Pope Leo’s election has been commented on for many facets, but his age (ten) at the conclusion of Vatican II in 1965 is one of the most significant. It is likely he will be the last pope to have been born before the Council; he is the first not to have already been in ministry or formation during it. Robert Prevost was ordained in 1982, and his adulthood and ministry unfolded entirely in the wake of Vatican II’s reforms. Rather than a shock to the system or a decline from a golden age, the post-conciliar era defined the Church he said “yes” to when he became an Augustinian, a priest, and a bishop. It is appropriate that a pope formed by the post-conciliar Church will lead us into what I might be so bold as to call the “post-post-conciliar era.”
The post-conciliar era had many phases; the longest (and in some ways most decisive) one began with the 1978 conclaves. Through their choice of papal names selected in tribute to those who presided over the Council, John Paul I and John Paul II (in very different ways) committed the Church to the continuing implementation of Vatican II, against the wishes of those who would have preferred it be forgotten. John Paul II’s long papacy placed Vatican II—a highly specific interpretation but rooted in a reading of Gaudium et spes—at its center. At the same time, he tried to keep a lid on the various controversies, particularly those surrounding sexuality, governance, and the role of women in the Church, that had erupted in the immediate post-conciliar era and consumed the latter years of Paul VI’s papacy.
John Paul II’s interpretation of the Council—and Benedict XVI’s explicit discussion of hermeneutics—were much argued about in their time. They seemed to herald a permanent consolidation until the latter’s resignation opened the way for a new direction, but still served to cement Vatican II as an ongoing ecclesial reality. Many of John Paul’s actions, particularly his forays into interreligious dialogue (most famously at Assisi) conjured what even the conservative Cardinal Francis Arinze had to acknowledge as the “spirit of Vatican II”—the renewing impulse emanating from the Council and bursting beyond the letter of its documents. John O’Malley reframed this idea for historians by describing Vatican II as an event transcending what, strictly speaking, took place within the Council halls.
There has been some movement in right-leaning parts of the Catholic landscape to bury Vatican II through historical relativizing. Bishop Robert Barron has been a leader in this approach, as his critique of “beige Catholicism” attempted to sum up the early post-conciliar era in terms of bland 1970s aesthetics and insipid preaching. From this perspective, Vatican II and its aftermath must be contextualized within the great tradition, and in so doing would inevitably be overshadowed by the monuments of the past. Emphasizing the central importance of Vatican II, on this reading, evinces a recency bias unfitting for a two-thousand-year-old tradition.
While more extreme traditionalist criticisms of Vatican II have always had the liturgy as their primary entry point (with antisemitism and rejection of Nostra aetate a close second), the most serious and dangerous threat to its legacy today comes from the United States in the form of neo-integralist attempts to undermine the heritage of Dignitatis humanae, the declaration on religious freedom. The document’s partial origins in the work of American theologian John Courtney Murray do not deter many Christian nationalists, or Catholic intellectuals like Patrick Deneen, from advocating for policies and approaches—championed by the recently formed Religious Liberty Commission, whose members include Bishop Barron and Cardinal Timothy Dolan—that undermine religious freedom for non-(conservative) Christians.
The signature achievement of Pope Francis was to reignite the spirit of the Council precisely to prepare the Church for a new era. Without explicit judgment on his predecessors’ approaches, he released the brakes and reopened conversations within the Church that had become taboo. In the life of the Church and in the interpretation of the Council, Francis helped to engage the Church with (in the words of a book title by the recently deceased David Tracy) plurality and ambiguity in a constructive way. He was hated and accused of ambiguity himself for this, but it was a necessary course correction that has set the stage for the new era we face now.
Perhaps the key part of Leo’s first speech to the cardinals following his election was his immediate pivot to interpreting Vatican II in terms of Pope Francis’s Evangelii gaudium, focusing especially on its themes of missionary discipleship, care for the least and rejected, and dialogue with the modern world (with explicit reference to Gaudium et spes). Positioning the papacy of Francis as an authoritative interpretation of Vatican II, and thus positioning his key initiatives as its natural outgrowth, indicates a significant transition has occurred.
In the 2025 conclave, it was not so much Vatican II that was on the ballot as synodality. This was Pope Francis’s ecclesial initiative that sought to lead the Church down paths opened by the Council but closed beginning with Paul VI’s retreat from empowering the Synod of Bishops in its infancy. It was clear during the General Congregations that synodality was a point of contention and that Pietro Cardinal Parolin’s candidacy was the most realistic path for those who wanted to back away. This question was answered by Leo’s ringing endorsement of synodality from the get-go. Indeed, Leo’s documented leadership style—listening and consulting carefully with stakeholders before making a decision—meshes perhaps even more seamlessly with synodality than did that of Francis, who could be counterproductively brusque with direct collaborators.
The centrality of synodality to the Church’s work going forward is a positive sign that the Council and its messages are being metabolized. It augurs the increasing prominence of the voices of those who (not being eligible to be bishops) were not heard at the Council itself—in particular, women’s voices. Yet it is also a sobering reminder that the stakes are high, and that Augustine’s exhortation (cited by Leo) to “live well and the times will be good” is not a platitude worthy of a greeting card but a stark challenge. The triumphs and missteps of popes and theologians sixty years ago still matter, but the future is not theirs to shape. Nor will it predominantly be Leo’s. Rather, it will be the responsibility of an engaged, synodal Church carrying forward the message of Vatican II.
Leo rooted his name in that of Leo XIII while using language from Vatican II about the Church and the modern world to articulate his decision and the thinking of the cardinals who elected him. His priorities, particularly addressing artificial intelligence, were scarcely imaginable at the end of Vatican II (though some Catholic thinkers, such as Walter Ong, were laying the groundwork for these discussions). The post-post-conciliar era asks Catholics not to bury Vatican II, nor just to talk about it, but to live it.
