From Gemelli to Gemelli: Leone’s first 18 months

Nineteen months ago, Pope Francis was discharged from the Policlinico Gemelli in Rome. Today, Pope Leo XIV returned there, greeted by a large crowd, to undergo an operation to remove a lump in his lung, discovered during a routine check-up. “It was detected at a very early stage and was well localised. The doctors consider it advisable to operate and, following their advice, I have decided to undergo surgery to remove it,” he said at the end of the latest Sunday Angelus. Due to his hospitalisation, which is expected to last a week, all audiences have been cancelled until Tuesday 20 October. However, the apostolic journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, scheduled for 6 November – his first since the operation – has been confirmed. The most recent apostolic journey – to France, which took place from 25 to 28 September – drew millions of the faithful to Paris, Lourdes and Metz, including 80,000 young people who, on Friday evening at the Saint-Denis stadium, sang the Salve Regina a cappella, holding rosaries and taking thousands of photos with their smartphones.

It is, after all, the throngs of people that have characterised the last 18 months of Pope Leo’s pontificate: a collective embrace with the faithful, from the 900,000 attendees at the Rimini Meeting (where the Augustinian Pontiff reduced the usual motley crew of politicians – who occupy entire pages in the newspapers throughout the six-day event – to a virtually insignificant sideshow), right through to the packed prayer vigil last August at Tor Vergata to mark the Youth Jubilee. In recent months everything has seemed to follow the model of a ‘great tent’ under which all Catholics can coexist peacefully, despite holding different views on morality and politics. This idea was put forward by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who led the Archdiocese of Chicago from 1982 to 1996 and was, for two decades, the undisputed leader of the liberal American Church – the one that predated the culture war. This idea of the ‘big tent’, as we note here, appears evident in this pontificate. It is no coincidence that the papal motto encapsulates it: in illo uno, unum – in Him who is one, we are one. 

For Leo XIV, unity is a serious matter, not merely a slogan for a motto or a stamp. The faithful seem to have grasped this, though commentators perhaps not quite so much. In the early months of his pontificate, in fact, there was a sense, if not of disappointment (an excessive term), then at least of disorientation surrounding Leo. ‘Too stiff’, people were heard to say: too silent, not incisive enough on the geopolitical stage, too slow to reshape the machinery of government by implementing the spoils system (expected by some) or by confirming the status quo (as hoped for by others). As we recall here, it took four and a half months to choose his successor at the Congregation for Bishops, and someone immediately and tactfully pointed out that Francis took just two weeks to find someone to take his place in Buenos Aires – not exactly the most insignificant diocese on the face of the earth. It took another four and a half months to appoint the second secretary, chosen from the diocese of San Miniato. Then there is the war, the world falling to pieces, and the Pope’s voice issuing appeals on Wednesdays and Sundays, making a couple of jokes on Tuesday evenings as he leaves Castel Gandolfo – yet he does not display that Bergoglian punch that used to thrill the press rooms and guarantee the stressed-out Vatican correspondents a headline-grabbing story.

Some have voiced their disappointment by ranting in the pages of newspapers, as Don Paolo Farinella did when he wrote in Il Fatto Quotidiano that “the Pope does not speak out, but he suffers, he grieves, he invites, he urges, he pleads and… he acts like an American. Perhaps, had he given it a few more seconds’ thought, he would have been better off calling himself Leoncello I, a sweet little puppy’. And there are those on the ultra-conservative American right who have expressed outrage precisely over the award given to the self-styled Catholic Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who, whilst committed to the fight against discrimination against migrants, is a staunch advocate of abortion in the Bonini mould.  The anomaly, however, is not Prevost the procrastinator: the anomaly has been the pontificate of Francis. And indeed, the Augustinian Pontiff has imposed a sober shift in communication, characterised by simplicity of gesture and an absence of camera-friendly theatrics the likes of which we have not seen for some time. 

No grandstanding, neither in front of the young people at the Jubilee nor in the face of the numerous attacks from the White House. In April, President Trump insulted Pope Leo, calling him "WEAK on crime and terrible at foreign policy", in response to his criticism of the war in Iran and his calls for peace. On board the plane to Algiers, the Pope replied: “I am not afraid of the Trump administration, nor of speaking out loud about the message of the Gospel.” Not even a month later, Trump was at it again, and in an interview with the Salem News Channel he said: “He thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon; I don’t think that’s a good thing. I believe he is putting many Catholics and many other people at risk.”

The break with the White House was accompanied by another, far more significant schism of a religious nature: the Lefebvrian schism. A troubled and painful history characterised by two serious rifts which led the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X, founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, to separate from the Pope and from communion with the Church of Rome, committing—on two occasions—the schismatic act of consecrating bishops without papal authorisation and against the Pope’s will. The first schism, dating back to 1988, was followed by a second in July 2026, when the Lefebvrians consecrated four new bishops in Écône (Switzerland) without Leo’s authorisation. On 2 July 2026, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared the formal schism and the consequent latae sententiae excommunication. The Pope’s efforts to heal the rift proved in vain. “I beg you and ask you with all my heart: turn back!”, he wrote at the end of June in a letter addressed to the Lefebvrian Superior General, Father Davide Pagliarani: “I urge you to give careful consideration to the spiritual good of the faithful, for the schismatic act you would commit would deprive them of the lawful and, in some cases, even valid reception of the sacraments which they love and seek for their own sanctification.” Fr Pagliarani’s reply arrived the following day, on 1 July: “We are prepared to pay any price to save the Church. The sacrifice God asks of us today is to be treated as rebels, but we wish to serve the Church as a mother in distress, who is suffering, a mother who is sometimes betrayed, a mother who needs and deserves to be loved. We could remain indifferent,” he added, “but that would be to betray the Church.” He then went on to praise today as “a historic day, a celebration”.

Special reports, lengthy apostolic journeys, internal rifts and unprecedented diplomatic clashes. Pope Leone’s first 18 months have seen a succession of various events and ongoing conflicts (on the Ukrainian conflict, his position has always been crystal clear). Today, smiling and reserved, he is preparing to face a new and delicate challenge. In this climate of extreme transparency, however, it is clear that the Vatican is once again plunged, after just eighteen months, into a climate of uncertainty. One thing is certain, however: the affection of the crowd who, from the early hours of the morning, had been waiting for him outside the Policlinico.