At the time of his election in May and in the months immediately following, this correspondent expressed a cautious optimism that Pope Leo XIV would reunite the Catholic Church after the catastrophic papacy (in the late Cardinal Pell’s words) of Francis. Papa Prevost was owed at least that much, since it is generally unwise to rush to a priori judgements; the man had to be given a chance to get his feet under the desk. Having had that chance, what has emerged from the Vatican gives cause for concern that Leo will indeed be Francis 2.0.

During this Jubilee Year, among the millions of pilgrims from all over the world who have made their way to St Peter’s Basilica in order to renew their baptismal vows, repent for their sins, and commit to reform their lives, in early October an ‘LGBT pilgrimage’ made its way into St Peter’s, an event denounced by many prelates in the Church, but not the Vatican itself.

Only a month beforehand, Pope Leo met with LGBT activist Fr James Martin, who boasted afterward that Pope Leo will show the same ‘openness’ as Pope Francis to ‘LGBTQ Catholics’. In his words, ‘I was honoured and grateful. The pope was serene, joyful, and encouraging. He gave me the same message as Pope Francis: “Todos, todos, todos” – openness and welcome.’

All the while there is no such ‘openness and welcome’ for Traditional Catholics, as crackdowns on the Latin Mass continue with alacrity.

In October, the Bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee, announced the suppression of all Traditional Latin Masses there by the end of the year. This follows similar decrees in Detroit, Chattanooga and Charlotte, to name a few. As for Pope Leo’s view on the Latin Mass, he gave some telling insights in an interview given to Crux magazine in September. First, he mused, ‘The question about, people always say “the Latin Mass”. Well, you can say Mass in Latin right now. If it’s the Vatican II rite there’s no problem’.

Yes, the Mass can be said in Latin now in the rite promulgated by Pope Paul VI (the Novus Ordo), but it is not about the language, it is about the rite, its theology, its prayers, its gestures, its orientation, its very soul. Ask any one of the multitude of Gen Z Catholics who attend the Traditional Mass and they will tell you these things are precisely the reason they are prepared to travel long distances to a chapel converted out of a barn to attend a Traditional Mass rather than one in the New Rite.

In the next breath, the pope declared, ‘Obviously, between the Tridentine Mass and the Vatican II Mass, the Mass of Paul VI, I’m not sure where that’s going to go. It’s obviously very complicated.’

Complicated? The Council of Trent in 1570 settled the matter by stating that the Traditional Mass, part of the Church’s immemorial custom, was to be preserved for all time. That is not ‘complicated’. Indeed, as German Cardinal Gerhard Müller pointed out recently in an interview with ETWN, the Traditional Rite is ‘the same we’ve had since the 6th or the 4th century. One cannot simply toss away such an old, time-honoured liturgy’.

Then followed a predictable deflection from the pontiff. ‘Part of that issue… has become a process of polarization… people have used the liturgy as an excuse for advancing other topics. It’s become a political tool, and that’s very unfortunate.’

What ‘other topics’ does he mean? Climate activism and mass immigration rallies celebrated in the Novus Ordo? Rainbow flags on altars? Cardinal Müller summed it up best in the above-mentioned ETWN interview, declaring the ‘progressives’ in the Church are the one causing division, since they are ‘making moral compromises’ on Church teaching.

Then Leo admitted: ‘I have not had the chance to really sit down with a group of people who are advocating for the Tridentine Rite’.

But he had time to meet with Fr James Martin. He had time to meet with King Charles III in the Sistine Chapel, under the slogan of ‘ecological conversion’ and host an ecumenical ‘prayer for the care of Creation’ with the King. He had time to attend the Raising Hope for Climate Justice conference, bless a block of ice and, in the words of his predecessor’s climate encyclical, Laudato si, proclaim that all must ‘heed the cries of the Earth and the poor, families, indigenous peoples, involuntary migrants and believers throughout the world’.

He had time to pick up where Francis left off by continuing to abandon Catholics in China who were loyal to the Vatican under the 2018 Agreement with the Chinese Communist party by abolishing two dioceses created in 1946, before the Communist party takeover, and creating a new one with a bishop approved by Beijing.

He had time to visit Turkey and attend a mosque, while violent Islamic persecution of Christians, particularly in Nigeria, rages. All the while under his watch there has been the creation of a Muslim prayer room inside the Vatican, about which Cardinal Müller observed, ‘permitting non-Catholic worship there amounts to self-relativisation. Muslims may see it as a symbolic victory – a sign of their -perceived superiority being -acknowledged’.

A secret study on the participation of women in the life and leadership of the Church is nearing completion by the Orwellian sounding Study Group 5, as part of Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality which will be delivered to Pope Leo. The existence of this clandestine group, established by Francis, is totally in contrast to calls he made ‘to build a greater culture of transparency and accountability in the Church’.

Interesting, then, that the pope has convened the first extraordinary consistory of cardinals of his pontificate to take place on 7 and 8 January 2026, to discuss key issues facing the Church.

Under Francis, two such meetings of cardinals took place, setting the tone for old misery guts’ pontificate. Has Leo called this consistory to continue the toxic nightmare of the Synod on Synodality, which Cardinal Joseph Zen stated was like the Catholic Church following the Anglican Church, in that it was ‘committing suicide by assimilating with the world’?

While these first months of Leo’s pontificate seem to indicate Francis 2.0, we must hope, as Cardinal Zen exhorts, ‘that Pope Leo will unite the Church on the foundation of truth’.