Title:Extended interview: Fr. Mark Bosco on the recent papal change

Georgetown Magazine sat down with Father Mark Bosco, S.J., Vice President for Mission & Ministry, to discuss the May 2025 election of Pope Leo XIV. An extended interview is below. 

What reactions to Pope Leo’s election have you heard from the Georgetown community?

The question that a lot of people have asked me is, “Do you think he’s going to be like Pope Francis?” And I said, “Well, he’s going to be his own man and he will lead the church from the gifts and talents that he has.”

But in terms of the theology and the vision of the church as an invitation to all people, I think he will continue that inclusivity. He’ll just do it in his own way. 

The question came to me “Will he continue some of the policies?” I think that everyone’s spiritual journey, including cardinals and bishops and priests, is a growth pattern towards Christ. And I think that he’s grown in this job as a bishop, as a cardinal, and now he will do the same as a pope. 

How does Pope Leo differ from recent popes?

I think that with Pope John Paul II, we had a pope who was a philosopher. With Pope Benedict XVI, we had a pope who was a theologian. With Pope Francis, we had a pastor who was close to the people, who was interested in the human arts like literature, film, music, and comedy.

It will be interesting to see how Leo is. But I think he has a bit of all of that. He certainly understands Augustinian philosophy and theology. He’s been a pastor of the people in Chile. So I think we’re going to find out where his interests lie.

It’s very interesting that he identifies more as an Augustinian than anything else, that he’s fully following in the inspiration and the charism of his religious order.

Will the environment be a priority?

My sense is that Pope Leo is going to continue the vision of Pope Francis, especially on the environment. He has now spoken about it more than once as an important aspect of his papacy and how the church might evangelize the world to take care of the poor, especially the poor who are burdened by environmental degradation, living in those places and spaces.

Will interreligious dialogue be a priority? 

Pope Leo’s first trip will be to Turkey to the City of Nicaea, where the Council of Nicaea is, because we’re celebrating the 1,700th Anniversary of the Nicene Creed.

In the Catholic community we pray this creed every Sunday, and that puts us in a close union and communion with the Orthodox Christian Church. So I think it says something that his first major outing was to bring the Orthodox Christian East in conversation and celebrate with the Roman Church.

I do think that he will probably want to express his closeness to the continent of Africa and the continent of South America because the Global South is where the faith is really growing, where it’s young and fresh and looks to the papacy as a kind of shepherd in a profound way.  That Catholic ethos is a value system that everyone, Catholic or not, can appreciate.

What impact can the Pope have on the world?

One of the things that I think the papacy can do is convene the whole world so we can have a serious conversation about issues of the day. I think that Pope Leo is going to listen a lot to people. But I think he knows who he is and where he wants the Church to go, and where he feels like Christ is really calling the church.

My sense is that he wants to be a pope of the world, a universal pastor, not just the American. It’s wonderful he feels very comfortable speaking Spanish, Italian, English, and French, which is really important as he goes into those large communities. He can meet people in their own language, and that’s a great gift.

What do you look forward to learning about this pope?

I teach a MAGIS course called the Theology of Pilgrimage, and we always go to hear the pope as part of our 10 days in Rome during spring break. Earlier this year, we prayed for Pope Francis and prayed the rosary as a class with thousands of other people in St. Peter’s Square when he was in the hospital.

So I’m looking forward to finally getting to see Pope Leo as pope, see him preach to teach, and definitely we’ll be looking for his words. I have been impressed with his homilies, that real desire for unity, that sense that the church must always be inviting people into a unified religious community. And I’m impressed with how he has continually asked us to think of the poor and those who are in the margins as central to the gospel.

I think that Pope Leo is going to try to offer a way of thinking of the American experience that is different from some of the political polarizations today. He seems to be a centrist, a man of the center, and Christ is his center, not political ideology. But I also think that he will be strong in claiming a way to be human that is very much in jeopardy in the crassness of our politics today.

Is there a book that you’d recommend for people who are now interested in American Catholicism and its growth?

Mark Massa, who teaches at Boston College, is one of the best people for a historical look at American Catholicism. The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever came out in 2010, and I think it’s a really important work. He’s also written on the anti-Catholicism that was part of the founding of the United States and how that’s changed in the 20th century. 

Our own Father David Collins, S.J. is a historian who wrote The Jesuits in the United States: A Concise History but could speak clearly to the American church as well. There are a lot of people at Georgetown who would be good interlocutors on the Catholic experience in the United States including Kim Daniels [director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life] and John Borelli [theologian in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs].

You met Pope Francis in 2013 and 2023. What were your biggest takeaways from your audiences with him? 

I think Pope Francis really engaged young people. They found something very authentic about him. 

I was really struck by how Ignatian Pope Francis was. You could sense his Jesuit training, his Jesuit vision in his papacy. So we talked about service to others, a faith that does justice, the literary imagination as a source and place to find God and find oneself drawn to God. Those were the things that most impressed me; he was a loyal son of Ignatius.

Pope Francis, as a Jesuit, had the Ignatian spirituality and Ignatian vision, and now you have Pope Leo from another religious order, the Augustinians. They have their own spirituality and their own sense of vision as well, so the two orders are compatible, but they are different. 

Pope Francis stressed the role of discernment in the Church, the desire to find God in all things, and fostering a faith that does justice. Pope Leo will stress more strengthening unity within the Church and a deep desire to search for and share the truth of the Catholic faith.  But I think these two spiritual traditions overlap in substance and in their desire to build bridges and to foster social justice. 

Read more from Father Bosco in the Fall 2023 The Last Word >