The intonation mass represents the founding moment of each pontificate beginning, and again the “presentation” that Leone XIV has made of itself to the world, followed on TV and on the web by hundreds of millions of people, has not been an exception. Both in words and in gestures.

The gestures first of all, starting with the unprecedented choice to precede the mass a long lap in Papamobile (in all almost half an hour) in St. Peter’s Square up to via della Conciliazione, to give the image of a “outgoing” church, which goes to meet people, who do not remain locked up in their own enclosure events of meetings with the powerful on duty.

The Vatican as a peace mediator

Then, after the mass, with the meetings that Leone wanted to keep (and let it know that he held, also through photos disclosed by the press office) with some well -identified delegations. The first and most important that of the Ukrainian President Zelensky and that of the following day with the American vice -president Vance, as if to want to give concrete body to the call to peace launched by Leone in his first message after the election, and so often recalled later.

Peace, for Pope Prevost, is not only a label, an empty word or a reference to good feelings, it is not even “absence of war”, but it is a concrete commitment, in which he puts his face and for which he also declared the availability of the Holy See to be an active part, hosting future meetings at the top and carrying out mediation work. In the greeting that he wanted to address to everyone at the end of the prevost he recalled the hot fronts of the wars, with particularly hard words towards the situation in Gaza. In the meeting with journalists he had recalled the suffering of the Palestinian people and the drama of the hostages, this time of the hostages did not mention, and, on the contrary, he recalled that in Gaza there are “children who starve”. The Israeli president Herzog, in the front row among the guests, will certainly not have liked.

The unity of the Church

Leone XIV offered another significant tasting of himself during the homily, articulated on essentially religious issues, where, however, the call to the unity of the Church stands out. An apparently obvious call, if it were not for the fact that in the last twelve years of Bergoglio the unity of the Church has not always seemed the first concern of the Argentine Pope. So much so that sometimes it was resounded, in some ecclesiastical circles and in some episcopates, a word abhorred in the Vatican: “schism”.

A awareness of the need to bring together a flock that appeared divided and fragmented, probably also of this expressly invested by the cardinals during the general congregations, Leone XIV ensured his commitment to return to an internal discussion to the Church that takes into account everyone, in which no one feels excluded, but which he finally leads to proceed together. “Love and unity, these are the tasks that Jesus entrusts to Pietro”, that is, to him. These are the tasks that he feels to be loaded, without dealing at the moment, wider political or social issues at the moment.

It is not Francesco

Unlike John Paul II, who spoke openly about politics (“open the doors of political and economic systems to Christ”), and Di Francesco, who asked to “keep creation and creation”, as well as to reserve an “attention to the poor”, Leo XIV wanted to remind the faithful the love of Christ for the Church and the task that awaits him as successor of Peter. An idea of ​​the church and a deeply Augustinian government program, consistent with its declared reference to the saint (“I am a son of Sant’Agostino”, had recalled from the Loggia delle blessings on May 8).

A vision, therefore, different from the previous pontiff, despite the fame of Leo XIV as “Bergogliano”. It remains to be seen if these intentions will become concrete actions, as has often happened for its predecessors, whose first homilies were predictive of their pontificate. Will Leone XIV really be the pope capable of bringing together a divided church?