When, yesterday morning, Leo XIV appeared at the entrance of the Hall of Benedictions, everyone noticed his usual cheerful and serene expression, and that boisterous laugh exchanged with his collaborators: a detail that, even before any words were spoken, helped ease the atmosphere among the curial officials. Prevost consistently comes across as a man of joy: smiling, luminous, inwardly free from that gloomy, guarded posture - almost permanently on alert - that in other times was mistaken for a mark of authority. His demeanor is not naïveté; it is a form of non-aggressive confidence, capable of putting others at ease without lowering, by even a millimeter, the measure of his role.
Yes, Leo XIV ascends the throne prepared by ceremonial protocol. But he inhabits it in an unusual way: with the posture of someone who draws near, not of one who places himself above in order to preside from a distance. This is the subtle yet decisive difference between power that displays itself and authority that allows itself to be approached. From the very first days of his pontificate, Leo has shown an ability to be at ease everywhere: at lunch with the poor of Caritas, within diplomatic protocol, in dialogue with priests, in closeness to the laity, with religious women, with non-Catholics. He does not change language to seduce an audience; he changes register in order to respect his interlocutor.
There is, in this style, a further hallmark: Leo wears what is given to him with humility, with a calm that speaks of trust. For him, reliance is not humiliation; it is an act of realism, the awareness that the Church lives by relationships, not by suspicion. And precisely this unsettles part of the media narrative: because it defuses the story of permanent conflict, while generating peace and serenity, not only within the Leonine walls. For thirteen years, by contrast, an idea took hold that authority had to present itself with a harsh face, an angry tone, an almost structurally inquisitorial cadence; that any appeal to the form of the papacy was a relic to be discarded; that severity guaranteed authenticity. Over time, the results became plain to see: fatigue, closure, resentment, a sense of perpetual judgment that rarely produces conversion and far more often produces rigidity.
Today, Leo XIV embodies an idea of a Church that goes forth - open, welcoming - without attempting to erase what came before. He does not disown, ridicule, or sever the continuity of these two thousand years. And here Italian journalists struggle: because a Pope who combines gentleness and authority, who denounces distortions without raising his voice or theatricalizing condemnation, is harder to turn into a headline. Yet it is precisely this firm gentleness that today makes his language more credible and his presence more readily received. In recent years, part of the press found all too fertile ground in crafting punitive headlines against clergy and institution: the operation succeeded easily, because the Pope himself adopted a percussive register, and reporters merely had to engage in a mechanical copy-and-paste of tone and wording.
In the 2014 Christmas address, Francis framed his intervention as a public diagnosis: a list of “diseases” and temptations, a deliberately abrasive lexicon, intended to shake and expose internal dynamics. That language, however, proved ineffective precisely for those who should have allowed themselves to be challenged unto conversion, while functioning perfectly as raw material for media narration. Over the years, the repetition of a corrective and punitive register - often lacking the restraint required by the delicacy of the role - shifted the overall effect: instead of generating lasting improvement, it consolidated a climate of withdrawal, anger, and defensive identity.
The psychology of continuous correction: from conscience to defense
The Church allows itself to be transformed when criticism becomes material for discernment and work, not a weapon wielded against the dignity of persons or against the institution as a whole. For this to happen, the listener must be able to recognize in the admonition a practicable path, without feeling subjected to global devaluation. When, instead, the individual feels nailed down, the psyche instinctively seeks protection: sometimes in the guise of obedience, more often by slipping into less visible forms of resistance, rigidity, and submerged opposition. Within this dynamic lies a paradox many in the Curia have experienced in recent years: when reproach becomes habitual, its generative force is exhausted. Sarcasm and fatigue increase, and personal hostility can creep in, corroding relationships. The issue is not the value or accuracy of the diagnosis; it lies in the impact of the repeated form, which ends up rendering truth psychologically uninhabitable. Without a framework perceived as reliable - built on trust, recognition, and concrete possibilities for change - continuous correction fuels resentment and undermines precisely the responsibility it seeks to awaken.
At bottom, on many issues, what Pope Francis said and what Leo XIV says today does not diverge in substance from their predecessors. The difference lies in how the word is delivered. There is an enormous distance between a statement that labels and pins down its interlocutor and an admonition that identifies a temptation to be fought. In the first case, the phrase sounds like a sentence; in the second, it opens a space of freedom, calls for vigilance, and makes conversion possible without turning it into humiliation.
Atmosphere as message: why the smile matters
In the address delivered yesterday, Leo XIV does not refrain from pointing out distortions and risks. He does so, however, within a framework that begins with a concrete question - friendship, fraternity, loyalty in relationships - and places conversion within a horizon of mission and communion. The point is not merely that it “sounds more positive.” It changes the psychological configuration of listening. A serene, non-aggressive climate produces a measurable effect: it lowers defenses and increases the willingness to acknowledge a problem without experiencing it as humiliation. In other words, it makes it possible to assume responsibility without seeking an enemy. And this matters greatly in the daily life of the Curia, because institutions change when people stop acting out of fear and begin acting out of conviction. It is no coincidence that, in these first months of the pontificate, many have sensed a more relaxed environment. This is not a salon-style psychological detail; it is a variable of governance. The way a Pope enters a room, looks and greets, welcomes his interlocutors, and refrains from fueling tension directly affects the quality of relationships and ordinary work.
External distortion: “Francis-style” headlines for a Pope who speaks differently
It is necessary to pause on media narration. In these hours, many Italian headlines have reproduced - almost without deviation - schemes and tones inherited from the previous season: polarization, dramatization, a lexicon of confrontation. It is a consolidated automatism: for years, the scene was read through the narrative pair of a Pope who “scolds” and a Curia that “takes it”. Today the Pontiff has changed, but the interpretive grid has remained the same. The critical point is that this grid, through repetition, becomes manipulative: instead of recounting the event, it forces it into a format designed to capture attention and generate clicks. When the raw material - the actual tone of the address - offers no hooks for the “big headline,” a kind of rewriting intervenes: passages of denunciation are isolated and magnified, context is thinned out, and a harshness is attributed that in fact belonged to a very different register.
In this, Leo XIV naturally aligns himself with a communicative tradition recognized in many of his predecessors - from Benedict XVI to John Paul II, from John XXIII to Pius X: clarity of content, the ability to warn against distortions without softening their gravity, yet delivered with an institutional gentleness that avoids slogans, does not raise its voice, and does not rely on accusatory tones to assert authority. This difference is substantial, because it shifts perception: denunciation arrives not as condemnation, but as an invitation to responsibility.
This gap disorients part of the media ecosystem, especially Italian journalism that does not truly inhabit these places and is content to describe them from the outside, sometimes with an acrimony rooted in personal histories and unresolved grievances toward the clergy. Those who do not live ecclesial life yet presume to describe its breathing often project pre-established categories. And today those categories remain steeped in the conflict-driven register of the previous season, particularly in public moments when exposing others to public humiliation was treated as a communicative virtue.
The question of results: pastoral effectiveness and media convenience
There is, finally, a point that helps explain why this distortion continues to be convenient: gentleness “sells less” in the attention economy. Aggressive communication triggers polarization; polarization produces clicks; clicks generate revenue and visibility. A language that addresses problems without turning them into spectacle is harder to package as “news,” especially when it offers no lexicon of conflict. This is precisely what Leo XIV asked to be corrected from the very beginning of his pontificate, addressing the media with a clear mandate: to promote communication that does not chase consensus “at all costs,” that does not cloak itself in aggressive words, that rejects the paradigm of competition and says no to the war of words and images; a “disarmed and disarming” communication, capable of listening, that separates prejudice from the search for truth and does not sever truth from the love with which it must be sought. In this perspective, the invitation to “disarm” communication is a cultural choice that affects the quality of coexistence.
If, then, the question is which formula works better, the answer lies in the concrete dynamics of effects. A language that exposes and humiliates may obtain surface compliance, silence, and fear; a language that fosters responsibility within a serene climate more often leads to real change, because it makes conversion practicable without manufacturing enemies.
The difference between Francis and Leo XIV, ultimately, does not lie in the direction of the criticisms or the substance of the admonitions. It lies in the human impact produced by language. The former often chose percussion as leverage, with the risk of hardening and accumulating resentment; the latter shows that truth can be spoken without adopting a confrontational register, and that even this “blessed Curia” - precisely because it is made up of men and women on a journey - changes more readily when it feels called to communion, not nailed to shame.
Marco Felipe Perfetti
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