Leo XIV is an Augustinian.
I remember reading Augustine when I was maybe 17, 18—just a kid full of Marxism-Leninism, full of anger and hope for justice, for revolution, for something new.
Then I met you, dear saint.
Not in a church, but in a book. Not in Latin, but as an Algerian immigrant walking the streets of my mind like a stranger in Milan.
And your authenticity—your hunger, your questions, your wild, restless soul—touched me.
That was the beginning.
The beginning of a journey I didn’t yet understand.
Now I do.
Now I know it was a mission.
We Catholics have a new pope.
But I ask myself—is this pope just for us?
The pope is called Pontifex.
A Roman word.
A builder of bridges.
Once stone, now people.
Between sides. Between enemies.
Between the wound and the one who wounded.
And I think of Monicelli—his bitterness, his rage, his despair.
I remember him saying: “Hope is the worst thing ever invented by man.”
And then, I remember how he jumped from his window in Monti, Rome.
How his body became a question, dropped into the city that made him.
And I understand.
There’s an enemy inside all of us that says:
Hope is a lie.
Hope is for fools.
Hope is an accusation against God, against suffering, against this unbearable world.
I hear that voice too.
But I don’t believe it.
Because hope is not a lie.
Hope is a bridge.
And a bridge never promises certainty.
It only asks you to cross—
even if you cannot see what’s on the other side.
LATINO A FRONTE
Spes est Pons
Leo XIV est Augustinianus.
Memini me legisse Augustinum cum essem annorum septemdecim vel duodeviginti—adulescens plenus Marxismi-Leninismi, plenus irae et spei, spei de iustitia, de re nova.
Tunc te, sancte
mi, inveni.
Non in ecclesia, sed in libro.
Non in Latina lingua, sed quasi peregrinum ex Algeria, ambulantem per vias mentis meae, sicut ignotum in Mediolanum ingressum.
Et tua veritas, tua sitis, tua anima inquieta me tetigerunt.
Illa fuit initium.
Iter coepit quod nondum intellexi.
Nunc intellego:
Missio erat.
Novum papam habemus nos Catholici.
Sed rogo: hic papa est solum pro nobis?
Papa dicitur Pontifex.
Verbum Romanum est.
Id est: factor pontium.
Olim lapideus, nunc humanus.
Inter partes. Inter inimicos.
Inter vulnus et vulnerantem.
Et memini Monicelli, amaritudinem eius, iram, desperationem.
Aiebat: “Spes est pessimum inventum hominum.”
Deinde audivi eum ex fenestra sua in Montibus Romae se praecipitasse.
Corpus eius factum est quaestio in medio urbis quae eum genuit.
Et intellego.
Est hostis intra nos omnes qui sussurrat:
Spes est mendacium.
Spes est pro stultis.
Spes est accusatio contra Deum, contra dolorem, contra hunc mundum ferendum.
Ego quoque illum vocem audio.
Sed non credo.
Spes non est mendacium.
Spes est pons.
Et pons certitudinem non promittit.
Solum petit ut transeas—
etiamsi nescis quid sit in altera parte.
VIDEO MONICELLI