🙏 Everything You Need To Know About The New Pope

Professor Joel Hodge joins Jonesy & Amanda to answer all our questions about the new pope - Leo XIV.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
J Jerzy and Amanda Jamna.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
We've woken to the news that we have a new Pope,
Robert Prevost. He'll be known as Pope Leo the fourteenth.
He is the two hundred and sixty seventh pope to
lead the world's one point four billion Roman Catholics. To
find out more, it's nice to talk again to Professor
Joel Hodge, Administratian Catholic University. Joel.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hello, Hello, Joel, good morning. Were you good morning?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Were you surprised by this?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Oh? A little bit surprised. He was one of the
people who was talked about and one of the people
I knew in Rome who was telling me was the possibility,
But he wasn't one of the main contenders that was
talked about. But you know, it was an open field.
I suspected that we probably wouldn't get one of the

(00:46):
main contenders, but you know, they're the ones that people
talked about and were betting on and all that kind
of thing. But he he's someone that Pope Francis clearly
had signaled was someone he had a lot of respect
or a major future leader, because he had him in
a major Dicastrio department choosing future bishops. He also promoted

(01:10):
him to the high highest rank of cardinals. All happened
in the last couple of years, So someone who was
on the up, but also interestingly, someone who's not from
a major diocese, like Pope Francis was from Buenos Aires,
he was the archbishop of that big city, whereas this
pope he was from a regional diocese in Peru, so

(01:34):
not from a big diocese, not from a big city,
but from the margins in a certain sense, like Pope
France has emphasized and.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Not being cynical, but an American pope. This isn't to
appease the Trump administration in any way.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Is it. Well, the Catholic Church and the cardinals the
Vatican have always kind of kept themselves at a bit
of arms length with the United States. I mean, you know,
allied in close interests, but careful in terms of how
close they got. So we've never had a pope from

(02:08):
the United States, and it was thought maybe we never
would because of that reason. But this indicates that, you know,
they want to choose the best person, the best man
for the job, so to speak, and it does give
us a connection to the Americas. So you know, that's
where the most number of Catholics are, and so we've
got a connection to South America and North America at

(02:30):
the same time. And if you're thinking strategically South America,
Central America the most number of Catholics. North America has
a lot of finance, so there's lots of good strategic
links there.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
What do we know about this new Pope? Will he
be if he was someone who previous Pope thought was
on the right path, does that mean he'll be progressive
like the previous pope or more conservative?

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well, it'll be interesting. I mean those those categories are
always difficult when talking about the church, and it depends
on the issue that you're talking about. But look at
his personality, like when he came out onto the balcony,
he was smiling, you know, he seemed the ease, relaxed.
But maybe he won't be the kind of bouncing, big

(03:18):
personality like Pope Francis or John Paul the Second. He's
said to be a bit more reserved, a very good listener,
someone who is with people, accompanying people like Pope Francis
in that sense. So we'll see what his personality in
styl is like I think he'll be similar to Pope
Francis in his emphasis around governance. He talked about a

(03:39):
sonodyl church, about welcoming lay people more and more into
the governance of the church, and clear emphasis similar to
Pope Francis on being with people, walking with people, accompanying them,
loving them, being with them, etc. So I think those
he was signaling there that he's continuing on in the

(04:00):
line of Pope Francis. Also a strong emphasis on peace
and on mission. He talked his first words would peace
be with you, and they're the words from the risen
Jesus after he rises from the dead in the Gospels,
and he wanted to signal, I think, a strong sense
of we need that love of Jesus right now, and

(04:20):
we especially need it for peace in the world. And
so I think he wanted to signal his his very
strong commitment to that area.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
All right, And I'm glad that they announced it overnight,
because Amanda had a way of deciding the new pope.
Forget about the smoke coming out of the chimney. She
was going to have me in a suit covered in
balloons with numbers on them, and then she would throw
darts at me to pick the Pope.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
I picked the footy tips the same way, so I thought.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, already a throng of people had gathered outside the building,
just waiting, and a seagull landed on top of my head.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
That's that's a lot of balloons and a lot of dart.
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
So it's win win all round. Well, thank you so
much for joining us, and and and thank you and
have a good weekend.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
You true, thanks a lot, Thanks.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
John, Professor Joel Hodge.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
There