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Pope Bob’s elevation from Chicago’s seemy south side to Rome’s See of Peter is certainly one for the books, and for the American TV crews, who have been scrambling all over the Windy City to write their glowing reports of Pope Leo XIV, to give Bob his official moniker.

I call His Holiness Bob as that is what half of Chicago call their fellow White Sox fan who, according to his two older brothers, knew he wanted to be a priest almost as soon as he could walk. While other kids swung bats, kicked ball or played cowboys and indians, Pope Bob played at being a priest. He has the lead role now.

And glowing testimonies from all those who knew him. These include not only his brothers, who seem as phlegmatic as Pope Bob is, but also, importantly in my book Sister Therese DelGenio, a nun who taught him when his contemporaries would have been chasing skirt and downing Bud Lights. The elevation of Bob to the papacy is not only a feather in his own cap but it is an acknowledgement of the important role the Anglophonic world now plays in the Catholic Church and, if his Chicago mates are anything to go by, their mastery of the soundbite will be a blessing to Bob, to the whole Church and, hopefully, to the wider world as well.

The Archdiocese of Chicago is an interesting outpost as, with Munich and Cologne, it is the main funder of the Catholic Church. Without those three archdioceses, the Church would long ago have been bankrupt and the Beltway vultures would long ago have scooped up its assets.

Balancing the books is not the only hurdle Bob faces. There is also the not insignificant issue of child sexual abuse and its particular features with the Catholic Church, where teenage boys joined seminaries before going on the be priests and, in many cases, child sex abusers. If Pope Bob ever wants to get on top of that issue, he needs professional help and lots of it from psychiatrists, cops and many more.

Much the same applies within the American and wider Anglophonic Church where, thanks to the selfless work of earlier generations of largely unsung priests and nuns, the Catholic Church is largely a middle class, suburban phenomenon, with deep roots in the police forces and health services. For Pope Leo to solidify and expand out from that solid base will take a lot of brain power and professional help.

If His Holiness can solidify the Church in the Anglophonic world then, like Pope Leo XIII, he might be another Leo the Great, who died in 1903, a little before my time. That said, Leo the Great wrote Rerum Novarum, the encyclical which is the cornerstone of all Catholic social teaching and which is one of my favourite books and, with Quadragesimo Anno, my favourite ever encyclical. I also like that Leo the Great was the first pope for centuries to encourage the Eastern Churches to be faithful to their life and traditions, and to really value the unique contribution the East brings to the universal Church’s life.

Add to that that Pope Bob is an Augustinian, so named after St Augustine, one of the greatest thinkers (and carnal sinners) to ever live and Bob holds a strong hand. This hand is further strengthened by Bob’s missionary work in Peru, the home of the potato and the former stomping ground of the Shining Path lunatics. Although I never got to Peru or never even met Pope Bob, Archbishop Frank Little did launch one of my books in Melbourne, a point I mention as his cousin, Ossie nun Sr Irene McCormack, was one of 70,000 innocents the Shining Path psychos murdered.

The fact that Peru has always been virulently right wing, even by Latin America’s right wing standards, was never an excuse for Chairman Gonzalo and his fellow nutters to wreak havoc and it takes a particularly sick and selfish mind to say that Sr McCormack, or the American Maryknoll nuns the CIA’s henchmen murdered in El Salvador around the same time they dispatched Archbishop Romero, were the CIA running dogs.

If I were to generalise about those wonderful women and about Pope Bob and the very many great Oblate, Franciscan and Columban priests I have met in various Latin American, European, West Asian and South east Asian missions, I would say that most of them went as sheep among wolves and, though many were clearly unsuited for the tasks at hand, their collective contribution to society’s evolution has been immense and has been concretised in hospitals, schools, clinics and very much more besides.

Although my opinion might not count for much, Pope Bob and his buddies, who have spent years at the same impoverished coal face, will be aware of the challenges Pacem in Terris faces not only in Peru but throughout all the Americas and Africa as well.

Though there is little doubt that Hollywood will churn out Pope Bob themed movies along the lines of Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman, Pope Bob’s world has been and will be a lot grittier than their The Bells of St Mary’s fare. Although child sex abuse and possible bankruptcy need immediate attention, so too do the myriad evils of the Beltway and its Hollywood and other media spin offs.

Although Washington’s wars of imperial conquest, together with its Frazzledrip type depravity, must be tackled, so too must its underlying ideological war, which has been manifested in the mercenary screeds of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and their ilk who did not say anything that Thomas Paine did not say more eloquently well over two centuries ago.

If Harris and Dawkins served any CIA purpose, it was just to deflect from the debauchery Washington is synonymous with and that Frazzledrip and Jeffrey Epstein typify, no matter how true or untrue those particular allegations may be. Although I have no definite proof that Hillary Clinton and the Soros wench are Satanists, there is the old saying that, if they quack like a duck and behave like a dick, then they might well be ducks, dicks or Satanists in this case. Similarly, though I have no definite proof one way or the other as to the existence of an afterlife, I think it is a fair bet that Pope Bob is making bank in heaven. Indeed, when the late Sr Brigid Doody, a lovely Irish Salesian nun in Syria, told me I was making bank in heaven by giving her bank for destitute mothers, I don’t know if the twinkle in her eye indicated she meant it or that she was thinking that a fool and his money are easily parted. For my part, there is no doubt that folk like her and the various Oblate, Franciscan and Columban priests I have met do God’s work and that is true, whether God exists or not.

And, though God may be in the Pope’s corner, that is not to say that the devil is out for the count in the opposite corner. He is not and the corpses stacked to the heavens in the killing fields of Syria, Palestine, the Congo, Ukraine and a thousand other heavens turned into hell on earth that rarely make the news attest to that.

They say that Pope Bob, who can be seen here singing Feliz Navidad, is a bridge builder, a peacemaker and a people person. And so, from the evidence, it seems he is and he will no doubt be well aware of the faith most Latinos put in Our Lady of Guadalupe who, for far too many of them, is their only hope for any solace this side of the grave. From my own time in Mexico and in Spain I have, I will admit, a soft spot for La Virgin de Gaudalupe, though I have also dabbled in the earthier works of Thomas Merton, Roger Schutz and even the great Pascal himself; more to the point and, without being maudlin about it, I have seen, in the Levant, in Mexico and in South East Asia the abject poverty Pope Leo and his colleagues were faced with not only in Peru but in countless other countries turned into shitholes by you-know-who as well, and I sincerely hope that the Holy Father can help build bridges to lead them from poverty to some semblance of peace and dignity this side of the hereafter.

Pope Bob is currently enjoying an American honeymoon as the Yankee media surf along on the goodwill tide his election brought to their shores. But the fact of the matter is the Trump, Clinton, Obama and Genocide Joe Biden families are into making serious bank from their partners in crime and I doubt that all the singing or crying Pope Bob might do will change them one iota.

Still, though he might not change them, if he can change those ordinary Americans they depend on, then Americans, Peruvians and very many more will have cause to give him and La Virgin de Gaudalupe thanks and those who follow him onto the seat of Peter will have good cause to proclaim him another Leo the Great.