VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Washington Post
September 18, 2025
By Anthony Faiola
In extensive interviews, Pope Leo XIV, who turned 70 on Sunday, contours the future of his papacy, potentially one of the longest in decades.
VATICAN CITY — In a new biography containing his most extensive public reflections since he ascended to the throne of St. Peter in May, Pope Leo XIV says he has no intention to ordain women — but is willing to hear other views. He wants to avoid “partisan politics,” and will welcome “everyone, everyone, everyone” including LGBTQ+ Catholics in to the church, but he does not anticipate changing official teaching against homosexuality.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
“Marriage” is for “a man and a woman,” Leo says, and he defines a “family” as a “father, mother and children.”
The book, “Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the XXI Century” — released Thursday in Spanish, with an English edition due out early next year — offers the clearest contours yet of what could be one the longest papacies in decades. In it, Leo, who turned 70 on Sunday, gives lift to those seeking a healer to bridge divisions within the church of 1.4 billion Catholics. But liberals hoping for radical change and traditionalists pining for moral certainty may be unassuaged.Advertisementhttps://271cb86f739087da8558254055d8ba03.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html
The sweeping biography, by Elise Ann Allen, an American journalist and senior Vatican correspondent for the Catholic outlet Crux, is based, in part, on three hours of interviews with Leo in July. Allen, who describes the book as a “collaboration” with Leo, met him in 2018 when he was Robert Prevost, bishop of Chiclayo, Peru. They reconnected in 2023, after Pope Francis elevated him to be the cardinal overseeing the powerful dicastery of bishops in the Vatican.
The book, which traces Leo from his childhood in Chicago to his investiture in St. Peter’s Square, seeks to unriddle a thus-far media shy pontiff who has been exceedingly careful with his public words. With the exception of short, innocuous comments, Leo has been largely kept from the news media since becoming pope, leaving journalists to parse his homilies, addresses and asides before general audiences, or to seek clues from the few church insiders who meet him privately.
In the book, Leo positions himself as a rarity in an era of polarization: a deeply reflective listener. Itdelves into his past, including his mixed-race heritage, playing priest as a child, and finds him singing to the Beach Boys while driving in Peru. He often echoes Francis, while also differentiating himself from his off-the-cuff predecessor. The sum of Leo’s words suggests the first U.S.-born pope will be a restrained leader more interested in guiding the boat than rocking it. The waters, he suggests, are choppy enough: “I’m trying not to continue to polarize or promote polarization in the church.”
In an attention economy, Leo appears deliberately unsplashy. He can also be disarmingly candid. He admits to a learning curve on the part of his job that requires him to be a world leader but says he is not “overwhelmed.”
He addresses his dual nationality — with the Illinois-native White Sox fan seeing himself as culturally American, while also embracing Latin America and more specifically, his adoptive homeland of Peru where he served as a missionary and bishop in the poor diocese of Chiclayo. (Spoiler alert: In a theoretical World Cup match up against the United States, he would root for the Land of the Inca.)
A big part of his job is being a “pastor,” he says. “How did I get elected to this office, to this ministry? Because of my faith, because of what I have lived, because my understanding of Jesus Christ and the Gospel, I said yes, I’m here. I hope to be able to confirm others in their faith, because that is the most fundamental role that the Successor of Peter has.”
The conversations for the book took place at Villa Barberini, the papal summer residence south of Rome, Allen said, and later at his temporary residence at the Holy See, where he was waiting to move into the papal apartments, which were under renovation. Allen said she permitted him to preview the book before publication and to make changes, and she believes he agreed to cooperate in part because “he liked that idea of having a say in the telling of his own story.”
“He’s a very calm person; he’s the happy serene guy you see,” Allen told The Washington Post. “He’s also someone who is not going to make a lot of waves, and I think he’s intentional about that. He wants to take the temperature down a bit.”Advertisement
After his rise to the papacy, reporting emerged about Leo’s mixed-race background. Leo says in the book that while he and his brothers had no idea the family had Haitian and Cuban ancestry, he wasn’t wholly surprised by his “rich” genealogy.
“There’s an African American element, which, when we were young, was hinted at indirectly,” he said. “I can still remember a neighbor who wouldn’t speak to my mother because ‘your mother is African American,’ and there’s a prejudice there.” He credits that period with helping him “see people as people” and not as their race or religion.
Leo’s answers on the future, summarized largely in the book’s final chapter, suggest a pontiff who may replicate Francis’s resistance to formal doctrinal change.
The possibility of female priests was never discussed seriously under Francis. But the late Argentine allowed the conversation to continue on the ordination of women as deacons, and he authorized multiple commissions to analyze the topic. Nevertheless, Francis also made clear that such a landmark change was not on a fast track, and he had privately ruled out approving it during his papacy.
In the book, Leo also appears skeptical, saying the diaconate — a sort of intermediate status where a man is ordained, but is not a priest — required more study first. He hopes to follow in Francis’s footsteps by promoting women to senior church positions, and he is willing “to listen to people” on female ordination. But, he says, “I at the moment don’t have an intention of changing the teaching of the Church on the topic.”Advertisement
Francis also never changed doctrine that describes homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered.” But his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics — including explicitly allowing priests to conduct short blessings of individuals in same-sex unions — amounted to a revolutionary change of tone. In the book, Leo describes the LGBTQ+ question as “highly polarizing within the church” and noted that “for many people” beyond the West “that’s not a primary issue in terms of how we should deal with one another.”
He says that, like Francis, he will welcome LGBTQ+ Catholics to the church, but not because of their orientation. Rather, because they are either “a son or daughter of God.” Francis always drew an indelible line at the sacrament of marriage, which the church teaches must be between a man and woman. In the book, Leo sounds alarmed by reports that in liberal quarters of Northern Europe, Francis’s blessings are being stretched into rituals for “people who love one another,” in an apparent reference to same-sex couples.Advertisement
“That’s not what the church teaches,” he says. Still, he quickly adds: “I think it’s very important, again, to understand how to accept others who are different than we are, how to accept people who make choices in their life and to respect them.”
He continues: “I find it highly unlikely, certainly in the near future, that the church’s doctrine in terms of what the church teaches about sexuality, what the Church teaches about marriage … [will change].”
Traditionalists have held out hope that Leo would do away with Francis’s restrictions on the Latin Mass — a vestige of the past held onto by some conservative Catholics, particularly in the United States. Leo offers to hear them out but notes that, while the Latin Mass faces some limitations, it can be said today by priests who receive special authorization from the Vatican. He says he worries about the motivations of those pushing for its broader use.
“It’s become a political tool, and that’s very unfortunate,” he says.
Leo has made ending global conflict a major theme of his early papacy, but in the interviews he comes across as a realist. Despite requests from world leaders, the Vatican, he says, is unlikely to be the useful mediator in Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine. Leo shows himself to be humble, conceding that even as pope, he doesn’t “pretend to have all the answers.”
He voices frustration over failures to ease the suffering in Gaza, but says the Vatican “at this time” cannot define the war as a “genocide” (although he notes that more and more people have described it as such). Relations with the Jewish community grew strained as Francis spoke out ever more forcefully about Gaza, but those ties, Leo notes, have begun to improve in his first months.
More broadly, Leo expresses tolerance and respect for other faiths. He has indicated that his first international trip will likely be to Muslim-majority Turkey at the end of November, to complete Francis’s wish to commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the historic gathering aimed at uniting ancient Christians.
He describes sexual abuse by Catholic clerics — one of the church’s most painful topics — as “a real crisis,” and expresses compassion for the victims. He also says those looking for rapid solutions must understand that untangling cases takes time. He concurs with Francis by saying, “the issue of sexual abuse cannot become the center focus of the Church.”
Francis often encountered turbulence with the U.S. church, imposing sanctions against at least two senior conservative clerics who had challenged his authority. Conceding that not even he fully understood the “recent” links that have developed between some U.S. bishops and politics, Leo says he hopes he can hold more sway with the American hierarchy than Francis.
“The fact that I am American means, among other things, people can’t say, like they did about Francis, ‘he doesn’t understand the United States, he just doesn’t see what’s going on.’ I think that’s significant in this case,” Leo says.
He says he would avoid partisan politics but would also not be “afraid” to raise issues related to the Gospel. He cites a conversation he had with JD Vance after becoming pope, when he talked to the vice president “about human dignity” and the need respect all people, “wherever you’re born.”
“The United States is a power player on the world level, we have to recognize that, and sometimes decisions are made more based on economics than on human dignity and human support,” Leo says.
Asked if he had a better chance of engaging with President Donald Trump because they are both Americans, Leo says: “Not necessarily,” adding that dialogue with Trump was best left to U.S. bishops. But he says he would engage with the president directly as needed and permitted, especially to promote peace.
He also notes that Trump already met with Louis Prevost, Leo’s older brother, a Trump supporter in Florida. The pope said he has remained close to Louis despite his brother being “far on one end politically.”
“I think we have to continue to remind ourselves,” Leo says in the book, “of the potential that humanity has to overcome the violence and the hatred that is just dividing us more and more.”
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By Anthony Faiola
Anthony Faiola is Rome Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. Since joining the paper in 1994, he has served as bureau chief in Miami, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and New York and additionally worked as roving correspondent at large. follow on X@Anthony_Faiola