Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with journalist Elise Ann Allen, the Rome correspondent for Crux, about her new book, Pope Leo XIV: The Biography (Penguin Random House). 

Together, they discuss how Allen came to know then-Bishop Robert Prevost while investigating an abuse scandal in Peru, the formative decades he spent as a missionary amid poverty, terrorism, and political upheaval there, as well as the influence of Augustinian spirituality and liberation theology on his social conscience. 

They also discuss how his instincts for unity and peacemaking are shaping a papacy that, as his recent trip to Africa revealed, is only beginning to find its voice. 

Episode production and original music by Joel Myers.