Leo XIV hits ground running on first full week as pope

Vatican City (AFP) — Pope Leo XIV launches his first full week as leader of the world’s Catholics on Monday, with journalists, diplomats and top Vatican officials all set to meet the newly elected pontiff.

Pomp and prayer marked the initial days of the pontificate of the former Robert Francis Prevost, the US pope first introduced to the world from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on Thursday. But the former missionary now has a packed calendar.

On Monday at 11 a.m. (0900 GMT), he is to be introduced to the international press inside the Vatican’s vast audience hall, where pontiffs hold their general audiences. This will be followed on Friday with an audience for foreign diplomats at the Vatican.

The pope’s inauguration Mass at St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, 18 May will be a far grander affair — his first public Mass as pope, during which he will preside before thousands of worshippers and world leaders.

The following week will see Leo’s first general audience on 21 May, usually a regularly scheduled event for the pope on Wednesdays. Members of the public are invited inside the Vatican for teachings and readings in different languages, after which the pope gives a blessing.

Days later, on 24 May, the pope will meet with the Roman Curia over which he presides, the powerful top officials and department heads running the government of the Holy See.

The world is still getting to know the modest and soft-spoken pontiff born in Chicago, who spent much of his life in the priesthood as a missionary in Peru, where he holds a second citizenship.

Before making him a cardinal in 2023, Francis entrusted Leo with the leadership of the powerful Dicastery of Bishops, which advises the pontiff on bishop appointments.

As pope, Leo will have to heal rifts within the Church, renew faith among the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics and address a host of modern-day challenges — including the fallout of the global sex abuse scandal — still weighing on the two-millennia-old institution.

Among the tens of thousands of faithful who came out to see him Sunday, many said they were cheered by signs that Leo would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Francis, who died 21 April at age 88, seeking unity in a fractured world with an attention to the world’s poor.