St. Augustine, source of inspiration for Leo XIV

“I am an Augustinian, a son of St. Augustine…” These words of Leo XIV, spoken during his first appearance in the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica on the evening of his election, set the tone for an “Augustinian” pontificate, just as Francis's was “Ignatian.”

St. Augustine (354-430 AD) had a lasting influence on Christian thought, emphasizing faith, divine grace, and conversion. Robert Francis Prevost, who was Prior General of the Order of Saint Augustine from 2001 to 2013, has forged his vocation and career in the footsteps of this Father of the Church.

Since the 19th century, the formation of the clergy has tended to emphasize St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274 AD). This great medieval philosopher and theologian offers a conception of the link between faith and reason inspired by Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle. In Thomistic thought, observation of nature and knowledge of history must lead to a virtuous ethic and a rational demonstration of the existence of God.

St. Augustine, who was not strictly speaking a Hellenist, emphasized instead the experience of Revelation and conversion, in a perspective of unity with the divine. Marked by the barbarian invasions and the collapse of the institutions inherited from the Roman Empire, he proposed a conception of history that revealed a dramatic struggle between the City of God and the earthly city.

The magisterium of contemporary popes has generally followed the Thomist line. Benedict XVI, however, was the notable exception. He wrote a thesis on St. Augustine when he was a young priest in 1953, and he repeatedly emphasized his affection for this Father of the Church. 

“When I read St Augustine's writings, I do not get the impression that he is a man who died more or less 1,600 years ago; I feel he is like a man of today: a friend, a contemporary who speaks to me, who speaks to us with his fresh and timely faith,” Benedict XVI said during a catechesis in 2008.

Leo XIV could certainly have echoed these words of the German pope, so much did St. Augustine structure his thinking and now enters into his speeches.

On May 12, during his first meeting with the media, the new pope said that “communication and journalism do not exist outside of time and history.” He then quoted a famous passage from a speech by St. Augustine: “Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times.”

The “time” of this new pontificate has therefore begun with an Augustinian tone advocating unity. “The Church consists of all those who are in harmony with their brothers and sisters and who love their neighbor,” Leo XIV said, quoting a speech by St. Augustine, during his installation Mass on May 18. The new pope thus intended to promote “a Church founded on God’s love, a sign of unity.”

On May 19, in his address to delegates from other Churches and religions who had attended his installation Mass the previous day, Leo XIV returned to the meaning of his motto: In Illo uno unum, an expression of St. Augustine of Hippo meaning “in the One”—that is, Christ—“we are one.”

On June 21, in his speech for the Jubilee of Political Leaders, the pope recalled the importance of religious freedom and interreligious dialogue. He emphasized that “belief in God, with the positive values that flow from it, is an immense source of good and truth for the lives of individuals and communities.”

He then explicitly draws on St. Augustine's City of God, which describes “a society whose fundamental law is charity” and for which man must pass from “egotistic, myopic and destructive self-love” to “freely and generous love, grounded in God and leading to the gift of self.”

Speaking to the clergy of Rome on June 12, Leo XIV also drew on St. Augustine in his vibrant appeal to the priests of the Italian capital: "Love this Church, be ye in this holy Church, be ye this Church [...]. Pray too for the scattered sheep; that they too may come, that they too may acknowledge Him, that they too may love Him; that there may be One Flock and One Shepherd."

The current Prior General of the Augustinians, Father Alejandro Moral Anton, recently emphasized in an interview with I.MEDIA that three essential words summarize Augustinian spirituality: the search for truth, the practice of charity, and unity. Augustine also speaks a lot about interiority, affirming that God is “deeper inside me than my own innermost self.” Father Anton, who succeeded Father Prevost in 2013, believes that “Pope Leo XIV embodies these spiritual dimensions with great force, something the Church greatly needs today.”

This Augustinian theology also gives an important place to emotions. By allowing a few tears to show, especially when he received the fisherman's ring during his installation Mass on May 18, Leo XIV in a way followed in the footsteps of St. Augustine, sometimes nicknamed the “doctor of tears.”

The dimension of “the grace of tears” is very present in his writings, which refer in particular to those of his mother, St. Monica, who prayed intensely and painfully for her son's conversion.