VATICAN CITY, Rome — It's been a month since he was elected as leader of the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Leo XIV has seen the importance of listening rather than acting to shepherd the world’s 1.376 billion faithful around the globe in about 195 different countries.

In succeeding the Vatican's 266th head of state Pope Francis, who passed away last April 21, 2025, the erstwhile American bishop Louis Marius Prevost from Chicago, Illinois has made efforts to learn the lay of the land in the world’s smallest state.

Catholics and other believers from across the racial divide who have had the chance to know and observe the new pope see both a continuity with his predecessor while tracing a different path that is his own.

And although no major curial appointments or announcements have been made in the past four weeks, one person who had a chance to know then Cardinal Prevost during the Synod on Synodality said the new pope takes his time and listens before speaking or taking concrete action.

“He’s reaching out and basically listening right now, and taking notes. And, well, that’s what he did, not only in the synod but also in the diocese he led in Chiclayo, Peru,” José Manuel De Urquidi, founder of the Juan Diego Network, noted.

Urquidi, who was among the lay delegates attending the Synod of Bishops, was in the same group as the future pope and saw firsthand Pope Leo’s modus operandi.

“He doesn’t just want to listen, and that’s it, but to listen to everyone as a first step. And to also see how to react in a good way, and work with everyone,” Urquidi enthused in a media interview.

Pontifical Mission Societies USA national director Monsignor Roger Landry expressed positivity on the new pope’s missionary experience: “His 12 years traveling the globe as Augustinian prior general, have really prepared him well to steer the barque of Peter in the church’s worldwide fishing expedition.”

“The most striking thing about him is how poised he has been in everything he has been doing, While his election may have been a shock to almost everyone else, he has seemed, from the moment he walked out on the balcony, to be ready and perfectly comfortable in his new and greatly expanded mission,” Msgr. Landry messaged in an email to OSV News on June 6.

Urquidi echoed Landry's sentiments, citing that Pope Leo’s 'missionary heart' gave him a unique perspective on leading by listening first and then acting: “He has a very universal approach—American but also Latin American—but also this very unique experience of being a superior for many years with the Augustinian's.”

The digital missionary highlighted his observation that “a lot of people in the media, or even pundits, (try to) classify American bishops or cardinals on a spectrum, (but the new pope) doesn’t fit any of those at all.
“We’re seeing that in how he’s approaching things during this first month,” he asserted while disclosing that Pope Leo has repeatedly mentioned various themes “that seem to be the initial lines of his papal magisterium.”'

Among those themes are “the peace of the risen Christ that the world urgently needs; the summons of everyone in the church to proclaim and give witness to Jesus as the Son of the Living God and the answer to man’s restless heart; the call for the church to serve as the sacrament of communion for the human race in the one Christ who seeks to make us one.”

In ending, Msgr. Landry spelled out that Pope Leo has emphasized “the importance of Catholic teaching to respond to the social, anthropological, economic and intellectual revolution underway because of artificial intelligence,” which humbly reaffirms that the pontiff is indeed still Catholic with regard to gender ideology, marriage, family, human sexuality and the dignity of every human life.”