Pope Leo XIV's First Year: Love Works Miracles in Pompeii

One year into his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV has chosen presence over pageantry — bowling, playing chess, walking among ruins — as his answer to a church quietly losing its hold on the modern world. Where previous popes governed from ceremonial distance, Leo seems to understand that the crisis facing Catholicism is not doctrinal but existential: a question of whether faith can still feel human. His early gestures, from Pompeii to the chessboard, read less as novelty and more as a considered wager that warmth, not authority, is what keeps institutions alive.