Title:Last Word: Fr. Mark Bosco, SJ

Following the election of Pope Leo XIV in May 2025, Georgetown Magazine sat down with Father Bosco to discuss the transition.

How do you think the new pope will connect with Pope Francis’s legacy?

He’s building on what Pope Francis started and he’ll have his own way of doing it, his own words. And he’ll probably use his Augustinian spirituality and background to shape the language of what Pope Francis did in an Ignatian language.

I think that Pope Francis saw something in him and raised him up to be a cardinal. Pope Francis saw his love for the poor, his work in South America, his ability to be in different places and spaces without causing any problems or making it all about him. I think that those qualities that Pope Francis saw in him will now come to fruition.

How do you expect that he will focus his teaching?

There’s usually an audience that fills St. Peter’s Square every Wednesday, and he’s going to continue to do that. He will also continue to reflect on theological hope: What is hope about? What’s the religious grounding of our hope in the world? What does it mean to have hope in the church?

The Mass itself gives the world a chance to meet him, and he can meet those who visit St. Peter’s. We’re in a Jubilee year—every 25 years the holy doors are open and people go on pilgrimage. I think he really wants to make sure that he’s present for those pilgrims in the final six months of the Holy Year.

What do you think it means to worshipers in the United States that the pope is an American for the first time?

Talking to our Georgetown undergraduates, they’re excited to have somebody who knows what a hot dog is, who cheers for the White Sox, who went to Villanova. It makes us feel a closeness to him.

There’s also a sense that he’s a Midwesterner and they are more practical kinds of people. I’m a Midwesterner myself. I think that his pragmatism is going to really come forth in his work and his shepherding the church.

Read more in an extended online Q&A >