At the end of his first World Youth Day in July 2013, Pope Francis urged the millions of young people gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to “make some noise!” or “make a mess!”
The Spanish phrase, ¡Hagan lío!, can be translated both ways (and the Vatican’s official translators often used both), but it spoke to the desire of history’s first pontiff from the global south to use his papacy to shake things up.
As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then-archbishop of Buenos Aires, told his brother cardinals in the pre-conclave meetings before his election as pope in 2013, he felt Jesus was trapped on the inside of a Church that had become too self-referential and was knocking at the door in hopes of being let out. The shared desire to shake things up after years of devastating headlines involving clergy abuse and financial corruption at the Vatican led to the election of a trailblazing pope who did just that.
Francis’ mode of ¡Hagan lío! was best exhibited through his legacy-making initiative known as the Synod on Synodality, a multi-year listening global consultation process that allowed often taboo topics in Church life—women, sexuality, accountability, and clericalism—to be discussed openly in an official Vatican-backed forum. For Francis’ detractors, ¡Hagan lío! also became the shorthand to dismiss what they viewed to be a pope who had stirred up a hornet’s nest.
When Francis died earlier this year, the unfinished work of that legacy project hung in the balance. The conclave of 2025 became a referendum on synodality and the late pontiff’s disruptive efforts.
When out on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica stepped Robert Prevost, an American pope who straddled both the United States and Latin American worlds, few knew what to expect. But the name he had chosen offered the first clue. Leo XIV was an immediate nod to Pope Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), gave birth to modern Catholic social teaching. In that seminal text written at the height of industrialization, Leo XIII rejected an economic model where labor was concentrated in the hands of only a select few. In just 14,000 words, the pope gave his backing to trade unions, the right of workers to a fair wage, and the need for better and safer working conditions. In a revolutionary era, Leo XIII left no doubt as to with whom the Church was siding: the rights of the working man must be protected by the state, precisely because of their God-given human dignity.
In surveying the forces shaping society at a rapid clip, Leo XIII decided the Church must bear witness to the plight these revolutions caused for the masses. More than a century would go by before another pope dared to carry on that mantle. And perhaps the least likely candidate to choose to do so was a 69-year-old who had been born on the South Side of Chicago.
Around the same time that Leo XIII penned his landmark letter, construction was underway on the Illinois Central Railroad. The new line, which connected the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, made it easier to connect city life and rural life. Among the many growing suburbs that would sprout up from this expansion was the village of Dolton, which soon began to attract many of the Catholic families seeking to leave the city. Originally settled by German immigrants in the nineteenth century, Dolton became a melting pot of others looking to escape the high prices of city life after the Second World War. And in a simple red brick, three-bedroom house—about 750-square feet at the time—a future pope, Robert Prevost, was raised.
There, the family’s life centered around Saint Mary of the Assumption Church, where the three Prevost boys attended school and where their father served as catechist and their mother sang in the choir. It was a parish whose membership reflected the rich mosaic of American life, as did their own family, whose multicultural roots could be traced back to France on Robert’s father’s side and to the Creole people on his mother’s side.
The call to religious life came early for Robert and from high school onwards, his life was intertwined with the Augustinians, an order he would eventually be elected to lead for a decade and oversee their operations in 50 countries around the world. But it was an early assignment as a missionary priest to Peru that he would credit with teaching him what it meant to truly become a pastor.
In Peru, Prevost encountered a young diocese where many of the faithful lacked electricity, where climate change regularly led to devastating flooding, and where violent rebel groups fueled conflict. By contrast, Church leaders—energized by the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on the "the People of God"—saw it as their duty to stand alongside the poor to fight political and economic injustices. ¡Hagan lío!, in such a context, was the Church’s way of refusing to simply accept the status quo.
When the 133 cardinals from around the world gathered in Rome to elect Francis’ successor, Cardinal Robert Prevost’s name was not on many shortlists of potential popes (papabile, as the Italians call them). He had been brought to the Vatican two years prior by Francis to head the powerful Vatican department tasked with vetting potential bishops. He was an introvert, a cautious and careful individual who resisted the spotlight. Yet Francis, the extrovert, came to view him as one of his most trusted advisers and accelerated his rank among the hierarchy. In retrospect, some have even argued the pope—who his American critics often accused of not understanding the United States—had chosen someone from there as his heir apparent.
As the cardinals weighed the needs of the Church and the world and considered who among them might be best suited to lead in this moment, there was an overwhelming desire to choose a man who both shared Francis’ pastoral priorities but who could also take the processes initiated by Francis and systematize them for the whole Church. In Francis, the Church had been given a spiritual entrepreneur, and in Leo, the cardinals elected an institutional enforcer to ensure that the change initiated by Francis could be given the necessary support to continue in the future.
The spirit of ¡Hagan lío! that animated Francis and later converted Prevost in Peru remains present in the DNA of this new papacy. In the years ahead, a different style of leadership will certainly unfold. But the conviction that Leo XIII had that the Church must be attentive to the “new things” of his age and the concrete realities of the people of God has a long through line that runs from Chicago to Chiclayo, Peru. It is one that goes all the way back to the gospels and has now been given new forward momentum in this new papacy.
