It has been intriguing really to watch the news coverage of our beloved Pope Francis’ death and funeral rites. It is as if something has touched the soul of the global community who wanted to find ways of expressing grief, gratitude and thanksgiving for this good man of faith. The news focused on Pope Franics capacity to connect with ordinary people in extraordinary ways. His off the cuff remarks that took dogmatists by surprise. His visits to prisons in his own Diocese of Rome along with his energetic focus on the peripheries, marked by his first journey out of Rome to Lampedusa to stand with the atrocities inflicted on those seeking refugee status. Wherever Francis went, it was intentional, deliberate and, in the best sense of the word, political. He saw opportunity to awaken the world with the good news message and he delivered this message clearly and at times starkly, never flinching from what might be the backlash from those quarters nestled in their comfortable lifestyles. Francis was a disruptor; he came to awaken the world to its conscience and has left us with much to ponder and further to enact in terms of creating a just world.

Habemus Papam! So the news greeted the world. Now we have a new Pope, successor to the fisherman Peter.

In the days leading to the conclave, the scriptural reading was most relevant of an encounter at the seaside with an anonymous person sitting aside a fire cooking fish for the exhausted fishermen who had been out all night in their boats without a catch. The Johannine community captures the dialogue so aptly : Do you love me? Do you love me more than these others? Was it a confronting dialogue or was it one of intimate searching? There is no doubt it was about the love of one for another. A love that had been betrayed out of human weakness and uncertainty. Haven’t we all been there at some time or other? Yet the dialogue uncovers another aspect of this encounter – of the Risen One seeking assurance that his Love is worth everything. Even though things have been so difficult, the persecution so real, do you still keep loving?

Was it not then significant that this new pontiff opens his heart to the world with “ Peace be with you!” And, of course, we know the next line – as the Father has sent me, so I send you. Leo XIV’s focus in his first words is about being missionary. As Consecrated Religious, we know that calling well. As we look across Australia we still see in the peripheries of places, parishes and diocese Religious IN mission with the people of God. Leo has been immersed in mission in Peru and it has formed him in his Augustinian charism to be a person intent on following his Founder Augustine, the great teacher and doctor of the Church who according to his contemporary, Jerome of Stridon, "established a new the ancient Faith". Augustine emerged in a time when his civilisation was crumbling around him and he provided an anchor of faith to re-interperet the times through the eyes of faith. His insight into God was driven by his own vulnerable journey of conversion captured so poignantly in his confessions : “Late have I loved thee O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.
Late have I loved you for you were within me but I was outside, and there I sought you!” Yet in his humility he was led to seek that deep desire of his heart and it was there he found the beauty and solace he had been seeking.

As Pope Leo grows into becoming Bishop of Rome – and the world - may we give thanks for his Augustinian Brothers who have formed him and inspired him, and may we be patient to let him be-come who is meant to be for the Church and the world at this pivotal moment in history.