The gaze of Pope Leo XIV
The high tide of Pope Leo XIV’s journey to Spain left an immense archive of words, gestures and emotions. Ever since the evening of May 8, 2025, when he stepped out onto the Benediction Loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica to greet the world for the first time as Bishop of Rome and the 267th successor of Saint Peter, journalists have been asking: who is Robert F. Prevost?
Biographies have multiplied in many languages, and television cameras have travelled through Chicago, Peru and Rome in search of images and testimonies.
Biographical facts and curiosities aside, some features of his personality have been highlighted. Seemingly shy, cordial, approachable and serene; a lover of the poor more than of poverty (poverty does not necessarily lead to love, but love inevitably leads to poverty, wrote José María Cabodevilla); a mathematician with an analytical mind; observant, orderly, didactic in his speech, a peacemaker, exquisite in his respect and his listening, with an affectionate countenance and a naked faith that has led him to live out in the open or, better said, under the shelter of God’s will; an expert in listening to people wounded by life… At this point, Pope Robert F. Prevost would say that piling up epithets, or trying to paint an intimate portrait of a person, is something of an impossible and futile task. And so it is.
What if we tried to choose a single gesture of Leo XIV? Perhaps his gaze. Serene, luminous, forgiving, trust-building, it embraces and gives value to whoever speaks with him. The blessed passivity of someone who knows how to listen and offers you the gift of an eloquent silence.
The power of God is drawn in that immense eye that the illustrations of old catechisms placed inside a triangle. Pope Leo’s gaze is warm, welcoming, Samaritan.
While the popemobile drove through the streets of Madrid, Barcelona and the Canary Islands, anonymous Spain stood on tiptoe on the pavements so that, later, it could say with joy: “I saw the Pope” or “the Pope looked at me”. A Pope surrounded by an aura of solemnity without artifice, at ease when blessing and tireless in handing out blessings and peaceful smiles. He crossed our cities celebrating the ceremony of simplicity, enjoying the Augustinian joy of loving and feeling loved.
What non-verbal message did the Pope convey during his visit to our country? “Without a doubt, something almost imperceptible, the mysterious transmission of a depth hidden behind his face, his gestures and his words… Something deeper that flows from him: a great silence, the restraint of a hidden treasure, where the ego of the influential leader fades away to make room for a savoured interiority that reaches people” (Pedro Miguel Lamet, June 12, 2026).