I met the man who would become Pope Leo XIV in October 2023. We were standing outside the Vatican’s Synod Hall, and from my short conversation with Cardinal Robert Prevost, I could tell he was a good listener, thoughtful and had a certain presence about him.

Our conversation took place on the sidelines of a major Vatican assembly focused on church reform efforts. It was part of a multi-year process begun by the late Pope Francis – the synod – which he extended from his hospital bed as one of his final acts in power.

Inside the large gathering hall in 2023, and again in 2024, participants like Prevost sat at roundtables where everyone was given a chance to speak for the same allotted length. The future pope, like other cardinals and bishops, engaged with people from across the world, notably including women. Synod gatherings in the Vatican had not taken place in that style before and, for the first time, included female voters who had their say on agreeing a final document.

Just half a year later, Prevost – now Pope Leo XIV – is no longer one of the many participants at the table. He is at the helm of the church and set to continue steering this reform process in the same direction.

When Pope Leo spoke on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica just moments after his election, he signaled he would seek “to walk together with you as a united church searching all together for peace and justice, working together as women and men.”

Leo is likely to continue what Francis started but with his own low-key yet determined style. His election, at the age of 69, shows the cardinals want a pope to institutionalize those reforms in a papacy that could last several decades.

Central among them are questions about the role of women, the exercise of power in the church hierarchy and the move to a more missionary church that gets out of its comfort zone.

Potential counterweight to Trumpism

Before the white smoke went up, the best-known American in the world was President Donald Trump. Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, has changed that.

By electing Prevost, the cardinals have ensured the papacy is a prophetic voice on the world stage that could serve as a counterweight to Trumpism.

While Pope Leo is a unifier who does not appear looking to pick fights, his focus on bridge-building, dialogue and support for migrants, stands in contrast to the Trump administration.

In his first speech to the cardinals following his election, Pope Leo pledged his “complete commitment” to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962 to 1965 gathering of bishops that provided the blueprint fort contemporary the contemporary church.

He insisted that this meant “loving care for the least and the rejected” and “courageous and trusting dialogue” with the contemporary world with the contemporary world in its various components and realities” including, tackling the challenge to human dignity that Artificial Intelligence presents.

The Second Vatican Council sought to emphasize the church as a voice for the marginalized – a “prophetic voice” – and was particularly embraced in Central and Latin America, where the future Pope Leo served for decades.

Banks said the new pontiff is “very concerned with social issues and the marginalized,” someone who is close to those on the “peripheries.” The Augustinian order – which pope Leo was elected to lead for two terms – is focused on community building.

Posts made on an X account under the new pope’s name reposted articles and posts critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, although those who know Pope Leo say he is not naturally confrontational.

“I don’t think he’s one to pick fights with people, but he’s not one to back down if the cause is just,” according to Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, who has known Pope Leo for some time as his friend “Bob” Prevost.

A humble leader

When it comes to the hotly disputed topics inside the church – same-sex blessings, the ordination of women – the new pope is going to adopt a posture, rather than make bold changes.

In 2012, Prevost gave a speech criticizing the “sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyle choices” found in the mass media including same-sex couples and “their adopted children,” although 11 years later he said his position had developed “in the sense of the need for the church to open and to be welcoming.”

When he was Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, Becquart says he ensured women were in leadership positions in his diocese.

Like Francis, he is unlikely to try and change church doctrine but will take a firm stance on topics such as migration, peace, the environment.

“He’s not a man who’s going to tell you what he’s against, he’s going to tell you what he’s for, that’s to me the crucial thing about him,” said Brother Mark O’Connor, a Catholic journalist who runs communications for the Diocese of Parramatta in Australia. O’Connor knows Pope Leo reasonably well.

“He’s the opposite of a culture warrior,” he said. “I don’t think he believes fighting about doctrine or even changing doctrine and talking about dogmatic issues is the way forward.”

As the church moves into a new era, one topic he must address is clerical sexual abuse.

Given his time as a former leader of a religious order and prefect of the Vatican office for bishops he will have had experience dealing with abuse cases. One survivor group has criticized his handling of some cases, while the leader of Peru’s bishops’ conference praised Prevost’s ministry to abuse survivors.

Leo has a doctorate in the church’s canon law, which equips him for the task of ensuring existing church laws are applied to investigate cases and hold leaders accountable.

The new pope is also credited with playing a crucial role in the suppression of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a powerful Peruvian group plagued by allegations of abuse.

Traditional wisdom said it was not possible to have a pope from the United States.

Yet in Pope Leo XIV, church leaders chose someone who has spent decades working in Latin America and has global experience – often referred to as a citizen of the world.

At a time of increasing divisions, wars and conflicts, the 2025 conclave has opened an extraordinary new page for the church with the choice of Leo, a bridge-builder and quietly prophetic pope.

The governor of the Mexican state of Baja California, which borders the US, said on social media Sunday that the United States withdrew tourist visas from her and her husband.

Marina del Pilar Ávila, from the ruling Morena party, did not say why her visa was withdrawn.

A spokesperson for the US Embassy said that visa records are confidential and that the details of individual cases cannot be discussed.

Baja California borders California and day-to-day commercial ties between the two states run deep.

”I fully trust that the situation will be satisfactorily clarified for both of us,” Ávila said on X.

Her husband, Carlos Torres Torres, who is an active member of Morena, said his “conscience is clear,” in a statement on Facebook on Saturday.

“This proceeding does not represent a formal accusation, investigation or indictment by any authority in Mexico or the United States,” he added.

The Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for three ports in Yemen on Sunday night after vowing to “defend itself by itself” following a ceasefire deal between the US and the Houthis that excluded Israel.

The warning, posted on social media by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic media spokesperson Avichay Adraee, warned people to evacuate the ports of Ras Isa, Hodeidah, and Salif.

The anticipated airstrikes come two days after Israel intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, according to the IDF.

That missile was the first since President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire deal between the US and the Iran-backed rebel group last week.

Despite the deal, the Houthis said they would continue to attack Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian population of Gaza.

Blindsided by the deal, Israel vowed it would strike the Houthis alone if necessary.

“Israel must be able to defend itself by itself against any threat and any enemy,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement last week. “This has been true in the face of many past challenges, and it will remain true in the future.”

This marks the second time within a week that Israel has issued an evacuation warning for Yemen.

Last Tuesday, the military issued a warning for Yemen’s international airport in the capital of Sana’a before carrying out strikes that it said “fully” disabled the facility.

Victory has a thousand fathers, as they say, but defeat is an orphan.

And so it goes after the brief but bruising conflict between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan with both sides loudly talking up their successes while quietly down-playing losses.

On India’s frantic television news channels, minutes after a US-brokered ceasefire came into force, the headline “Pakistan Surrenders” was splashed across the screens.

India’s military action against Pakistan, sparked by the killing of tourists in India-administered Kashmir last month, sent a bold message to terrorists, India’s defense minister, Rajnath Singh, said later.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, crowds gathered in the streets of the capital to celebrate what Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described as “military history” achieved by “our brave army in a spectacular fashion.”

“In a few hours our jets silenced India’s guns in a way that history will not soon forget,” Sharif said, while an effigy of his Indian counterpart burned outside.

But this was an eruption of violence between two nuclear-armed neighbors in which both sides delivered and suffered heavy blows.

Pakistan has trumpeted successes in the skies, claiming its pilots shot down five Indian fighter jets in aerial battles – including three advanced French-made Rafales – in what would be a stinging humiliation for the Indian air force.

But Indian officials are still refusing to acknowledge even a single aircraft loss.

Meanwhile, India has released new satellite images showing serious damage to air strips and radar stations at what Indian defense officials say are multiple Pakistani military bases crippled by massive Indian airstrikes.

In other words, political and military leaders in India and Pakistan can spin it how they like, but there is no clear winner in this conflict.

There’s even a struggle to take credit for what were clearly US-brokered negotiations that led to the ceasefire, announced almost out of the blue by US President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform.

Amid a rapidly deteriorating security situation at the weekend, which threatened to spin out of control, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he and Vice President JD Vance called political and military leaders on both sides urging them to hold back.

Pakistani officials expressed gratitude for the intervention. But Indian leaders are playing down any US role, saying the truce was worked out between India and Pakistan directly.

The reason is likely to be driven by national pride, with Indian officials loathe to admit a truce was imposed on them, or even brokered, by the United States.

India also has a long-standing policy of refusing to allow foreign mediation when it comes to the status of Muslim-majority Kashmir – a disputed region claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety – which has been at the center of the latest conflict with Pakistan and which India regards as a strictly internal matter.

Nevertheless, perhaps buoyed by his quick ceasefire win, President Trump has offered to help the two countries find a lasting solution “after a thousand years” concerning Kashmir. Inevitably, Pakistan has welcomed the idea, while in India it has fallen on deaf ears.

The offer is a stark reminder, though, that the US-brokered truce is little more than a quick fix, a band aid that is unlikely to remotely address the fundamental grievances fueling what is actually a decades long dispute, over the status of Kashmir.

And if you think the Indian and Pakistani claims of victory both ring a bit hollow now, just wait until the simmering Kashmir dispute, inevitably, boils over once again.

Pope Leo XIV indicated on Saturday that his papacy will follow closely in the footsteps of the late Pope Francis, telling church cardinals that they should take up that “precious legacy” and identifying artificial intelligence as a main challenge for working people and “human dignity.”

Pope Leo, born in Chicago as Robert Prevost, was elected Thursday, becoming the first US-born pope to the surprise and delight of many Catholics across the Americas.

In his first formal meeting with cardinals, which began with a standing ovation, the new pontiff said he chose his papal name to continue down the path of Pope Leo XIII, who addressed “the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”

Pope Leo XIII ruled the Roman Catholic Church from 1878 until his death in 1903 and is remembered as a pope of Catholic social teaching. He wrote a famous open letter to all Catholics in 1891, called “Rerum Novarum” (“Of Revolutionary Change”), which reflected on the destruction wrought by the Industrial Revolution on the lives of workers.

“In our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor,” the new American pontiff said Saturday, speaking in fluent Italian.

Wearing the white robes of the papacy, he strongly signaled to the cardinals that his leadership will build upon Pope Francis’ church reforms and legacy of social justice.

“It has been clearly seen in the example of so many of my predecessors, and most recently by Pope Francis himself, with his example of complete dedication to service and to sober simplicity of life, his abandonment to God throughout his ministry and his serene trust at the moment of his return to the Father’s house,” Pope Leo told the gathering. “Let us take up this precious legacy and continue on the journey, inspired by the same hope that is born of faith.”

He went on to ask the other senior church leaders to renew their commitment to the pivotal Second Vatican Council, which enacted sweeping church reforms in the 1960s. The modernizing reforms included allowing Mass to be celebrated in local languages rather than Latin for the first time.

Setting out that vision on Saturday, Leo said the church should be guided by a missionary focus, “growth in collegiality and synodality,” courageous dialogue with the contemporary world and “loving care for the least and the rejected.”

He also suggested that he will approach the weighty office with humility and fraternity.

“You, dear cardinals, are the closest collaborators of the pope. This has proved a great comfort to me in accepting a yoke clearly far beyond my own limited powers, as it would be for any of us,” Leo added.

“Your presence reminds me that the Lord, who has entrusted me with this mission, will not leave me alone in bearing its responsibility,” he said, also specifically thanking Dean of the College of Cardinals Giovanni Battista Re and the Camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, who was responsible for shepherding the church through the papal transition.

Pope Leo will appear on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica for a second time on Sunday to greet crowds of people in the square below. His installation Mass will take place the following week on Sunday, May 18.

It’s a proposal that the Kremlin can neither reject nor accept, but one that may force it into an awkward choice, revealing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s true appetite for his brutal war of choice.

Europe’s leaders have grasped the nettle of whether peace talks over Ukraine can lead anywhere meaningful, to force Moscow into a pause in violence, precisely when it seems to seek to escalate assaults in the summer months ahead.

It also gives Europe’s largest army – Ukraine – just over 30 hours to prepare their frontline forces for perhaps a month of tense peace, and then hopefully weeks of serious negotiation, in which the borders of their country will be decided.

Ultimately, Ukraine, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland faced little choice: the Trump administration’s very public loss of patience – sometimes with Moscow, but also less justifiably with Kyiv – carried the risk of the White House simply “moving on.” That could lead to the United States dropping aid to Ukraine, together with their efforts for a peaceful solution – a potential disaster for European security.

The past week’s clear enormous diplomatic lifting by French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and of course Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, has put the White House in a position where it has had to back a direct European bid to take control of the outcome of the biggest war on the continent since the 1940s.

Europe is indeed forcing on Russia a proposal initially made by the US and Ukraine – the 30-day unconditional ceasefire first offered after a bilateral meeting in Saudi Arabia almost two months ago. But they are also forcing the White House to step up, monitor the truce, and then back tough consequences – Macron called them “massive sanctions” – if the initiative falls apart.

Now the Kremlin’s previous answer of “we need to talk about the nuances” is not enough. It needs to agree, dispute, or ignore the proposal. It is likely it will, as we have seen in the past, contrive a complex fudge of a response.

Russia might agree to the pause, but then engineer a spike in violence it can accuse the Ukrainians of initiating. Or to dispute certain elements of the proposal – for instance, fighting back only against Ukrainian forces inside Russia’s Kursk or Belgorod regions – causing the White House to question whether they should angrily reject the Kremlin’s partial adherence to the truce. Moscow might choose to entirely ignore the proposal, and deploy their magical card of a Trump-Putin phone call to reshuffle the deck from which they’ve been dealt a difficult hand.

This is the most significant diplomatic moment of the war, perhaps the most important declaration of the conflict yet, and certainly the most important 36 hours since Putin faced a rebellion from his top aide Yevgeny Prigozhin in June 2023. Time is a serious problem: something that has to last 30 days must be built in 30 hours.

Gigantic questions remain for Ukraine and its allies as to how this ceasefire comes into effect. Can Kyiv order its forces to not fight back in self-defense? If the US is to monitor the truce, as Macron suggested, does it have the capabilities in place, in adequate quality and quantity, to study hundreds of miles of violent frontlines? Precise evidence of Moscow’s infractions will be key to helping Ukraine and Europe respond to the inevitable wave of Russian misinformation and recrimination that may accompany a truce.

The cost for Kyiv and Europe of the next month could be significant. Ukraine could lose ground as its troops soften their responses to Russian assaults during a ceasefire. The White House might emerge from the process and again swing back on its pendulum to a place where it believes Zelensky is the problem. Europe’s unity – on display remarkably today in Kyiv, and backed by over a dozen other countries from New Zealand to Canada – can only worsen from its current peak, especially if American support for Ukraine ebbs.

But the cost of doing nothing – as was the case in the Europe of the 1930s – was higher. Trump losing patience with perhaps the most complex item on his portfolio would likely be damaging for Kyiv, more than for Moscow. Putin having another two months to pick away at Kyiv’s frontlines would leave Zelensky facing another ghastly winter.

Ukraine and its European allies seek clarity from this proposal on whether Putin wants any kind of peace at all. The path they have chosen to get there is in itself unclear, and deeply fraught with potholes of Putin’s manipulation.

Listening to the heads of Europe’s five largest militaries in Kyiv Saturday, it appeared most had made their mind up that Putin does not want peace and won’t genuinely contemplate a month of it. These five leaders face a tricky few weeks of establishing that fact, and then the messy persuasion of Trump that he must take an even tougher position on Russia than his predecessor, Joe Biden.

The path ahead that Europe’s leaders appear to envisage is of a worsening of the war – where Putin violates a ceasefire, is hit with “massive sanctions,” and Europe must escalate its military backing for Ukraine. They do not appear to think the Kremlin wants the war to stop. The weeks ahead are designed, it seems, for a future in which they must prove to Trump he is being misled, and drag his White House permanently and irrefutably into their camp.