Crux

[Editor’s Note: These are the sixth excerpts of a two-part interview between Pope Leo XIV and Crux Senior Correspondent Elise Ann Allen contained in her new biography of the pontiff, León XIV: ciudadano del mundo, misionero del siglo XXI, or “Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the XXI Century.” The book is published in Spanish by Penguin Peru and will be available for purchase in stores and online Sept. 18. English and Portuguese editions will be available in early 2026.]

Allen: Two of the most prominent hot-button issues that came out of the Synod on Synodality, in terms of the debate they generated, were the role of women in the church and the church’s approach to the LBGTQ+ community. What were your thoughts on the discussion about these two issues, and how will you approach them in your new role now as pope?

Pope Leo: In a synodal way. For most people, certainly the understanding that the role of women in the church has to continue to develop, I think in that sense there was a positive response. I hope to continue in the footsteps of Francis, including in appointing women to some leadership roles at different levels in the Church’s life, recognizing the gifts that women have that can contribute to the life of the Church in many ways.

The topic becomes a hot-button issue when the specific question is asked about ordination. What the synod had spoken about specifically was the ordination, perhaps, of women deacons, which has been a question that’s been studied for many years now. There’ve been different commissions appointed by different popes to say, what can we do about this? I think that will continue to be an issue. I at the moment don’t have an intention of changing the teaching of the Church on the topic. I think there are some previous questions that have to be asked.

Just one small example. Earlier this year, when there was the Jubilee for Permanent Deacons, so obviously all men, but their wives were present. I had the catechesis one day with a fairly large group of English-speaking permanent deacons. The English language is one of the groups where they are better represented because there are parts of the world that never really promoted the permanent deaconate, and that itself became a question: Why would we talk about ordaining women to the diaconate if the diaconate itself is not yet properly understood and properly developed and promoted within the church? And what are the reasons for that? So while I think there was a significant inspiration at the time of the Council when the permanent diaconate was in effect reinstated, it has not become, in many parts of the world, what I think some people thought it would be earlier on. So, I think there are some questions that have to be asked around that issue.

I also wonder, in terms of a comment I made at one of the press conferences I participated in in the synod, in terms of what has oftentimes been identified as clericalism in the present structures of the church. Would we simply be wanting to invite women to become clericalized, and what has that really solved? Perhaps there are a lot of things that have to be looked at and developed at this time before we can ever really come around to asking the other questions.

That’s where I see things right now. I am certainly willing to continue to listen to people. There are these study groups; the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has responsibility for some of those questions, they continue to examine the theological background, history, of some of those questions, and we’ll walk with that and see what comes.

Just a quick follow up on the LGBTQ+ point, it can be a very ideological issue. However, beyond any ideological views, I think people felt this was just spoken about in a different way, with a different tone, under Francis. What will your own approach be?

Well, I don’t have a plan at the moment. I was asked about that already a couple of times during these first couple of months, about the LGBT issue. I recall something that a cardinal from the eastern part of the world said to me before I was pope, about “the western world is fixated, obsessed with sexuality.” A person’s identity, for some people, is all about sexual identity, and for many people in other parts of the world, that’s not a primary issue in terms of how we should deal with one another. I confess, that’s on the back of my mind, because, as we’ve seen at the synod, any issue dealing with the LGBTQ questions is highly polarizing within the Church. For now, because of what I’ve already tried to demonstrate and live out in terms of my understanding of being pope at this time in history, I’m trying not to continue to polarize or promote polarization in the church.

What I’m trying to say is what Francis said very clearly when he would say, ‘todos, todos, todos’. Everyone’s invited in, but I don’t invite a person in because they are or are not of any specific identity. I invite a person in because they are a son or daughter of God. You’re all welcome, and let’s get to know one another and respect one another. At some point, when specific questions will come up… People want the church doctrine to change, want attitudes to change. I think we have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the Church says about any given question. 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].

I’ve already spoken about marriage, as did Pope Francis when he was pope, about a family being a man and a woman in solemn commitment, blessed in the sacrament of marriage. But even to say that, I understand some people will take that badly. In Northern Europe they are already publishing rituals of blessing ‘people who love one another’, is the way they express it, which goes specifically against the document that Pope Francis approved, Fiducia Supplicans, which basically says, of course we can bless all people, but it doesn’t look for a way of ritualizing some kind of blessing because that’s not what the Church teaches. That doesn’t mean those people are bad people, but 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.

I do understand that this is a very hot-button topic and that some people will make demands to say, “we want the recognition of gay marriage,” for example, or “we want recognition of people who are trans,” to say this is officially recognized and approved by the church. The individuals will be accepted and received. Any priest who has ever heard confessions will have heard confessions from all kinds of people with all kinds of issues, all kinds of states of life and choices that are made. I think that the Church’s teaching will continue as it is, and that’s what I have to say about that for right now. I think it’s very important.

Families need to be supported, what they call the traditional family. The family is father, mother, and children. I think that the role of the family in society, which has at times suffered in recent decades, once again has to be recognized, strengthened. I just wonder out loud if the question about polarization and how people treat one another doesn’t also come from situations where people did not grow up in the context of a family where we learn – that’s the first place you learn how to love one another, how to live with one another, how to tolerate one another, and how to form the bonds of communion. That’s the family. If we take away that basic building block it becomes very difficult to learn that in other ways.

I think there are some very key elements that need to be looked at. I believe I’m who I am because I had a wonderful relationship with my father and my mother. They had a very happy married life for over 40 years. Even today people comment on this, even with my brothers. We’re still very close, even though one is far on one end politically, we’re in different places. In my experience, that has been an extremely important factor of who I am and how I’m even able to be who I am right now.

Another quick follow-up on the synod, in addition to the study groups that have already been established, you created two new ones: one for liturgy, and one for episcopal conferences and ecclesial assemblies. Why? What do you think needs to be studied about these topics?

These actually were approved by Francis already, right at the end of his pontificate. They both have grown out of some of the other issues that were studied at the Synod. The Episcopal conferences which actually began, again, some of them in Latin America first, before the time of the Council but then were much more developed at the time the Council in terms of the role of the Bishops Conference and how they can help the church in any different country or region.

I think that generally speaking there has been great appreciation for the role the Bishop’s Conference. Today you won’t have the situation where a bishop on this side of the river is preaching “A” and the bishop on that side of the river is doing something totally different. We come together and we try to look at the questions together, to make common policies or take common approaches given the area, the culture, the language that people are working with. So, on a pastoral level, there’s already been great value there.

The question is raised, going back quite a few years, about how much actual authority can be given to a bishop’s conference. There’s been a lot of theological debate on this since the time of the Second Vatican Council, because the successor of the apostles is the individual bishop, not the bishop’s conference. The tension that can come up between whether a bishop’s conference can make a decision and if the individual bishops have to follow it, that’s gone back and forth in different places and different ways through the years. There was a desire expressed at the synod to take a closer look at that and to see if the bishops’ conference couldn’t have a greater role in trying to have the bishops come together and make decisions which are helpful for the life of the church in their given region or country.

The role of the nuncios, that’s also being studied now in a separate group. It makes much more sense for a regional church to study, and reflect, and choose policies or approaches that will be most helpful for the church in that area, rather than every individual bishop on his own. So, it’s a way of supporting bishops in that ministry. Those are some of the things that we looked at there.

There was concern raised about an expression in one of the documents about the role of bishops and bishops’ conferences. It asked the question, should episcopal conferences have a certain doctrinal authority? And that got translated in different ways during the synod, but even in the original document it’s not translated the same way from language to language. I pointed that out. Some of the English-speaking bishops became very upset, actually, thinking that the bishops in northern Europe could make a decision changing the doctrine of the Church on divorce and remarriage, or on homosexual relationships, or on polygamy. That’s another issue which the African bishops have brought forward, going back to issues that are not easily reconciled within the formal doctrine of the Church. So, because of translation differences, that became a question of discussion of the synod. But the issue remains, as Episcopal conferences have developed, what kind of role they can play.

Regarding the study group on liturgy, what is being studied? How much of the reason for establishing this was related to divisions surrounding the Traditional Latin Mass, for example, or issues such as the new Amazonian rite?

My understanding of what the group came out of is primarily from issues that have to do with the inculturation of the liturgy. How to continue the process of making the liturgy more meaningful within a different culture, within a specific culture, in a specific place at any given time. I think that was the primary issue.

There is another issue, which is also another hot-button issue, which I have already received a number of requests and letters [about]: The question about, people always say ‘the Latin Mass.’ Well, you can say Mass in Latin right now. If it’s the Vatican II rite there’s no problem. Obviously, between the Tridentine Mass and the Vatican II Mass, the Mass of Paul VI, I’m not sure where that’s going to go. It’s obviously very complicated.

I do know that part of that issue, unfortunately, has become – again, part of a process of polarization – people have used the liturgy as an excuse for advancing other topics. It’s become a political tool, and that’s very unfortunate. I think sometimes the, say, ‘abuse’ of the liturgy from what we call the Vatican II Mass, was not helpful for people who were looking for a deeper experience of prayer, of contact with the mystery of faith that they seemed to find in the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. Again, we’ve become polarized, so that instead of being able to say, well, if we celebrate the Vatican II liturgy in a proper way, do you really find that much difference between this experience and that experience?

I have not had the chance to really sit down with a group of people who are advocating for the Tridentine rite. There’s an opportunity coming up soon, and I’m sure there will be occasions for that. But that is an issue that I think also, maybe with synodality, we have to sit down and talk about. It’s become the kind of issue that’s so polarized that people aren’t willing to listen to one another, oftentimes. I’ve heard bishops talk to me, they’ve talked to me about that, where they say, ‘we invited them to this and that and they just won’t even hear it’. They don’t even want to talk about it. That’s a problem in itself. It means we’re into ideology now, we’re no longer into the experience of church communion. That’s one of the issues on the agenda.