Where Is The Pope Guiding Us in This Changing World?

By Takenori Inoki / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:00 JST, July 4, 2025

The Roman Catholic Church has chosen an American-born cardinal as its new pope, and he has taken the name Leo XIV.

Many of the world’s news outlets enthusiastically covered the conclave that elected the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion-strong Catholics, as well as the challenges facing the church today.

In what direction will the new pope take church reform? The power of religion is once more being tested by the chaotic reality of politics, and by political leaders in the United States, China and Russia, among other heads of government, who act arbitrarily.

In January, Donald Trump began his second term as U.S. president. So, the world’s attention is now focused on two American leaders, President Trump and Pope Leo.

Of course, they lead in different domains. But both politics and religion are deployed to tame the chaos that lurks in the human heart.

Trump has made clear from his policies that the United States is looking to step back from its role in shaping and maintaining the world order. He has already staked out a thoroughly protectionist stance, begun the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change and frozen U.S. funding for the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, among other international agencies. He has also shown indifference to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Trump thinks the United States has not benefited enough from international agreements, international organizations and military alliances to compensate it for how much it has spent on infrastructure for maintaining the global order, in other words public goods. But in this mental calculus that sees unilateralism as reasonable, there is no understanding of how an international order with no hegemon will collapse, triggering major turmoil.

American economic historian Charles Kindleberger argued that a global leadership vacuum was to blame for instability in currencies, a turbulent world economy and the rise of protectionism in the 1930s.

After World War I, there was a dire need for the United States, which was experiencing a remarkable economic rise, to explicitly take over as the global economic hegemon from the United Kingdom, which had lost its momentum. However, the United States was focused on its own interests and would not assume the responsibilities of a hegemon. This was the main reason the Great Depression lasted so long, according to Kindleberger.

For its part, the United Kingdom was no longer willing or able to carry on as the provider of “international public goods.” It could no longer fulfill the responsibilities of a hegemon, such as coordinating macroeconomic policies among countries and supporting free markets and a stable currency system — the foundation of global economic infrastructure.

On the other hand, despite its economic predominance, the United States never seriously tried to stabilize the public goods that are global trade and currency exchange.

What do we see when we apply Kindleberger’s perspective to U.S.-China tensions today and Washington’s latest shift toward “America First”? We see a world facing a harsh reality, one of worsening trade wars and growing competition for resources, with no country assuming the mantle of hegemon to create order.

Once order begins to break down, things easily return to the chaos and barbarism of the primitive world. We have been reminded of this fact by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the Palestine-Israel conflict and the missile strikes exchanged by Iran and Israel.

Irreconcilable goals

What message will the new pontiff send amid such circumstances? One thing is clear: The new pope has a very strong interest in social issues.

This can be inferred from how he worked assiduously to eradicate poverty and political corruption in Peru in the 1980s, and from his choice of the papal name Leo.

Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) is remembered for having issued in 1891 the groundbreaking encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” which declared that the Catholic Church would seriously address social issues. The encyclical touched on the rights of workers and the limits of private property ownership from the perspective of human dignity at a time when economic competition was becoming increasingly fierce due to rapid industrialization.

Pope Leo XIV has said he wants to address, with the help of experts, issues relating to the spread of robots and artificial intelligence, both brought about by the new industrial revolution of the 21st century. The new pontiff is viewed as paying tribute to Pope Leo XIII, as a leader determined to continue on the earlier pontiff’s path.

Science and technology have changed our lives greatly over the past half century. Have they brought happiness, or are they a source of unhappiness? There can be no simple answer since it depends on how the technologies are used. That said, history shows that cultures that are superior in science and technology inject themselves into those that lag behind and, with overwhelming force, bring assimilation.

For example, in the 12th century, Europe experienced an influx of Islamic culture, which carried a wealth of knowledge on the empirical sciences, such as medicine, astronomy and chemistry, and a variety of social problems emerged in Europe. Similarly today, the overwhelming push toward assimilation caused by science and technology, which chiefly originate in the United States, raises the question of whether AI will surpass humans.

Surely, many people would like to know how the Catholic Church — which from its perspective based on faith has been observing these matters that force a reexamination of humanity — views the latest issues.

Trump’s policy toward Harvard and other leading U.S. universities is also causing major upheaval. Pope Leo XIII took a clear stance on the freedom of education and research in universities. He supported the so-called Oxford Movement that advocated separation of church and state, and deeply valued English theologian John Henry Newman and his idea of liberal education in universities.

Whether one supports or criticizes the political power of the time, being able to reason freely while maintaining a distance from power is essential to society.

Pope Leo XIII recognized that universities have value beyond simply nurturing human resources for the sake of national strength and economic power.

Clearly, there is an irreconcilable divergence between the goals of Trump and Pope Leo XIV.

Western societies have a long history of conflict over religion’s interference in politics. The separation of church and state, a principle that is now mainstream, is very clear: Political power is to be separate from religious power, and neither is to intrude upon the other. However, Japan and the West have not been on the same page about what this principle is meant to deter.

In modern Japan, there is a fear that politics will be dominated by one religious group. But in the West, which has a long history of movements aimed at securing freedom, people have focused on how to prevent a weakening of religion due to entanglement in politics. This is because they want religion to retain its power to bring order to people’s minds when they are heading toward chaos and barbarism.

What direction will the new pope point us in amid our tumultuous politics and rapidly changing society? I believe that it is important not to simply wait for messages from others but to reexamine our thoughts and lives.

Takenori Inoki

Inoki is a professor emeritus at Osaka University, where he also served as dean of the economics department. He was a specially appointed professor at Aoyama Gakuin University from 2012 to 2016. Prior to that, he served as director general of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies from 2008 to 2012.

The original Japanese article appeared in the June 29 issue of The Yomiuri Shimbun.