When white smoke rose above the Sistine Chapel on May 8 2025, the surprise was immediate. The Catholic Church’s leadership had elected its first pope born in the United States, a former Augustinian missionary in Peru who few expected to win.
One year later, the story is not about celebration or verdicts. It is about difficulty. Leo XIV’s first year reveals how hard it is to govern a global church shaped by division, reform and competing expectations.
That difficulty has not remained internal.
