Pope Leo the XIV will be formally installed as the new Pope this coming Sunday.

Catholics around the world have been marveling at the wild diversity to reactions of the election of Pope Leo the XIV within the United States.

The not merely conventional wisdom, but the actual “universally held belief” an American could not be elected Pope fell like so many such convictions over the decades for many reasons we can only guess at.

Who knows?

Nobody, not even Pope Leo the XIV, I would guess.

Every opinion will be premature until after one or two consistories – those occasions when Popes add to the men in the College of Cardinals. Pope Leo could do a lot to repair breaches in the church with some early selection, which would heal divisions while also continuing the embrace begun by St. John Paul the Great and continued by Pope Benedict and Pope Francis of a global church that holds up the divinity of Jesus Christ first and recalls and broadcasts that the beatitudes are the quick hack on the whole of the Gospels.