(RNS) — As Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost walked out on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday (May 8) and took the name Pope Leo XIV, Steven P. Millies’ initial reaction was a mixture of elation and disbelief. A professor at Catholic Theological Union — a seminary Prevost, a Chicago native, attended — Millies was overjoyed at the idea of a pontiff from so close to home.
“It’s incredible to me that we have a Southsider who’s the pope,” Millies said of the first U.S.-born bishop of Rome.
But Millies also had another thought: By electing Leo, the College of Cardinals was, as Millies put it, “taking a side” in global politics — including U.S. politics.
He was reminded of when Pope John Paul II was elected “from behind the Iron Curtain” in 1978, a move that signaled the church was choosing to challenge the Soviet bloc.
“We are watching authoritarianism swell in all parts of the globe, but is fueled most visibly by the Trump administration in Washington, D.C.,” Millies said. “The election of an American pope, the first American pope … there’s a signal here that the church is taking a side in what’s happening around the globe.”
Leo is already seen as a continuation of the legacy o …