THE WISCONSIN SYNOD, ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Pope Leo XIV, born in Chicago with Wisconsin ties.  He is likely able to correctly pronounce "Kosciuszko" and "Oconomowoc."

While his Chicago origins already provide a strong local link, Pope Leo XIV also has significant connections through his religious order, the Augustinians, including a period of service in Wisconsin.

His journey within the Augustinians included a time when he served as a teacher at the Augustinian Novitiate in Oconomowoc.

The Augustinians have a presence in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, with communities and ministries that reflect their commitment to communal life, study, and service, following the Rule of Saint Augustine.

Parishes like St. Augustine of Hippo on Milwaukee's South Side also bear the name of the order's founder, Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Free Press contributor Matthew Walther, before getting on to the more serious stuff, notes, "Pope Leo XIV is almost certainly the first Vicar of Christ to have fond memories of the ’85 Bears."  The pope's brother has already answered the most important Chicago sports question.  Habemus fanaticus Soxus.

Then comes the Deep Thinking.

For some Europeans, the election of an American pope must feel improbable and even grotesque, like when McDonald’s opened in the Champs-Élysées. It is the ultimate rebuke to a certain image of the Church cherished by nineteenth-century Protestant nativists and by some traditionalist Catholics today: that of an exotic, baroque, necessarily un-American organism, never more than a whisper away from a midnight poisoning or a Jesuit plot to overthrow a legitimate sovereign. And yet, here he is, the successor of Peter, a man who might have opinions about Kraft Mac & Cheese and, possibly, a Costco membership.

But it is hard to escape the feeling that sooner or later an American pope was inevitable. Every bit as much as the Roman Republic, the United States has become an empire, and the church in the English-speaking world long ago assumed a kind of imperial character. Our debates about sexual morality and the liturgy, even when they are inscrutable to hundreds of millions of Catholics in the Third World, set the tone for the rest of the world.

Oh, please. He earned his biretta for missionary work in Peru.  Who knew, Paddington Bear or Popes might be found in Peru?  Mr Walther recognizes as much.

Meanwhile, the Church’s position in this country has been transformed almost beyond recognition. American Catholicism, once associated with immigrant-descended populations in the ethnic enclaves of major cities, has spent a century remaking itself—first through white flight and suburbanization, climbing into the professional classes via the GI Bill and the collapse of the old WASP establishment, which had once relegated Catholics to second-tier universities and suspicious glances.

Alongside this demographic drift came a spiritual one: the upheaval of the Second Vatican Council, with the introduction of a new vernacular (and less obviously sacrificial) liturgy, near-universal rejection of the Church’s teaching on birth control, and a collapse in both priestly vocations and Mass attendance. While neither of these trends has been reversed, a new generation of priests—and a small but influential segment of the laity—has risen up under the influence of Benedict XVI. This group, along with Hispanic immigrants, represents the future of American Catholicism.

Leo XIV is a product of that transformation and its aftermath, for good or ill. Though much of his ecclesiastical career has been in Peru, where he served as a seminary professor and later as bishop of Chiclayo (which almost looks like a misspelling of his hometown), his most recent appointment as the head of the Vatican department responsible for nominating new bishops is perhaps more relevant. He cannot be ignorant of the theologically conservative leanings of the American clergy, especially priests under the age of 40. His support for immigration, his opposition to both abortion and the death penalty, and his defense of the traditional family puts him solidly in the middle of the episcopate in the United States, even if it makes him politically homeless in our two-party system. Records show that as recently as 2023, he was registered to vote in Illinois—a detail likely to amuse, and perhaps alarm, both canon lawyers and electoral officials.

This naturally raises a host of deliciously technical questions. Can an American citizen become the sovereign of a foreign state? If so, must he renounce his citizenship? Can the bishop of Rome cast an absentee ballot in Cook County? One imagines a kind of ecclesiastical provisional ballot, sealed with wax, co-signed by a nuncio, and delivered by diplomatic pouch.

But these are trifles. A more interesting question is what his name signifies. Most papal names are regarded as either safe or defiant. Leo is a more ambiguous choice. It conjures up not only Leo I, who mysteriously tricked Attila the Hun into retreating, but Leo XIII, whose reign inaugurated modern Catholic social teaching. Leo XIII was also—I think not coincidentally—the first pope to write at length about the American Founding and its implications for Church-state relations in a world still reeling from a century of liberal revolutions.

Is it a lapse of Christian charity to note that those second-tier universities kick the Ivies' butts on the playing field?  Call the roll:  Notre Dame, Fordham, Georgetown, Marquette, Loyola.  He concludes,  "The immediate truth, in all its strangeness, is worth savoring for a while: The election of an American pope—I still cannot believe I am typing those words—is almost a cosmic joke, one whose consequences are presently unknowable."  What is that Einstein line about the Lord being subtle but never malicious?

The editors of National Review also engage in some Deep Thinking.

We expect Leo XIV will be a solid witness to the dignity of every life. He has tied together the issues of abortion and euthanasia frequently in his homilies: “God’s mercy calls us to protect every life, especially those society overlooks — the child yet to be born and the elderly nearing their journey’s end — because each bears Christ’s face.” We are needful of exactly this kind of bold leadership against the culture of death.

But we confess some apprehensions as well. Robert Francis Prevost has promoted Francis’s project of “synodality,” which risks dividing the church into different camps. He has recently made a special point to promote voices making spurious criticisms of Vice President JD Vance’s elaboration of “the order of love” in Catholic thinking. We are surprised the College of Cardinals chose a candidate who has been dogged by questions about his handling of priestly abuse cases. We hope that as the media pursue these stories to their end, his innocence and good judgment are revealed for the whole world.

The pontificate of Francis has been doctrinally, liturgically, and tonally disruptive. We hope Leo XIV brings peace within the church even as he calls for peace outside of it. Pope Francis often made scabrous criticisms of younger, more tradition-minded priests and faithful. With Leo XIV beginning his reign at the relatively spritely age of 69, it occasions a serious question: With a potential 20- or 30-year pontificate ahead of him, does Pope Leo XIV stiffly resist or gently accommodate the generational turnover and geographic shift that is turning the Catholic Church in a more traditional direction?

Martin Luther was of the Augustinian order before he started having doubts about how his church was financing the construction of St. Peter's.  Just saying.