ROME (OSV News) -- On May 8, Father Thomas Joseph White, the American rector of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, was at St. Peter's Square with hundreds of thousands of people when white smoke rose out of the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel.
When, shortly after 7 p.m., the name of the new pope was announced to the world from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, "I was stunned," Father White said.
"I had heard (Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost) mentioned as a possible candidate, but I had, as so many others, dismissed it as unlikely for the simple reason that the candidate was an American," Father White told OSV News in the first interview after the election of a pope who graduated from the university the American Dominican leads. "So when it happened ... I was really surprised. And also, of course, it made a great impression on me that the pope chose this name -- Leo -- which has so many important historic and symbolic connotations."
Pope Leo XIII -- who was, Leo XIV has confirmed, the biggest inspiration for choosing the papal name -- was a big advocate of thomism, or the philosophical and theological school of thought based on the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. Asked whether promoting the thought of Aquinas would continue from the graduate of canon law at the Angelicum, Father White said that the answer to the question lies in the doctoral thesis of Pope Leo XIV that Father White has been studying in recent days.
Finalized in 1985, the thesis bears the title "The office and authority of the local prior in the Order of Saint Augustine." Then-Father Robert Francis Prevost studied at the Angelicum from 1981 to 1983 for his licentiate in canon law "and then he continued immediately from 1983 to 1985 to compose his doctorate in canon law," which was "published in a formal way only in 1987," Father White said.
He emphasized the doctoral thesis of the future Pope Leo is "a rather impressive analysis of the question of what obedience is in religious life after the Second Vatican Council, and in light of the newly revised, at that time, 1983 Code of Canon Law. There's a lot of rich reflection on the human character of obedience and also, very interestingly, Christian authority as a service of selflessness," Father White said. "So I would not say that his formation here was explicitly in the study of Thomas Aquinas. What was implicit was that the canon lawyers who taught him were actually quite celebrated ... great canon lawyers."
Many of them were Dominicans from Spain, Father White told OSV News, "who taught canon law in light of the principles of St. Thomas Aquinas. So he would have no doubt imbibed some of that."
Regarding the pope's formation at the Angelicum, Father White said that "what we know so far is that Leo XIV has made appeal to 'Rerum Novarum,' which is a very famous encyclical of Pope Leo XIII about the human rights of workers."
"Rerum Novarum," issued by Pope Leo XIII on May 15, 1891, was groundbreaking in addressing societal challenges during the industrial revolution. Direct English translation of the title is "Of New Things."
"Sensing myself called to continue in this same path, I chose to take the name Leo XIV" for several reasons, Pope Leo said May 9, a day after his election, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII, "in his historic encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum' addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution."
For Father White, "a lot of people want to ignore 'Leo XIII of social doctrine' in favor of the 'Leo XIII of scholasticism,' or vice versa. But historically speaking, this is a huge error. The pope saw the renewal of the study of scholasticism and the renewal of social doctrine as being deeply interrelated."
"Leo XIII saw the renewal of the study of Thomas Aquinas and classical wisdom as having a place in the modern world, precisely so as to support the promotion of human rights and the dignity of the human person in Catholic social doctrine," Father White said.
"So he didn't see these two things as opposed: studying deeply the wisdom of the Christian tradition and advocating for those who are disempowered are integrally related," he added. "And I do suspect this is something that Pope Leo XIV understands very deeply from his penetrating analysis of the thought of Thomas, of Augustine, as well as, I'm no doubt, his time spent studying Thomas Aquinas."
In the thesis, which 30-year-old Father Prevost defended at the Angelicum, the spirit of service is "extremely visible," Father White said.
"I read this passage this morning," he told OSV News, reading the powerful and somewhat providential "early in the thesis" excerpt out loud: "Augustine writes, 'we are put in charge and we are servants; we possess authority, but only if we serve.'" Young Father Prevost quoted St. Augustine, referring to his source in Latin: "Praeposti sumus, et servi sumus; praesumus, sed si prosumus."
Immediately after a direct quote from Augustine, the future pope comments in his work: "There is no room in Augustine's concept of authority for one who is self-seeking and in search of power over others. The exercise of authority in any Christian community requires the setting aside of all self-interest and a total dedication to the good of the community. This is the attitude which must be adopted as the starting point for an authentic understanding of the role of the local superior."
"You can see there the young man who's thinking about what it is to be radically connected to Christ in religious obedience and to be a servant of others and to think about obedience," Father White told OSV News, as if he somewhat, psychologically, "could foresee that he might one day have authority, but he can certainly see that authority in the church is to be exercised in this Christ-centered way."
While no one from then-Father Prevost's time at the Angelicum is still teaching there, Father White is proud that Leo XIV is the second contemporary pope to be an Angelicum graduate in recent decades. St. John Paul II studied at the Angelicum between 1946 and 1948, which was the first exposure to Western Catholic culture for the young priest from Eastern European Poland.
Father White reads the moment of the election of Pope Leo as beyond historical for the church in the United States.
"We're at the beginning of something that we can't quite fathom or measure yet, but this is undoubtedly one of the most important things to happen in the history of the Catholic Church in America, if not the most important," he told OSV News. "I think it's arguably the greatest mercy that God has ever shown on the Catholic Church in America and on the people of America to have a pope who's American. I think, I hope that his message will really be welcomed and received in a time in which the country is in a more secular cycle or secular phase of its history."
For the people of the United States, having an American pope "represents an incredible spiritual opportunity," he said, adding that it also presents a "challenge" because Americans have a "very living" Catholic community.
"The Catholic Church in America is very alive and it has real depth and a vivid and widespread membership and a wonderful intellectual and spiritual life," Father White said. "What we might think about now is how Americans can, in the Catholic Church in America, aspire to be their best selves in the service of this pontificate."
He said the big tasks of the American nation amid the election of their native son as the Successor of Peter is "overcoming artificial polarization, seeking deeper unity, trying to be attentive on all sides to the deepest truths of the faith in all of their integrity."
"You might say, Christ's mystical body has a right side and a left side, but it has a center in its head and in its heart that makes demands on all sides," Father White said. "And I think if everyone concentrates or centers on the heart and the mind of Christ, the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the mind of Christ that Paul talks about in the life of the Catholic Church in America today -- we could really be of great service to the mission of Pope Leo, but also to our own country. It's a kind of unfathomable grace and possibility ... that is now emergent for us."
Father White added that "in a majority Protestant country, the voice of the pope is often a comfort as coming from the outside as a guide in a somewhat disoriented and disorienting culture. And now it's strange to think about the voice of the pope in some sense coming from within. But I'm not worried about it. I think the Holy Spirit will help the pope to be the pope of the Catholic Church. I think he's very aware of that. I don't think there's going to be nationalistic temptations on his part. I think God's prepared him to be a truly Catholic pope, a universal pastor."
Father White, originally a native of southeastern Georgia and theology graduate at Oxford University, said that "the challenge and the opportunity for this pope is to be a genuine successor to the legacy and example of Pope Francis and genuinely relay in continuity many of the values and practices promoted by Pope Francis, but to also advance the reception of truths or styles ... that are also to be received from the pontificate of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, each of which is different from one another, but all of which have a compatibility fundamentally."
He said this precisely derives from the episcopal motto of Pope Leo: "In Illo uno unum," or literally "In the One, we are one."
The motto is "suggesting that we are all truly one in Christ, in the unity of Christ, (it) implies that it's this Augustinian idea of the church as the Mystical Body of Christ, that is a key to deepening the unity among Catholic Christians. We can see each of the great pontiffs who have succeeded one another as ... many compatible lights, or you might say, polyphonic musical notes that sound within one harmony. And I think he's interested in identifying the theme of unity ... and finding how in all of them we see the deeper resonance of Christ, the unity of Christ. I think that's already in his mind. It's in the way he's speaking and preaching."
Speaking about Pope Leo's previous post at the Dicastery for Bishops, Father White said Pope Leo "sees the episcopacy as a very essential and irreplaceable part of the life of the church. He's aware as a canonist and as himself a bishop of the irreducible role and responsibility of the bishops that can't be subjugated to something else, or delegated or reduced or ignored, but that also is constituted by an endeavor of service and ministry to convey, to teach the truth of the Catholic faith in an integral and compassionate way, and to steward or govern the church in service of others."
"We should pray that he's inspired to choose people who have a good experience and a pastoral heart, and a learned Christian mind and a dedication to civility, but also to justice and fairness and a pastoral heart of mercy -- all the qualities that have been rightly underscored" with his service in Peru as a missionary, Father White said.
Having as pope a canon lawyer, who also graduated from Augustinian-run Villanova University in 1977 with a math degree, the faithful can "be confident that the pope has the right attitude, and he has a lot of ... great international experience, so there's no reason to be doubtful about his intentions or his capacities. Like everyone else, he has to deal with the finitude of human nature. But as God has supplied great bishops in the past, in the church, we can hope for the best in the decade to come."
"There's a grace to receive each pope for what he gives and what he brings," Father White told OSV News. "And we're still discovering what this will look like, but it looks like there will be a kind of humble celebration of the beauty of the liturgy, which is very in keeping with the Augustinian tradition."
When he was still Cardinal Prevost, Pope Leo received an invitation for a conference at the Angelicum at the end of May. While the rector said it's understandable the visit may have to be rescheduled or "we can visit him" -- the emotions of the academic community at the Dominican-ran university are precisely those: "we're awed and inexpressibly grateful that he is an alumnus of the Angelicum."
