Christopher White writes:

At the end of his first World Youth Day in July 2013, Pope Francis urged the millions of young people gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to “make some noise!” or “make a mess!”

The Spanish phrase, ¡Hagan lío!, can be translated both ways (and the Vatican’s official translators often used both), but it spoke to the desire of history’s first pontiff from the global south to use his papacy to shake things up….

Francis’ mode of ¡Hagan lío! was best exhibited through his legacy-making initiative known as the Synod on Synodality, a multi-year listening global consultation process that allowed often taboo topics in Church life—women, sexuality, accountability, and clericalism—to be discussed openly in an official Vatican-backed forum. For Francis’ detractors, ¡Hagan lío! also became the shorthand to dismiss what they viewed to be a pope who had stirred up a hornet’s nest….

In Peru, Prevost encountered a young diocese where many of the faithful lacked electricity, where climate change regularly led to devastating flooding, and where violent rebel groups fueled conflict. By contrast, Church leaders—energized by the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on the “the People of God”—saw it as their duty to stand alongside the poor to fight political and economic injustices. ¡Hagan lío!, in such a context, was the Church’s way of refusing to simply accept the status quo….

As the cardinals weighed the needs of the Church and the world and considered who among them might be best suited to lead in this moment, there was an overwhelming desire to choose a man who both shared Francis’ pastoral priorities but who could also take the processes initiated by Francis and systematize them for the whole Church. In Francis, the Church had been given a spiritual entrepreneur, and in Leo, the cardinals elected an institutional enforcer to ensure that the change initiated by Francis could be given the necessary support to continue in the future.

The spirit of ¡Hagan lío! that animated Francis and later converted Prevost in Peru remains present in the DNA of this new papacy. In the years ahead, a different style of leadership will certainly unfold. But the conviction that Leo XIII had that the Church must be attentive to the “new things” of his age and the concrete realities of the people of God has a long through line that runs from Chicago to Chiclayo, Peru. It is one that goes all the way back to the gospels and has now been given new forward momentum in this new papacy.