Giuseppe Sacco In the history of the Catholic Church, there have been, to date, 266 Pontiffs. Of these, 217 – four out of five – were born in what is now the Italian Republic. In particular, all the Popes during the 455 years between the pontificate of Adrian VI (1522–1523), originally from the Netherlands, and that of the Polish John Paul II (1978–2005), were Italian. But how can this extraordinary predominance be explained in the most universal institution in human history? ...

Roberto Bertoni What escapes Donald Trump is that with someone like Leo XIV, turning up the volume — to the point of making statements that would warrant a psychiatric hold — achieves very little. This mild-mannered Augustinian, unlike Francis, is not the trench-warfare type, does not go in for grand gestures, and does not possess, perhaps, the same prophetic charge as his predecessor; nor does he give interviews to talk shows, at least not yet. The thing is, on the rare occasions when he does speak, he does so with precision and clarity, drawing unanimous approval from every corner of the world. And so, if Francis was a pope we loved almost to distraction — if only for his courage, his determination, and his embodiment of the universal message of the Gospel — Leo is the moderate version, though no less effective for that. ...

Contrary to the hopes of those who spreading rumors about his possible resignation, Pope Francis died in action. The way one could expect from a man such as he was, a fighter steadfast in his convictions in defense of the common good, of justice, and of the poorest on earth, he feared nothing and no one. Never afraid of expressing his political views – sharp and lapidarily succinct, as in the case of “NATO barking at Russia” – he was endowed with clear-sightedness that professional historians or literary scholars have rarely been able to match. So that it is no coincidence that the Palestinian people—victims of the most brutal and deliberate massacre of this century—have always considered him a faithful friend, whose evening phone calls to the catholic Parish in Gaza were nothing less than an unceasing appeal to humanity to put an end to the ongoing martyrdom. Such as was his latest walkabout. ...