Pope Leo's fellow Augustinian brothers look forward to papacy marked by unity, focus on Jesus

Genazzano (Italy) | A new photo of Leo XIV stands by frescoes representing past papal visits to a Virgin Mary icon in the Sanctuary of Our Mother of Good Counsel, commemorating where he prayed two days after being elected pope.

But the new pontiff is still “Father Bob” to the handful of Augustinian friars who serve in the basilica in a hilltop medieval village - and the tight-knit community of Augustinians worldwide. They knew Leo when he was their global leader, seminary teacher or simply fellow brother in black habits with thick belts and large hooded capes.

“With Father Robert, then Very Rev Prior General, we have had to change the names, but Father Bob... we realise the person hasn't changed at all, it's still him,” said the Rev Alberto Giovannetti, 78. He was born in Genazzano in the wooded hills outside Rome and entered the seminary at age 11.

He remembers a day in 2001 when he was struggling with the responsibility of a new position and then-Prior General Prevost comforted him.

“He gave me courage, Stay calm, the less adequate you feel, the more you're fit for it,' that was the meaning,” Giovannetti said. “I think it's what's guiding him now as well, that real humbleness that doesn't make you feel weak, but rather makes you feel not alone.”

St Augustine and brotherly leadership

It's a style of brotherly leadership that was crucial to St Augustine, who inspired the order that's found itself in an unusual spotlight ever since Leo's first public blessing from St Peter's Basilica.

“He resolutely affirmed, I'm a son of Augustine, I'm Augustinian,' and this filled us all with pride. We're feeling like the pope's friars,” said the Rev Pasquale Cormio, rector of Rome's Basilica of St Augustine.

Leo's predecessor, Pope Francis, was a Jesuit who took the name of the founder of the Franciscans. The Jesuit order is widely known for its scholarly star-power, while the Franciscans appeal to many because of the order's down-to-earth charity.

The Augustinian order is a bit of a paradox - it remains as unassuming as when it was first organised in the mid-13th century as a union of mendicant orders, yet traces its origins to one of the most influential thinkers in Christian and Western culture.

And now the friars are expecting that “Father Bob” will bring some of St Augustine's spiritual trademarks to the wider church.

Augustinian spirituality

“Augustinian spirituality is founded on these words of St Augustine - a single heart, a single soul oriented toward God, that is to say, toward unity,” said the Rev Lizardo Estrada, who was a student of Leo's in seminary.

“That's why you can sum it up in four words, I'd say - community, interiority, charity and obedience.” For Augustinians, the foundation of a godly life is seeking truth with the help of Scriptures and sacraments, finding it as God's presence inside one's heart - the “interiority” - and then taking that knowledge outward to help others.

“You can't adore the Lord every day, pray every day, and not find God in the vulnerable, in the humble, in those working the fields, in the Amazonian peoples,” said Estrada, who is secretary general of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Conference. “You can't know God inside you, have that knowledge, and stay put.”

The order has certainly been on a journey - part of St Augustine's enduring appeal is that he was a “seeker” who introduced the concept of introspection as a way to happiness. Born in what today is Algeria in the 4th century, he embraced his mother's Christian faith during travels in Italy and went on to write some of history's pivotal spiritual and philosophical treatises.

His answers to perennial questions such as free will versus predestination, true faith versus heresy, even issues addressing leadership, gender and sexuality continue to inform Western culture today, said Colleen Mitchell, a scholar with Villanova University's Augustinian Institute.

The Augustinians since the Middle Ages

As both male and female monastic communities started following him, St Augustine wrote the basics of a “rule” or the charter for an order, which was eventually assigned some eight centuries later by the pope to medieval hermits in Tuscany to form a single union.

Today, the order of some 3,000 friars is active in 50 countries, with universities like Villanova in Pennsylvania and some 150,000 children enrolled in Augustinian schools.

They operate missions across Africa, are growing in Asia, and run historic and artwork-filled churches across Europe, including Santo Spirito in Florence - for which a young Michelangelo sculpted a crucifix as a thank-you gift since the friars had allowed him access to their hospital to learn anatomy, said the prior general, the Rev Alejandro Moral.

“The search for truth is very important because as St Augustine put it, truth is not yours or mine, it's ours. And we have to engage in dialogue to find that truth and, once we have found it, walk together, because we both want to follow truth,” Moral told The Associated Press from the Augustinians' headquarters in Rome.

A brother pope

The large, unpretentious complex is next to the spectacular colonnade that encircles St Peter's Square. Jubilant friars huddled at the windows cheering when Leo was announced as pope.

A few days later, the pope joined them for a surprise lunch and the birthday celebration of a brother, showing the attention to fraternity that is an Augustinian point of pride.

“He puts you at ease, he has this way of being near that... always struck me even when he was prior general, and he's kept up that style as cardinal and now as pope,” said the Rev Gabriele Pedicino, the provincial for Italy.

He added that finding unity in diversity is another pillar of Augustinian thought that he expects Leo will promote.

“The diversity among brothers - I think that the pope will labour so that increasingly inside and outside the church, we can recognise the other, the different, not as a danger, not as an enemy, but as someone to love, someone who makes our life richer and more beautiful,” Pedicino said.

Various friars found inspiration in the pope's motto, “in illo uno unum” - Latin for “in the one Christ, we are one” and derived from St Augustine's sermons about Christian unity.

He lived through times of division. A millennium later a former Augustinian, Martin Luther, broke with Catholicism and launched the Protestant Reformation.

As today's Catholic Church also struggles with polarisation, reestablishing a core unity centred in Jesus is a message that resonates widely.

“It's not like we're better than anybody else, we're all the same, and when we engage in dialogue, we need to realise that we need to greatly respect the other,” Moral said. “I believe that this is fundamental to our mission - to listen, to respect, and to love. Pope Leo has this straightforward simplicity.”