What's So Great About Pope Leo XIV?

 Don't Get Me Started!

1. He is a man of deep prayer and holiness. Close to Christ.

2. His heart burns with love, especially for the suffering and poor.

3. He is genuinely humble, modest, and self-effacing. He is the Non-Narcissist in the Age of Narcissism.

4. A listener, he receives and affirms the good wherever he finds it. He is friend to the conservative and the progressive both as he sees the good in each.

5. Sublimely irenic, he will draw us towards unity in our viciously polarizing time.

6. An institutionalist and canon lawyer, he deeply understands and cherishes the structural integrity of the Church. He will protect and enhance it.

7. A genuine globalist, he is a sturdy tripod with a foot in the USA, in Peru, and the Vatican. He has travelled and worked around the globe.

8. Solid theologically, he is grounded in our tradition in the manner of John Paul and Benedict even as he shares the urgency of Francis to reach out those who feel excluded. Best of both worlds. Not primarily a culture warrior or world class theologian, he nevertheless is on the right side of the conflict and will right the deformities of the previous pontificate.

9. A gifted administrator, Vatican insider, mathematician who can read a spread sheet, young/fit/energetic, and quintessentially a pragmatist, a man of action, he may be able to reform the Vatican (financially, theologically and spiritually) in way that eluded the previous three popes.

10. American: chosen in spite of, not because of his origin. The abiding global anti-Americanism is arguably heightened by Trump, although the new multipolar world has diminished our status as singular world power. His qualifications are so strong, that it overcame this impediment. He knows and loves American and can only have a good influence on us.

That's an initial impression. Since his selection, Fleckinstein has been a stable, calm, euphoric state. The question must be faced:  Is this a hallucinatory state? Did I die and go to heaven? No, this is neither psychosis nor exaltation out of this life. But it is heaven on earth!