Pope Leo's unity-focused leadership inspired by St. Augustine

Pope Leo's first year blends Augustine's wisdom with modern challenges

The statement signaled to the world and its 1.4 billion Catholics that they were going to experience a papacy heavily influenced by a Church Father and doctor of the Church - one whose extensive writings have endured the past 16 centuries and continue to shape the Church today.

Pope Leo's brothers in the Order of St. Augustine have said their patron's way has marked, and so far defined, the pope's leadership over his first year.

Poep Leo prays during a visit to the archaeological site of Hippo in Annaba, Algeria, April 14, 2026. The site represents the ancient city where St. Augustine, the founder of the pope's religious order, served as bishop in the 4th century. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

"While it is true that Augustine is an intellectual giant, particularly when we think of his theological and doctrinal contributions, I also see his pastoral contributions - which are grounded in the human experience and his understanding of the human experience," said Augustinian Father Kevin DePrinzio, who serves in Rome an assistant general for English-speaking provinces of the Order of St. Augustine.

In an email to OSV, Father DePrinzio pointed to St. Augustine's Confessions, as one of the theologian's best-known works that remains popular to this day. The long, introspective prayer to God about his life from sin - which included cohabiting with a woman as a teenager, fathering a child out of wedlock and other lust-driven pursuits, all while doing his utmost to impress his school peers with his intellect and disobeying his parents - to discovering the heart's restlessness in its search for God and receiving God's grace, to his conversion to Catholicism.

Father DePrinzio said the book highlights the saint as "one of the first (theologians) to begin to articulate a Christian understanding of friendship" and "that somehow in and through relationship, God is found."

"This, I believe, contributes to Leo's pastoral approach. We hear Leo often speaking about being 'together,' and the importance of not going at it alone," said the former vice president of mission and ministry at the Augustinian-founded Villanova University, Pope Leo's own alma mater in suburban Philadelphia.

"To live in the potential of encountering the other as a friend, to search for home and belonging," he continued. "This drives Leo's call to engage in dialogue, to reach out, and to walk together."

An example of that call was evident in Pope Leo's first video message to young people, which aired in Chicago's Rate Field at the Archdiocese of Chicago's celebration and Mass of thanksgiving for the first American pope's election, held June 14, 2025. He described the Trinity as a community of love, and told young people to "continue to build up community, friendship as brothers and sisters, in your daily lives, in your parishes, in the archdiocese and throughout our world."

Augustinian Father Allan Fitzgerald, an Augustine scholar and former director of Villanova's Augustinian Institution, said Pope Leo is teaching that "faith doesn't just touch the head. It also touches the heart."

"Augustine learned to be a person of heart," he explained. He said the saint's mother, St. Monica, was "a person of heart" and his father was an "irascible" businessman, yet St. Augustine saw his parents eventually come to be "on the same page."

"So the pulling together of head and heart was a crucial piece of his own growing and his own development," Father Fitzgerald said. "And I think that's what is, in fact, happening in the life of Pope Leo at this point."

His fellow Augustinians have observed the way Pope Leo has maintained the strong sense of Augustinian community throughout his pastoral journey, which included years as a missionary in Peru, leadership roles with the order, and now as the vicar of Christ leading his flock throughout the world.

Father Tom McCarthy, the incoming Midwest Augustinians' provincial superior, told our website that Pope Leo continues to sustain relationships in person with Augustinians in Rome and via text and email with others worldwide.

"We have to support him and say, 'Keep it going. Good job,'" said Father McCarthy, who is stepping into a role in the Chicago-based province that Pope Leo - then Father Robert Prevost - once held himself.

The pope has also spoken out about the U.S. government's immigration crackdown that has led to thousands of arrests of those without proper authorization to remain in the country.

Father Fitzgerald said the times call for the pope speaking out on what is morally wrong, just as St. Augustine did when he refuted the heresy of Manichaeism, a dualistic faith using cosmology to explain the forces of good versus evil while incorporating elements of Christianity and other religions. Talking about morality amid "so-called political decisions is really just a way of being human," Father Fitzgerald said.

With Pope Leo on the world stage, "we will see (and have already seen) Leo call for encounter and dialogue, engage difference, gather, bring together and cut through polarization," he said in his email. "It's in his bones to be this way, and it's up to us and the world to listen attentively to this invitation to go deeper together, to walk together, as St. Augustine urged his followers 1,600 years ago."

That, Father DePrinzio said, is also reflected in Pope Leo's motto, drawn from one of St. Augustine's sermons: "In Illo uno unum," or "In the One, we are one."

Simone Orendain is an our website correspondent. She writes from Chicago.