Habemus Papam: A Pause in Our Series on Composite Models
We will return next week to our ongoing series on trauma, scapegoating, and the formation of the self through remembered model-relationships. But today—May 8, 2025—demands a pause.
Because today, the Church proclaims: Habemus Papam.
We have a pope.
The Mimetic Center
It’s tempting to respond to this kind of moment the way the world always does: commentary, conjecture, instant polarization. But we would do well to step back and consider what is actually unfolding before us.
The papacy is many things: a spiritual office, a juridical seat, a symbol of unity. But it is also, unmistakably, a mimetic lightning rod. From the moment the white smoke appears, the new pontiff becomes a figure of immense attraction—and therefore a source of immense rivalry.
Everyone has a take. Everyone has a stake.
But the truth is that the man we now call Pope Leo XIV has stepped into a role not defined by his biography, nor even by the hope or dread his election provokes. He has stepped into the center. And in mimetic terms, that center is always unstable. It is where attention converges, where projections are cast, and—too often—where the crowd begins to look for a victim.
Not a Blank Slate
While he hasn’t been noted for speaking his mind in public forums, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, is not a cipher. He brings with him the spiritual formation of the Augustinian order, the lived intimacy of missionary service in Peru, and the practical demands of curial governance. Yet, unlike his most recent predecessors, he has left behind little in the way of public theological writing or interviews. He arrives at the balcony not with a corpus of thought, but as a kind of liminal figure—one who stands between past and future, action and expectation, presence and projection.
His choice of the name Leo gestures backward—perhaps toward Leo I, the peacemaker before Attila, or Leo XIII, the architect of modern Catholic social thought. But his path forward remains largely undefined, and it is precisely that lack of interpretive material that will invite the crowd’s mimetic machinery to fill in the gaps.
As René Girard teaches us, the more symbolic power is projected onto a person, the more dangerous that person becomes to the crowd. We should be cautious, then, about what we expect. Or demand. Or resent.
The True Rock
What gives the papacy its durability is not the strength of its officeholder, but the conversion of Peter, the one who denied Christ and was still entrusted with the care of the flock. That paradox is the key: our faith is apostolic not because the apostles were strong, but because Christ remained faithful.
To have a pope is to receive a gift—a model, yes, but not one we must idolize or destroy. A model to imitate in faith, not to use as proof of our positions.
The visible hierarchy of the Catholic Church exemplifies how the thread of composite models we’ve been exploring can be faithfully woven. I look to my parish priest; we both look to our bishop; and all three of us look to the pope—the visible head of that body of models we call the communion of saints—looking to Christ. Together, they form a cultural composite model, one that points us away from blood-sacrifice and toward self-sacrifice, in imitation of Christ.
The Way Forward
As we continue to trace how trauma shapes the soul and how scapegoating corrupts our relationships to self and other, today’s papal election offers a timely reminder: the structure of desire does not pause for ecclesial events—it intensifies around them.
So I invite you—before reading further coverage, before aligning or opposing, before forming attachments to what this papacy might mean—to begin instead with prayer.
Let us pray for Pope Leo XIV—not that he would fulfill our desires, but that he would stand fast in the one desire that matters: to know Christ and make Him known.
We have a pope. Deo gratias.
And we’ll return to our regularly scheduled reflection—on trauma and the mimetic inheritance of evil—next Tuesday.