From Facebook’s “Vocanti”:
🔴 Leon XIV is not just appointing bishops, he is profiling a style and a way to serve in the Church.
When you look at the recent appointments of the Archbishops of New York, Westminster and Vienna together, it is clear that these are not isolated decisions or merely technical. There's an internal logic that connects them. Even more: there is a vision of the Church beginning to take shape sharply under the pontificate of Leo XIV.
These appointments constitute a model of bishop designed for a Church that can no longer be governed from theoretical abstractions, but also cannot afford to dilute its identity into soulless pragmatism. A Church that lives in the cultural climate, observed, questioned, sometimes misunderstood, but still called to proclaim the Gospel with credibility.
1. Pastors with real resumes, not office careers.
The first feature is perhaps the most eloquent. Leon XIV seems to distrust — or at least relativize — the model of bishop built exclusively in the curial or academic circuits, far from the territory. There is no rejection of intellectual competition, but a clear hierarchy: pastoral experience first, then everything else.
Hicks, Grünwidl and Moth share a decisive characteristic: they have spent years governing specific communities, facing internal tensions, accompanying tired clergy, managing the scarcity of vocations, and measuring each decision with the real limits of church life. They are field proven bishops not theory.
A silent but firm twist is seen here: Lion XIV seems to prefer pastors who have learned to govern from lived experience, not from the ideal model of textbooks.
2. Government as structured service, not as improvised charisma
The second criteria is equally clear. We are not in front of a pontificate who bets on naive pastoralism. Lion XIV does not name sympathetic but weak figures in government.
Administrative capacity appears as an indispensable condition, albeit never in a technocratic key. At Westminster, legal training and experience in church court speaks for itself. In New York and Vienna, attention to the management of complex structures, subjected to media and political pressure, is equally evident.
The message is straightforward: The Church needs pastors who are able to decide, organize, delegate, and assume conflicts, without hiding behind spiritual language that avoids accountability.
3. Bishops who know how to read their time.
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the pontificate of Leo XIV is this: the election of bishops with contextual intelligence. It's not about adapting critically to the world, but understanding it to evangelize it.
New York and Westminster require leaders capable of moving in plural societies, highly media sensitive to language, rights and public scrutiny. Vienna, on the other hand, claims a pastor capable of guarding a solid tradition in the context of advanced secularization and some ecclesiastical fatigue.
Here emerges a fundamental principle: there is no standard bishop, but pastors suitable for specific contexts, with a fine reading of culture, politics and public opinion.
4. Doctrine lived not ideologized
Draw attention to what doesn't take center stage. These bishops are not identified by doctrinal battles, ideological alignments, or theological protagonism.
This does not imply relativism It indicates, rather, a commitment to an embodied doctrine, sustained in communion and pastoral practice, rather than proclaimed as an identity flag.
Lion XIV seems to suggest, without explicitly saying, that Orthodoxy translates into good governance, pastoral closeness and historical discernment ends up barren.
5. Lion XIV, the interpretive key
All this is better understood if you look at Robert Francis Prevost himself, today Leo XIV. We are not in front of a Pope who theorizes the Episcopacy from the outside. We're in front of someone who's already experienced this model first-hand.
Prevost was forged in the mission in Peru, in the government of a peripheral diocese like Chiclayo and in the leadership of an international religious congregation. He knew the Church from the bottom and from the inside, before he knew it from Rome.
That's why he appoints bishops with real pastoral history. Do not choose what you admire in abstract; choose what you recognize as effective because you have lived it.
His sober, underperforming, discernment-focused style of government is clearly reflected in the profiles he chooses. At the ecclesiastical princes. Not noisy figures. Solid pastors.
In synthesis:
Compared to the profile of Leo XIV, these appointments reveal something essential: the Pope is institutionalizing his own experience.
It does not govern from nostalgia of the past nor from anxiety about the future, but from a mature conviction: the Church is held today with bishops capable of inhabiting complexity without losing the center.
In that sense, Hicks, Moth and Grünwidl aren't just good choices. They are, in the background, the pastoral autobiography of Leon XIV written in Episcopal key.

18 comments:
Also bishops who will not challenge the Lavender Mafia
Where are the candidates who have presided over THIRVING communities? Surely, vocations must count for something.
After looking at this crop, maybe we do need to reconsider celibacy for the secular clergy. We might attract more virile types!
The installation mass for Archbishop-elect Moth is on Saturday 14th at 12.00; it's a fair bet that it'll be a lot more sober and reverent than those for Archbishops Grunwidl and Hicks.
It's being live-streamed on the Westminster Cathedral YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@WestminsterCathedral/featured
Kind of suspicious when they go through the "not ideological " bit, since many believe that protecting doctrine and ideological are the same. Also, I've got limited info on Grundwidl but what I read suggests that he does not fit this profile. Although there was some comment somewhere that suggested he said he doesn't support women priests anymore in a press conference, so maybe that's a thing. Looking at his story as presented online I'd have a hard time believing that but I suppose I ought to presume his truthfulness if that is the case.
But that would be ideological! Oh the humanity
Apparently, a man smiling isn't "virile" enough for TJM.
When I think of lack of virility, I think of you! After all, you are a Democrat, a party of girliemen pretending to be tough!
A priest who votes for abortion as healthcare, may have trouble understanding virility too!
TJM - Good to know that I am still living rent-free in your mind, especially when you think of virility. Woo Hoo!
Hey K, this will ruin YOUR day. Trump reported Epstein to the authorities!!!! Unlike your hero, Clinton, my little feather duster!
https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2026/02/10/bombshell-new-documents-show-trump-called-police-on-epstein-in-2006-thank-goodness-youre-stopping-him-n2198993
A note: the substance of the article, even if the examples are bad, might still be reasonable. Amid a confusing slate of US appointments, one can see a moderate yet solid trend on aggregate, especially looking at Checchio, Hicks (nervous but will be happy to be wrong), and Golka. There's not much out there on Moth but if the prevailing view is right then he may fit this profile as well. I really wish Leo would tweak the congregation for bishops though. I suppose we will have to wait for the next consistory with new cardinals.
Hey TJM - Here are the people who reported Trump to authorities:
1. Jessica Leeds - Trump groped her
2. Kristin Anderson - Trump put his hand up her skirt
3. Jill Harth - Trump tried to put his hands between her legs
4. Cathy Heller - Trump grabbed her unexpectedly and started to kiss her on the lips
5. Temple Taggart McDowell - Trump, who owned the Miss USA pageant at the time, kissed her "directly on the lips”
6. Karena Virginia - Trump approached her in 1998 outside the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York while she was awaiting a car service, made unseemly comments about her appearance, grabbed her arm and groped her breast.
7. Bridget Sullivan - Trump came into the Miss Universe changing room while the contestants were naked.
8. Tasha Dixon - Trump walked into a dress rehearsal for a pageant in 2001 while the contestants were “half-naked’ and the women
9. Mindy McGillivray - Trump grabbed her rear end while she was working as a photographer's assistant
10. Rachel Crooks - Trump in 2005, he shook her hand, then kissed her on the cheeks and then on the lips
11. Natasha Stoynoff - Trump inappropriately touched her in 2005 when she was at Mar-a-Lago for an interview
12. Jennifer Murphy - Trump kissed her on the lips after a job interview in 2005.
13. Jessica Drake - Trump kissed her and two other women without their consent 10 years ago.
14. Ninni Laaksonen - Trump squeezed her rear end after posing for a photo before an appearance on “The David Letterman Show.”
15. Summer Zervos - Trump abused his role as a potential employer, kissing her twice during a meeting at Trump Tower in New York, and later groping and kissing her in a California hotel room.
16. Cassandra Searles - "He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room,"
17. E. Jean Carroll - E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room
18. Amy Dorris - Trump groped her body and forced his tongue into her mouth outside of a bathroom.
I'm sure he's your model of verility...
K, when you become a billionaire people will claim YOU groped them. Clintoon's list is much longer and there is hard evidence on him! Remember the blue dress?
Here is more bad news for you and your idiot Party, Zuckerberg fees Kalifornia for Florida:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/real-estate/mark-zuckerberg-becomes-latest-california-billionaire-relocate-florida-amid-tax-concerns
It does seem that King Trump has a rent free throne room in your head. Just sayin’
K has a sad and messed up existence! Can't wait til he moves to New Yawk, Kalifornia or Illinoying so he gets the full Dem treatment!
Fr. ALLAN McDonald - It's just info readily available online. Pay a little more attention, if you can, and you'll be amazed....
Abortion, as healthcare, is what you believe! Hell is waiting for you! How many illegal alien rapists and murderers are you supporting?
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