Pope Leo’s cancer diagnosis and the future of his papacy

At his election 18 months ago, the then 69-year-old Pope Leo was the youngest man chosen to lead the Catholic church for 40 years. It was “the view in the Vatican and among church leaders” that “he had a long papacy in front of him”, said CNN. But, after his shock cancer diagnosis last week, “that assumption” is “being tested”.

‘Big question mark’

When Cardinal Robert Prevost emerged on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica as Pope Leo, he looked “energetic, spoke in a strong voice and had no known history of health issues” – a stark contrast to his predecessor Francis, who died at 88 and “had become increasingly frail during his 12-year papacy”, said Reuters’ Vatican correspondent, Joshua McElwee.

Since taking office, the first US-born pontiff has “emerged as an increasingly influential voice beyond the Church”. In his first, widely praised, encyclical letter, he warned of the risks posed by artificial intelligence, and his criticism of the US war with Iran has drawn the very public ire of Donald Trump. But the expectation of a dynamic papacy “with many foreign trips” and his “stepping into a leading moral role on the global stage” now seems less certain.

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For a man of energy and apparently robust health – “he was known to play tennis regularly” – Leo “suddenly faces the same sense of urgency and questions of longevity that had hung over Francis”, said The New York Times’ Rome correspondent, Motoko Rich. The cancer diagnosis poses a “lurching shift” in outlook, casting “uncertainty over his travel schedule, his agenda and his efforts to unite the church. And, in the worst-case scenario, it raises questions about succession that most thought would not have to be addressed for years to come.”

It also places “a big question mark” on the investment many people made in this pontificate, Massimo Faggioli, a theologian at Leo’s alma mater, Villanova University in Pennsylvania, told The Associated Press. They made an “emotional investment, a political investment”, even an investment into his getting the Vatican’s finances into order.

‘Galvanise support’

“Vatican watchers” say Leo’s diagnosis could “have other unintended effects – not all of them negative”, said AP. It could incentivise him “to accelerate his own agenda, which to date has been slow and deliberate”, and it could also “galvanise support for him, bolstering his efforts to unify the fractured Catholic Church”.

Past pontiffs have used their personal vulnerability to shape the Church’s agenda – most notably John Paul II, who narrowly escaped assassination early on in his papacy, and then used his experience of Parkinson’s disease to model his theology of redemptive suffering. “Most significant” for Leo’s ministry is that this cancer diagnosis places him “squarely among the ‘fragile’ and ‘vulnerable’ who have emerged as a central focus of his pontificate” so far.

“There’s something really beautiful in that even the most powerful person in the Church is broken,” Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a US associate professor of theology, told AP. “He’s been so, so eloquent on how our fragility is also a source of our strength.”