One of the most poignant images after Pope Francis’s death was a close-up photograph of his shoes as he lay in his open coffin inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Scuffed, worn and workaday, they were a testament to the Catholic Church he wanted — one that walked out to the margins, served the most vulnerable and rejected clerical trappings.
Two weeks later, when Pope Leo XIV stepped onto centre-stage of the Vatican auditorium to address journalists, he too wore simple oxfords — like Francis, foregoing the traditional papal red slippers.
But while he may walk in Francis’s shoes, early signs point to a papacy with a style and direction all its own — straddling ideological lines and blending traditional Catholic signifiers with a political awareness shaped by cross-cultural experience and global power dynamics.
Some familiar messages, some new
In his first major address to the media, after a self-deprecating joke in his American Midwestern English, Leo …