Our new pope is a canon lawyer. Pope Leo XIV earned a licentiate in canon law in 1984, and a doctorate in 1987, both from the Dominican-run Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, with a doctoral dissertation titled, “The Office and Authority of the Local Prior in the Order of St. Augustine.” After his studies he served as the judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Trujillo in Peru for almost a decade, from 1989 to 1998, and as professor of canon law, patristics and moral theology at the same archdiocese’s Major Seminary of San Carlos y San Marcelo.
In 1999, then-Father Robert Prevost was elected provincial prior of his Augustinian province based in Chicago, and then prior general of the worldwide Order of St. Augustine in 2001, being reelected for a second term in 2007. After this, he returned to his native province in Chicago before being appointed by Pope Francis the bishop of Chiclayo, also in Peru, where he also served as one of the vice presidents of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference. From here, Bishop Prevost was appointed prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in January 2023 and made a cardinal by Pope Francis later the same year.
What might all of this canon law training and experience mean for Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate? Here are some early thoughts.
Clear truths, communicated effectively
First, his training as a canonist will offer Pope Leo both a solid theological grounding and an eminently practical outlook. Canon law depends on, and arises from, theological truths. Justice demands truth, whether in the settlement of a dispute between parties, the conclusion of a trial, the resolution of some controversy or the day-to-day administration of the Church’s affairs. Good decisions arise from concrete, observable, objective truths: facts, evidence and defined teaching.
So, first of all, we can reasonably expect Pope Leo XIV to be someone who relies on clarity of theological thought and precision of doctrinal language; not simply as an end in itself, but because the just administration of the Church — and so her effectiveness in mission to the world — depends on it. We saw this already with his first words to the crowds gathered below the Loggia of Benedictions on the night of his election, when he preferred to make use of a prepared text rather than opting for off-the-cuff remarks. It seems reasonable to think this will continue when it comes to speaking on issues that demand care and attention.
Secondly, his time as a professor means that Pope Leo XIV has the capacity to communicate these truths in an effective way. The teaching of the Church does not just adorn volumes of books, as important as those are. Rather it informs the life, mission and work of the Church, both in its institutions and in the lives of individual members of the Christian faithful. Knowing the truth is only part of the story. It has to be communicated and promoted in a way that helps people to understand the reasons that undergird it. In this way, canon law is a kind of applied theology: taking Christian doctrine and putting it into practice. Again, this depends on clarity of theological thought, but it also relies on the kind of administrative and governance experience which Pope Leo — as a chancery official, professor, religious superior, bishop and Roman Curia official — has in spades.
A desire for all people to find truth, justice and charity in the Church
Finally, the fundamental reliance on truth and concern for justice that stir the hearts of canonists find particular expression in a desire to see that all people experience the Church at her best. That is to say, to see that all people are met with both truth and justice as an extension of authentic Christian charity. This is true in a technical sense in administrative and judicial decision-making, and in the creation and enforcement of the Church’s laws. But it is also true in a broader sense of being attentive to the plight of those whose circumstances set them at a disadvantage in experiencing for themselves the truth, justice and charity of Jesus Christ. So we can also expect Pope Leo XIV to be a man with a heart for the poor and the marginalized — the unborn, refugees, the poor in material and spiritual goods — because of the demands of the Gospel, which inform and define the demands of the Church’s legal system.
Our last canonist pope was Pope St. Paul VI. Our new Holy Father is the first pope to have received his training as a canon lawyer after the Second Vatican Council, and so after the promulgation of the current Code of Canon Law (1983). In promulgating this, Pope St. John Paul II said that “the Code, not only because of its content but also because of its very origin, manifests the spirit of this Council.” In that sense it takes the great theological statements of the Second Vatican Council and sets them in the context of the Church, constituted and organized in the world as a society. That is, it takes the conciliar teaching and gives the roadmap for its implementation. Pope Leo XIV has already acknowledged that this is “the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades.” It will be for him to continue that task, and by all accounts he is well prepared to do so.
