Is Pope Leo XIV continuing Francis, or quietly redefining the revolution? Beneath apparent contradictions lies a strategy that may reshape the Church’s very foundation: unity above all.
In recent months, many people here in Italy have given me the same assessment of Pope Leo XIV. “I can’t understand him,” they tell me, “whether he is a progressive or a conservative, whether he is like Francis or like Benedict!”
Each time I try to explain, with evidence in hand, that Pope Leo XIV is neither one nor the other, but a pope of synthesis, elected precisely to continue along the path of revolution in the Church, but at a restrained speed, with the ultimate aim of preserving what the ecclesiastical establishment (including those who are presented as conservatives) now considers the supreme good of the Church—not the salvation of souls, but the formal unity of Catholics. From this ultimate end derives all the other pastoral, governmental, and even doctrinal actions that Pope Leo is carrying forward.
The Slowed Revolution and the Primacy of Unity
Thus, within a few days, in the aftermath of Pope Leo XIV’s second apostolic journey to Africa, two events occurred that at the same time scandalized progressives and comforted conservatives, and then, conversely, scandalized conservatives and comforted progressives. And the enigma of Pope Leo XIV—apparently—continues.
Therefore, I am forced once again to formulate and prove the same diagnosis. Pope Leo XIV is an inclusive revolutionary of deceleration, because today the salvation of souls is no longer the supreme good of the Church, but unity. And this goes beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church: unity among Christians, unity among different religions, unity among nations. Revolutionary of deceleration, because overturning the structure of the Church too quickly—as done by Francis, now with a reputation for beatification—creates friction, and friction creates division. Inclusive, because in order to keep the Church (and not only) formally united, one must attempt the impossible art of squaring the circle, that is, finding space for everyone, ensuring that all can have their say (or believe they do), according to the ancient illusionistic art of democracy, according to which exercising the right to speak would be equivalent to exercising power.
Pope Leo XIV is not halting the revolution—he is slowing it down to preserve unity.
The Leitmotif of Apostolic Journeys
Before discussing the facts in question, let us attempt to contextualize. The apostolic journey concluded on April 23 had precisely unity as its leitmotif. In Algeria, the Pope emphasized that Christians and Muslims must work to build “communion” (a deliberately theological concept); in Cameroon, the Pope recalled that the Church has acted as an artisan of unity in a divided country; in Angola, he specified that peace (a totemic word used to refer to unity) implies “development,” which in today’s clerical language means—outside of metaphor—“socialism,” namely the state that must concern itself with redistributing wealth to foster a society that “leaves no one behind”; in Equatorial Guinea, the Pope instead linked peace to the defense of human dignity, another theme dear to the pseudo-Masonic agenda set within the Catholic Church during the pontificate of Bergoglio.
All this must be added to Pope Leo’s first apostolic journey to Turkey and Lebanon (November 2025), where the theme was—once again—unity among religions and among nations. Christ and His Gospel are functional to this discourse; they are not the ultimate end. Otherwise, one would fall into the much-hated proselytism condemned by Francis, a harbinger of divisions.
Gay Blessings: A Deliberate Ambiguity?
Let us now turn to the two facts in question. The first took place on the return flight to Rome on April 23. A German journalist asked for a comment regarding Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s decision to permit the blessing of homosexual couples in his diocese, even authorizing the creation of a ritual formula. Note carefully the conclusion of the question: ““In light of different cultural and theological perspectives, especially in Africa, how do you intend to preserve the unity of the global Church on that particular matter?””
It should be kept in mind that questions addressed to the Pope on flights are not spontaneous, but agreed upon in advance with the Press Office.
However, the Pope’s answer is not without difficulty: “First of all, I think it’s very important to understand that the unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters,” he stated.
Truth is no longer the foundation of unity; unity itself has become the goal.
The strategy is clear. Neo-modernist authorities today remain silent on the most divisive issues—namely the LGBT question and the female diaconate—but this does not mean that the Overton window has stopped.
Rather, the work of normalization on these topics is delegated to the lower ranks, to individual bishops, to theologians or associations that sensitize and accustom the masses of Catholics. Note that the latest negative response of the Holy See on the female diaconate was presented as temporary, even though the issue had in reality already been infallibly closed by John Paul II with Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994). The priesthood, in fact, concerns not only the presbyterate, but also the diaconate and the episcopate, degrees of the same sacrament.
The Pope continued: “In reality, I believe there are much greater and more important [moral] issues, such as justice, equality of freedom for men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue.”
As often happens today, a correct concept is expressed in an incorrect manner. The correct concept is that sexual sins are not the most serious and, consequently, there are also other moral priorities for the Church today, which, however, should not relegate the LGBT question to the background, which also deserves attention.
According to doctrine, in fact, the gravest sins are impiety toward God in all its forms (heresy, atheism, superstition, etc.) and murder of one’s neighbor. It follows that the priorities should be the re-evangelization of the West, or the reasoned condemnation of abortion and widespread euthanasia. The Pope, however, brings to mind other themes: an unspecified justice (forgetting that the noblest act of justice is religion, as the catechism teaches: giving God what is due to Him), equality among genders, and religious freedom.
However, we must not forget that the revolution today is mainly anthropological. Outside and inside the Church, it is no longer known how to define who the human being is, his nature, his origin, his ultimate end. Consequently, LGBT doctrine and what follows from it, as well as the inability to defend the patriarchal privilege of the priesthood, is an effect of this crisis, and therefore the Church cannot relegate it to a “secondary issue,” although it is true that sexual sins are not the gravest.
Even though — which is no less significant — sexual sins are among the most frequent, as Our Lady reminded at Fatima, and in some cases, such as sodomy, they already entail severe punishments in this life. Indeed, sins against nature are counted among those traditionally described as “sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.”
Ambiguity is no accident—it is the governing strategy.
Again, Leo XIV said: “The Holy See has already spoken with the German bishops. It has clarified that we do not agree with the formalized blessing of homosexual couples or couples in irregular situations, beyond what was specifically permitted by Pope Francis, affirming: ‘All people can receive blessings.’ When a priest gives a blessing at the end of Mass, when the Pope imparts a blessing at the conclusion of a great celebration like today’s, these are blessings addressed to all people. The notorious or famous, well-known expression of Francis Tutti, tutti, tutti [‘everyone, everyone, everyone’] is the expression of the Church’s faith according to which all are welcomed, all are invited, all are called to follow Jesus and to seek conversion in their lives.”
In this answer we can observe at least three things. First, the Pope declared that the Holy See has spoken with the German bishops, but officially nothing has been made known, at least to date. In fact, let us not forget that the German Synodal Path is awaiting from Rome the possible approval or rejection of the statutes that should establish the German Synodal Conference, that is, the invalid and illegitimate German ecclesiastical parliament. It is not clear whether this communication to the German bishops (note well: not only to Marx) implies this goal or not, given the close relationship between the two issues.
Let us not forget that Pope Leo is very concerned about the possible schismatic drift of the German Catholic Church, both for ideological reasons and for economic reasons, so much so that he wanted to appoint at the head of the Dicastery for Bishops a canon lawyer perceived as a long-standing expert on the German question, namely the Carmelite Iannone.
The hope for us faithful is that the aforementioned dialogue between Rome and Germany does not take place underground, as unfortunately has often happened in recent years, thus creating a nebulous fracture between what is said in Rome and what is done in Berlin, a fracture paradoxically functional to keeping together a bond that in itself cannot hold.
Second, it is not clear whether the Holy See has declared its opposition to the blessing of homosexual couples as couples or simply to formal blessings. As the reader will recall, the Declaration Fiducia supplicans on the pastoral meaning of blessings (2023) by Francis introduced, in response to specific questions on the subject coming from the episcopate, the lawfulness of imparting blessings to irregular couples. Couples, not individuals: the text is clear. The text simultaneously recommends not formalizing these blessings, that is, not creating ad hoc rites that risk equating this type of relationship with that blessed in the sacrament of marriage.
The scandalized reaction of an important portion of the world episcopate, including the progressive one and especially from Africa and Asia, forced Fernandez to tone things down, asserting that one is speaking of blessings to individuals, not to couples. A poorly placed fig leaf, both because the text clearly speaks of couples and because the Church has always recommended blessings to individuals, regardless of their state of life and even regardless of the state of grace.
The Church now risks redefining its mission: not the salvation of souls, but institutional cohesion.
Third, we witness the instrumental reinterpretation of Francis’ thought. We know—by now it is history—that the Pope and his compatriot protégé wanted to introduce the blessing of irregular couples as couples, within a broad process of revision of Eucharistic and matrimonial theology.
Pope Leo, however, attributed to Francis a thought that was not his: “one must not go beyond what Francis permitted,” he says, namely that “all people can receive blessings,” such as those that the priest imparts at the end of Mass. But at the end of Mass the priest blesses those present as individuals, not as couples. Hence the evident ambiguity.
He then concluded by emphasizing the point from which he had begun, and underlining once again the ultimate aim of the present pontifical agenda: “To go beyond that, I think that the topic can cause more disunity than unity, and that we should look for ways to build our unity upon Jesus Christ and what Jesus Christ teaches.”
This last emphasis in particular rekindled the hopes of the more conservative. Thus, the Pope would have emphasized that unity is founded on truth, on the doctrine of Christ! But what does this doctrine of Christ consist in, according to Pope Leo XIV? When he speaks of the teaching of Christ, is he referring to Catholic Dogma, necessary to be believed in its entirety for salvation, since “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6) and since, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, “good proceeds from an integral cause and evil from any defect”?
The Problem of the Kerygma and the Reduction of the Content of Faith
Once again, we must contextualize. As has already been emphasized during this Pontificate, the magna charta of Leo XIV’s evangelization is Evangelii Gaudium (2013), Francis’ manifesto. As was also emphasized during the first extraordinary consistory of January 2026 by the current defensor fidei, Cardinal Fernandez, the kerygma that the Church should proclaim today is the following: “the beauty of the saving love of God manifested in Jesus Christ dead and risen.” Nothing more vague. “One does not begin to be a Christian with a doctrine or a moral proposal,” Fernandez enlightens us. “It is the experience of an encounter that constitutes the foundation of everything.”
Unfortunately, the Christian kerygma is not at all this. The kerygma is the joyful proclamation that the human condition, corrupted due to original sin, has been repaired by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, offered to the Father as expiation of an infinite debt of justice, and whose merits are not automatically applied to men, but through the ministry of the Church in the sacraments, particularly Baptism.
Remove original sin, remove the sacrifice, remove the sacraments, and everything falls within the definition of kerygma proposed by Francis and Fernandez.
To believe that Pope Leo XIV, when he speaks of the teaching of Christ, intends to refer to Catholic doctrine, rigorous and systematic, appears a terribly naive act, a projection of one’s desires, far removed from all the factual evidence we have witnessed in recent months. As already happened under Francis, interviews and statements of the Pope on flights do nothing but contribute to ambiguity, to manipulations in one direction and the other, to the confusion of the faithful. In the name of unity!
When unity is detached from truth, it ceases to be Christian unity at all.
Does Pope Leo Recognize the Episcopal Authority of Sarah Mullally?
If the Pope’s statements on gay blessings rekindled the hopes of conservatives, the reception reserved for Sarah Mullally immediately dampened enthusiasm to the point of extinguishing it.
On April 25, in fact, the pseudo-archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally made an “ecumenical pilgrimage” to the Vatican, led a pseudo-blessing before the bones of Saint Peter the Apostle, and—as if that were not enough—the Catholic archbishop Flavio Pace, Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, bowed his head and made the sign of the cross. An aberrant and scandalous scene.
But have we not just said that the unity of the Church must be founded on Jesus Christ and on His teaching?
Pope Leo XIII infallibly taught that all Anglican ordinations are “null and invalid.” Sarah Mullally is a heretical and excommunicated laywoman convinced that she is a bishop. Why then does Bishop Pace bow his head before the blessing imparted by Mullally, if not because he believes that that woman is in all respects a minister of Jesus Christ—which she is not—thus going against what the Catholic Church teaches?
As if that were not enough, the aforementioned woman was then received in a private audience by Pope Leo on April 27. “Your Grace,” Leo said, thus recognizing Mullally with a title she cannot have. “Your visit brings to mind the memorable encounter between Saint Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey sixty years ago. […] Since then, Archbishops of Canterbury and Bishops of Rome have continued to meet to pray together, and I am glad that we are continuing this tradition today.”
And here once again appears the leitmotif of this Pontificate: “I have often mentioned that the peace of the risen Lord is unarmed. […] The divisions among Christians weakens our capacity to be effective bearers of that peace,” that is, unity at any cost.
“This focus on the need for unity for the sake of a more fruitful evangelization has been a theme throughout my own ministry; indeed it is reflected in the motto I chose when I became a bishop: In Illo uno unum, ‘In the One — that is Christ — we are one’”
And he concluded by saying: “Your Grace, in thanking you for your visit today, I pray that the same Holy Spirit will remain with you always, making you fruitful in the service to which you have been called,” forgetting, however, that it was not God who called Mullally to the office she holds.
Part of the so-called conservative world reacts today with a paradoxical attitude: on the one hand, it is scandalized by the most advanced ecumenical openings; on the other, it hastens to justify as right and necessary a possible sanction against those who, while criticizing aspects of the recent magisterium, have never denied the dogmas of the Church.
Anglicanism as a Model and the Gradual Change of Ecclesiology
In this context, additional elements emerge that help to clarify the underlying direction. In recent times, in fact, the Vatican seems to be multiplying gestures of openness toward the Anglican world, almost identifying it as a privileged interlocutor. This is not simply ecumenism in the classical sense, but something qualitatively different.
One must then ask what the reason for such attraction is. A possible answer, which emerges inductively from the facts, is that in the Anglican model the neo-modernists discern traits considered “virtuous” and, in certain respects, paradigmatic. First of all, the parliamentarization of ecclesial life: doctrinal and disciplinary authority is increasingly conceived as the result of assembly processes, in which consensus prevails over truth. Secondly, submission to political power: the Anglican Church was born as a state church and retains, in its structure, a permeability to civil power that radically contrasts with the Catholic doctrine of the distinction without separation between religious authority and civil power.
To this is added synodalism, of which Anglicans are pioneers, understood not as a consultative instrument subordinate to the authority of the Roman Pontiff, but as a constitutive principle of a “horizontal” ecclesiology, in which the Petrine primacy is in fact emptied in favor of a collegial and, in many respects, managerial governance of the episcopate. Finally, the marked ecumenical mission and a certain idea of universal brotherhood of a declared Masonic stamp, which tends to bracket dogmatic differences in the name of practical collaboration among religious communities.
In this light, even apparently secondary gestures acquire a precise meaning. For example, the reception of King Charles of England, head of the Anglican Communion, and the conferral of the title of “Royal Confrere” are particularly eloquent. The term “confrere,” in its proper sense, implies a sharing of dignity and belonging. Applied to a sovereign who, by definition, is head of a heretical and schismatic community, it signals a semantic torsion that cannot be dismissed as mere diplomatic courtesy, but reflects a change in the very conception of unity and authority.
Thus emerges a paradoxical yet coherent picture with what has been observed so far. On the one hand, signs of welcome, if not implicit legitimation, multiply toward realities that objectively lie outside Catholic communion, and that present doctrines and practices incompatible with it—one may think, among other things, precisely of the ordination of women, represented by Mullally at its highest degree.
Only truth—entire and whole—can constitute the foundation of everlasting unity.
On the other hand, there is increasing pressure against realities that fully profess Catholic doctrine and claim continuity with Tradition. While the living parody of Holy Orders is welcomed with red carpets in the Sacred Palaces, from some Vatican desk there is intense work these days on the imminent excommunication of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.
The contrast is evident and, from a logical standpoint, difficult to sustain without resorting to the criterion already identified: truth is no longer the formal principle of unity, but unity is a value in itself, detached from truth. The Anglicans, though separated, are functional to a project of “broad” unity, inclusive, capable of embracing even substantial differences; the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, on the other hand, represents a disturbing element, of division, insofar as it constantly recalls the necessity of a unity founded on the integral profession of the Catholic faith. “I have not come to bring peace on earth, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34).
It is therefore not surprising that a part of the so-called conservative world reacts today to this scenario with a paradoxical attitude: on the one hand, it is scandalized by the most advanced ecumenical openings; on the other, it hastens to justify as right and necessary a possible sanction against those who, while criticizing aspects of the recent magisterium, have never denied the dogmas of the Church. Here too, the apparent contradiction dissolves if one takes as the ultimate criterion not doctrinal coherence, but the preservation of a formal order perceived as the supreme value of ecclesial life.
Putting things into perspective, then, means precisely this: recognizing that the apparent oscillation between openings and closures, between reassurances to conservatives and concessions to progressives, is not a sign of indecision or personal incoherence, but the expression of a strategic line under the banner of unity.
A line in which unity—understood in a formal, sociological, and even geopolitical sense—tends to replace truth as the regulatory principle of human life. And it is precisely here that the decisive question is at stake, not only for interpreting the present pontificate, but for understanding the current crisis of the Church: whether unity can be authentic when it is detached from truth, or whether, as Catholic Tradition teaches, only truth—entire and whole—can constitute the foundation of everlasting unity. Whether, as Our Lord teaches (cf. John 8:32), truth—not unity—sets us free.
