978, it was said the Spanish cardinals brought copies of Amor y Responsibilidad into the conclave, so impressed were they by the Archbishop of Krakow. Perhaps it says something about our day that the lack of a “paper trail” is more appealing to some.

But into that gap there then steps a variety of tea leaf readers, entrail interpreters, and other diviners all trying to attribute/co-opt the new Pope for themselves. Granted, Vaticanology shares certain commonalities with the old trade of “Sovietologist,” but the musings of the divining class over the past two weeks has been amusing at best.

So, I do not want to suggest where this papacy will go. But I will say one thing that gives me confidence in our new Pope: he is a son of Augustine.

One cannot read St. Augustine without being struck by the importance of order. Order is not some extrinsic quality, some hang-up of obsession or compulsion. It is not a deontological fixation on procedural formalism, “order for order’s sake.” Order in St. Augustine is intrinsically woven into peace, justice, and love. Those things require order. As Augustine writes in City of God (19, 13): “The peace of all things is the tranquility of order.”

Leo’s first words on the loggia May 8 (here) were of “peace” and were a masterful weaving of theology and philosophy. “Peace” is the central message of Easter, the Lord’s own first words to His Apostles in the Upper Room. Peace is reconciliation, whose seed and fruit is love, which dispels fear (the message of another papal beginning). Peace and rest, for Augustine, are not found in the world but in God: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee” (Confessions, 1,1).

To the degree that Leo is a son of Augustine — and everything he’s done so far shows us he is a good Augustinian — Catholics should rest assured that our new Pope appreciates the value of order as a critical component of religion. And, frankly, after 12 years of “making a mess” and confused disorder, it is a peace the Church needs.

We pray for our new Pope, that he lead the restless hearts of his fellow Catholics and his fellow humanity to the one place they will find rest: the Heart of God. And, in this work, let him always be nourished by the awareness of what the Petrine ministry demands, something written in big black letters on gold right around the basilica closest to his window: the mandate of Christ to “confirm your brethren” in the faith.

May God bless Pope Leo XIV and us with the tranquility of order that leads to peace, justice, and love!