Depending on where you were in the world, it may have been morning, afternoon, or perhaps early evening. In Rome, it was slightly after 6 in the evening, and the sun was far enough from its zenith that the city was nicely lit without being blinding. The blue sky was free of almost all cloud cover, and from what I’ve heard, it was somewhere in the comfortable mid-60s. It was at this moment on a Thursday in mid-May in the year of Our Lord 2025 that the world discovered that we had a new pope. Many awaited the famous announcement from the Cardinal Protodeacon – “Habemus Papam!” (We have a pope!) – with bated breath. Who was elected? Was it the Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin? Maybe it was the Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle, or the Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo. The time for the announcement came, and Cardinal Dominique Mamberti announced to the world that “Robertum Franciscum… Cardinelem Prevost” had been elected by a supermajority of the members of the College of Cardinals to be the 267th Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman Church.

This election surprised many Vatican watchers, although it was slightly less out of left field than the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 2013. Because Cardinal Prevost was not on the radar of many people, a frantic search to learn everything that there was to know about the man ensued. He was born in Chicago, making him the first American pope; he had served as a missionary priest in Peru, making him the first pope with Peruvian citizenship, as well; he had led the Augustinian religious order, of which he is a member, for ten years; after that, he returned to Peru, eventually as a bishop, for nine years before becoming Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Rome; and, perhaps most importantly to many Americans, he is a White Sox fan. However, this sudden interest in the new pope also led to interest in such things as his personal coat of arms. His shield contains a fleur-de-lis, a clear symbol of his strong Marian devotion, as well as symbols of his religious order. It is what one finds under the shield – his episcopal (and later papal) motto – that is the most interesting to me: In Illo uno unum. In English, that can be roughly translated as “In the One, we are one.”

“In the one Christ we are one,” wrote St. Augustine in his Exposition on Psalm 128, reiterating what St. Paul wrote on the topic and reminding us that it is Christ, not ourselves, that unites us into one body as the Church. As a “son of St. Augustine,” as Pope Leo XIV has called himself, and as a missionary priest, it makes sense that this would be the motto that he chose. After all, he has devoted his life to following in the footsteps of St. Augustine, and he was clearly close to those that he ministered to abroad, seeing Christ in “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40). Christ Himself gave us the example of who we should care for the most in our world – the hungry, the homeless, the utterly destitute. If we are to witness Christ in Heaven, then we must first witness Him on this Earth in the form of the poor and the impoverished. In uniting ourselves with them and caring for them, we also unite ourselves to Christ. In that one Christ, we become one people with a common destination: Heaven.

There are some Christians that believe that faith alone is sufficient for salvation. This doctrine, known as sola fide, teaches that it is through faith alone, not works, that we are saved. If I were to simply proclaim Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, they say, I will be redeemed from my sins and welcomed into Heaven by the Lord with open arms at the Final Judgment. And while Catholics do not discount faith as being a necessary part of salvation, because it necessarily must be a component of it, we also believe that good works are necessary for our salvation. We must, then, look to charity as a means of finding Christ in this world. We can find Christ through faith everywhere – in churches, in fellow Christians, in social media posts, and more. However, if we don’t also seek out Christ in those that are less fortunate than us, then we are missing a key component of our salvation. We cannot accept Christ without also accepting those that He tenderly watches over. We cannot be one in Christ without also being one with our impoverished brothers and sisters. Pope Leo, as is common in so many missionaries, exemplified this when he was in Peru. He became one with those that he saw Christ in, and in the process, he became one with Christ, just as his motto says.

This doesn’t just apply to helping those that are impoverished. We are called to be charitable to all, even – and perhaps especially – those that do not agree with us. We are to be one with the liberal, one with the conservative, one with the Traditional Latin Mass-goer, and one with the Novus Ordo Mass-goer. It is only in healing our divisions that we can truly be one in Christ, as Christ’s Body cannot have divisions. Christ is perfect; division is imperfect. Imperfection cannot live within perfection, because then the perfection would be imperfect. For this reason, we must reconcile with all those around us in order to love each other as Christ loves us, and as He asks us to love others. It is only in becoming one with everyone, even those that don’t see eye to eye with us, that we become one in Christ.

It is especially poignant as we celebrate the feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary to remember that the members of the Holy Family were on the outskirts of society in their own day. Mary was an unmarried peasant girl when she fell pregnant with Our Lord, and St. Joseph was a woodworker and craftsman that could, realistically, barely afford to feed his family. However, the Jewish people were united by their belief in the one true God and their position as His children. Roman society may have dictated that Mary, Joseph, and all the other Nazarenes were unworthy of high placement, or even basic respect, but their deeply held religious beliefs taught them that everyone was worthy of respect as children of God. Even as Mary has been elevated to the place of honor at the right hand of her son, now and forever the King of Heaven and Earth, she has not forgotten that all of her children deserve just as much respect as she afforded to the Romans even as they tortured and killed her Son. The Mother of God does not, and can not by virtue of her role as Queen of Heaven and Earth, desire that we stay separated or split, and because of this, it is fitting that we beg her intercession as we struggle to love all of our brethren in Christ. Besides Christ Himself, there is no one more able to help us overcome our division than the queen that sits “at [His] right hand, arrayed in gold” (Psalm 45:10bc).

Even with as much heavenly help as possible, the Church has historically been polarized. This is one of the reasons why so many people awaited the election of the new pope with such concern. Would it be a liberal? A conservative? A Francis II, or a Benedict XVII? These questions threatened to tear us apart. But the Holy Spirit ultimately guides the cardinal electors to do what is best for the Church in the current moment. And the Holy Spirit did not lead the cardinals to elect a famous partisan liberal or conservative, or anything else that the media was expecting. Instead, He led the cardinals to choose an outsider to be the pope, one that could unite both sides of the spectrum, one who could love everyone regardless of their political affiliations or economic status. The cardinals seem to have picked a pope that can lead us to be unum in Uno, one in the One, instead of one that may divide us further. Let us pray, then, that we as Christians can come to live fully the motto of our Holy Father Leo, and that we may come to be in Illo uno unum. Further, let us take the cue of Mary, Joseph, and all the saints in living out our earthly vocation to respect everyone, no matter their station, as brothers and sisters in Christ. And finally, let us also remember to pray for Pope Leo XIV as he guides Christ’s Church on Earth, that it may flourish under his guidance and unifying spirit.