BY: Veton Surroi
1.
If you were to ask Saint Augustine, it would make perfect sense — and hardly seem a coincidence — that Joseph Nye, one of America’s and the world’s most prominent thinkers on international relations, passed away just two days before Robert Francis Prevost was elected Pope and took the name Leo XIV.
Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” at the end of the last century — the ability of a country to achieve its goals in international relations through attraction rather than coercion or payment, leveraging culture, foreign policy, and political-moral values. Over the last forty years, “soft power” has become an entire field of study in international affairs, initially inspired by the way ideas — from Hollywood and books to Voice of America and Radio Free Europe — helped topple communism in Europe. These ideas (and the complementary concept of “smart power,” which blends traditional hard power with soft power) echoed in the tributes that followed Nye’s death.
And Nye’s death happened within the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency — a period marked by a noisy departure from the “soft power” playbook. Replacing the Voice of America and democratic values were tariff threats, transactional foreign policy (how much does this deal profit the U.S.?), and even expansionist musings (Canada, Panama, Greenland).
Just two days after Nye’s passing, the Vatican announced that Robert Francis Prevost had been elected pope. In a chain of coincidences — which Saint Augustine would likely dismiss as divine providence — Cardinal Prevost, a mathematician from Chicago who had devoted his life to Christ and the Church through the Augustinian Order, became Pope Leo XIV.
2.
If you asked Saint Augustine of Hippo (who died in the 5th century), the election of Robert Francis Prevost as Pope was entirely natural. It was Divine Providence — divina providentia — the foreordained unfolding of events. In this age of upheaval, the world needed a pope from the Augustinian Order — those called to missionary work, communal life, and deep contemplation on the great questions of their time.
Even without Augustine’s theology, the decision of the cardinals in conclave pointed in the same direction. They elected a missionary from Chiclayo, Peru, a cardinal who had spoken for the poor and persecuted — and been embraced by them. For the first time, they chose a man born, raised, and educated in the U.S., then adopted by the rest of the Americas.
Whether viewed through the lens of divine guidance or secular logic, the result was this: two days after the death of the man who defined “soft power,” one of the world’s most potent soft power institutions was now in the hands of the most powerful American on Earth — not Donald Trump, but the man who once signed his emails as “Bob,” now known to the world as Pope Leo XIV.
In a time when official U.S. rhetoric had become about power, tariffs, public shaming, and transactional human relations, a different American voice rose — one of prayer, dignity, and human reconciliation. That voice belongs to Pope Leo XIV, an embodiment of the “other America” — the America of soft power, of service rather than supremacy, of healing rather than conquest.
3.
But the coincidences — or, as Saint Augustine would say, acts of providence — didn’t stop there.
Cardinal Prevost chose the name Leo XIV. His most famous namesake was Leo XIII, known for establishing the social doctrine of the Catholic Church with Rerum Novarum (“On the New Things”), the encyclical defending human dignity amid the technological revolution at the end of the 19th century.
Pope Leo XIV embraced that legacy from the start. In his inaugural address on May 8, 2025, he identified artificial intelligence (AI) as one of the greatest ethical challenges humanity now faces. He stressed the Church’s role in addressing the moral consequences of AI — particularly its impact on human dignity, justice, and labor. Drawing inspiration from Rerum Novarum, published May 15, 1891, which championed workers’ rights during the Industrial Revolution, Pope Leo XIV highlighted the similarities between the disruptive technologies of then and now.
His next natural step will be to draft a new encyclical: Rerum Novarum Digitalis — a new manifesto for justice and human dignity in the age of AI, machine-displaced labor, decentralized economies, and spiritual emptiness.
4.
It’s often said that Stalin, in a conversation with Churchill, sneered at the Church’s relevance with a cutting question: “How many divisions does the Pope have?”
Stalin got his answer decades later from Pope John Paul II, the Polish-born Karol Wojtyla, who stood with the people of Poland in their defiance of communist dictatorship. Russian tank divisions eventually withdrew — first from Poland, then from all of Central and Eastern Europe — defeated not by force, but by soft power, the strength of conviction, of ideas, of faith.
Today, in a world at war — a world where the achievements of post-WWII civilization are under siege, where states attack sovereignty as Russia does in Ukraine, or pursue collective punishment as Israel does in Gaza — Pope Leo XIV steps onto a historic stage. This is a time of ecological crisis, of technological upheaval, of war that will define the shape of the 21st century.
The scene could not be more dramatic for Pope Leo XIV. He has been summoned not to deploy Stalin’s tanks, but to serve as a missionary — as he once was among the poor in Chiclayo. In a world where data is measured in terabytes, but human empathy is reduced to digital statuses, Pope Leo XIV stands as a reminder that the Church still speaks — not in algorithms, but in metaphors. Not in code, but in human connection.