Leo XIV: What’s in a Name?

What can we learn from the Leonine papacies? A reflection on naming, doctrine, and the enduring weight of Petrine office.

From left to right: Pope St. Leo I, Pope St. Leo III, Pope Leo IX, Pope Leo X, Pope Leo XIII, and Pope Leo XIV.

With the election of Robert Francis Prevost as the 267th pope, and his choice of the name Leo XIV, the world is asking with Shakespeare’s Juliet: “What’s in a name?”

Juliet, of course, meant to highlight the arbitrariness of names. But to choose one’s name, especially as pope, is no arbitrary act. It is done with the intent of showing something, perhaps a show of continuity, perhaps of aspiration. In choosing “Leo,” Pope Leo XIV calls to mind his thirteen predecessors who share the name, some of whom shepherded the Church during her most pivotal moments.

The first Leo, St. Leo the Great, is known for his unwavering defense of Truth. At the Council of Chalcedon, it was Leo’s Tome that definitively articulated Christ as one divine person with two natures, fully God and fully man. At the reading of the Tome, the bishops proclaimed: “This is the faith of the fathers, this is the faith of the Apostles. So we all believe, thus the orthodox believe...Peter has spoken thus through Leo.”

In the year 800 A.D., Leo III crowned Charlemagne the Holy Roman Emperor and forged a strong bond between the papacy and the emerging Carolingian Empire. In terms of doctrinal teaching, he is also remembered for affixing the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed—without the filioque—to two massive silver shields displayed in St. Peter’s to this day.

Despite Leo III’s ecumenical gesture, tensions between East and West reached their peak under Leo IX. It was Leo IX who sent Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida to Constantinople. Humbert’s ambassadorial trip was intended to be diplomatic, but sadly ended in mutual excommunications, marking the symbolic beginning of the Great Schism, just months after Leo IX’s death in 1054.

A few centuries later, the successor to St. Peter, Leo X, presided over another devastating rupture in Christendom. After overseeing the conclusion of the Fifth Lateran Council, Leo X’s pontificate saw the rise of Martin Luther and what would become the Protestant Reformation.

What seems common among the Popes named Leo is their association with times of doctrinal debate—they are often found at the crossroads of unity or division, doctrinal clarity, ambiguity, and ecclesial rupture.

The most recent, Leo XIII, presided over one of Catholicism’s most intellectually rich and socially engaged pontificates. Often considered the father of modern Catholic Social Teaching, Leo XIII laid down enduring principles in documents like Rerum Novarum, providing teachings on the dignity of labor, the right to private property, and the principle of subsidiarity.

With Leo XIII, we find a relatively recent pope who worked to heal those wounds of schism that the pontificates of Leo IX and Leo X had witnessed.

Leo XIII confronted modernism and secularism, issuing Providentissimus Deus to defend Scripture against rationalist critique. And his encyclical Aeterni Patris secured the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas as a foundation for doctrinal clarity against the rising tide of relativism. Though any real ecumenical work with the Protestants was yet to come in the life of the Church, Leo XIII was committed to a proper engagement with the modern world—an engagement that would not succumb to error.

At the same time, in Leo’s encyclical Orientalium Dignitas, Leo XIII upheld the dignity of Eastern Christian traditions. He affirmed the importance of preserving their liturgies, disciplines, and autonomy within the Catholic Church. In the wake of Vatican I, he worked to strengthen ties with the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, the Maronites, and other Eastern Catholic Churches.

In all of this, the name Leo contains much—we can think of continuity with his predecessor’s commitment to clarity, and perhaps as Leo XIII did with the Eastern Catholic Churches, we may find a model for Synodality moving forward. If Pope Leo XIV has chosen this name with intention, as I am sure he did, then perhaps it signals his own desire to continue the doctrinal vision of ressourcement and aggiornamento.

Indeed, looking to Leo XIII as a model for social teaching is one thing, but if we remember Leo XIV’s affirmation to synodality when he first stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s and his appeal in his first homily to St. Ignatius to preside over the universal Church in charity, I think we have a Pope who sees the Leos of the past as models for unity without sacrificing truth or authority. He has even chosen a papal motto to reflect this emphasis on unity (and perhaps a renewed synodality): “In Illo uno unum”—“In the One, we are one.”

But names alone cannot accomplish much of anything. In the Gospel of John, we learn that at the first meeting of Simon with Jesus Christ, “Jesus looked at him, and said, ‘So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).” In the Gospel of Matthew, we learn that Peter is again given his name after his profession of faith and Christ tells him that “on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.”

But later, Peter denies Christ three times by the charcoal fire in the courtyard of the high priest. And in John 21, again by a charcoal fire on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus addresses him not as Peter, but as “Simon, son of John.” It is only after Peter’s threefold profession of love that he is restored and entrusted once more with the command: “Feed my sheep.”

The name that Peter had been given reached its full realization, with Christ’s command “Follow me.” (John 21: 19, 22). In this, we see that a name—even one given by Christ—must be lived, tested, and confirmed through faith.

Pope Leo XIV now bears a new name. Whether he will speak with the same clarity as Leo the Great, labor for unity as Leo XIII, or confront today’s cultural and doctrinal difficulties with the necessary resolve, remains to be seen. Let us pray for the new Pope.