Leo XIV: Patriarch of the West?
By Roberto de Mattei | 28 May 2025
Among the traditional titles with which the pope is honoured is that of “Patriarch of the West”, which dates back to the first centuries of Christianity. This title was abandoned by Benedict XVI in 2006 but, at the behest of Pope Francis, it curiously reappeared in the Annuario Pontificio of 2024. What is the meaning of this change?
Father Adriano Garuti (1938–2008), a Franciscan theologian close to Benedict XVI, dedicated a study to this designation,1 retracing its historical origins. The title of Patriarch of the West was adopted by Pope Theodore I in 642 and officially entered the 1863 edition of the Annuario Pontificio, during the reign of Pope Pius IX, to underline the role that the Vicar of Christ exercises over the Latin Church. But Rome has always affirmed its jurisdiction over the whole Church, both Western and Eastern. The “Orthodox”, on the contrary, since the schism of 1054, deny the Roman Primacy and affirm that in the first millennium the Bishop of Rome was only one of the five patriarchs, along with those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. According to the Orthodox conception, the patriarchates of the West and the East together formed what is called the “pentarchy”, within which the Bishop of Rome was considered only as primus inter pares — “first among equals”.
The elimination, in 2006, of the title of Patriarch of the West was interpreted by the Orthodox as a confirmation of the Catholic Church’s claim to universal jurisdiction, which they reject. The representative of the Russian Orthodox Church for European institutions, Hilarion Alfeyev, today the Metropolitan of Budapest, stated that Benedict XVI would have done better to remove from the Annuario Pontificio, not the title of Patriarch of the West, but rather those that refer to his Primacy. The Orthodox can admit the titles of Bishop of Rome, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman province, Primate of Italy and Patriarch of the West, but, he added, “the most unacceptable and even scandalous titles of the bishop of Rome are those that underline his claim to universal jurisdiction: vicar of Jesus Christ, successor of the Prince of the Apostles and sovereign pontiff of the universal Church.”2
Pope Francis always presented himself as “Bishop of Rome”, and never used the titles displeasing to the Orthodox. In re-establishing the title of Patriarch of the West in 2024, Francis may have wanted to send a conciliatory message to the Patriarchate of Moscow, after it had bitterly rejected the declaration Fiducia supplicans, but above all, he intended to make a symbolic step forward in his strategy of a “synodal way” for the Church. The historian Giuseppe Alberigo (1926–2007), leader of what is called the “School of Bologna”, always suggested a “geo-ecclesial” articulation of authority in the Church, referring to Orthodox ecclesiology, which has one of its constitutive forms in the synodality of the patriarchates.3 Alberigo’s current torchbearer, Alberto Melloni, back in 2014, a few months before Pope Francis’s trip to the Holy Land, therefore expressed hope for “the restoration of the title of Patriarch of the West, which was eliminated in 2006 for the most futile historical and political reasons”.4
Pope Leo XIV, from the first days of his pontificate, seems to demonstrate an awareness of the Petrine Primacy and his titles different from that of his predecessor. In his address to the college of cardinals on 10 May 2025, he wanted to thank those who support the “Vicar of Christ” with prayer and good works; in the homily for the inauguration of his pontificate, on 18 May, he defined himself as the “Successor of Peter”, and in his homily for his installation on the Roman Cathedra, on 25 May, he reaffirmed the universal mission of the Church of Rome, defining it as Mater omnium Ecclesiarum — “Mother of all the Churches”. The one, holy and apostolic Church is in fact not local or particular, but Catholic, that is, universal, destined to spread through the world the sole Baptism of Christ and the sole salvation.
How does the title of Patriarch of the West fit into the universal mission of the Church? It is clear that the term cannot have a juridical meaning, as desired by the Orthodox and the revolutionary ecumenists like Alberigo and Melloni, but it can and must have a cultural and moral meaning. What Cardinal Ratzinger said of Europe applies to the West: “Europe is a geographical concept only in a way that is entirely secondary … rather, it is a cultural and historical concept.”5 In this sense the term “West” does not refer to an ecclesiastical territory, but to a cultural space, which has universality as its characteristic. The Patriarch of the West is, in this perspective, the bearer of a message of universal salvation that cannot be reduced to a geographical scope, but developed historically in Europe and from Europe spread to the West and to the world.
The reigning pope, as Patriarch of the West, has the mission of defending not only the Catholic faith, but the civilisation that was born from this faith and has imposed itself in the world over the course of the centuries. Today this civilisation is under attack and finds itself on the brink of a planetary conflagration. Saint Augustine teaches that all human beings desire peace: “For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace”.6 Peace, however, is not the “white flag” evoked by Pope Francis in March 2024. Peace — the only peace possible — is that founded on Truth and Justice, as Leo XIV himself explained in his address to the diplomatic corps on 16 May. War is instead a divine punishment for the rejection of the natural and divine order by peoples, and only prayer and penance can avert the punishments that loom over humanity because of its sins. It is on this level, and not on that of an ambiguous synodal ecclesiology, that an authentic bridge can be built between East and West. Let us therefore make our own the words of the pope: “It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of Eastern spirituality”7
Leo XIV has before him the example of the first pope in history named Leo, the only one, with Saint Gregory I, to whom the title of “Great” has been attributed, pope between 440 and 461. It seems that the term “Patriarch of the West” was used for the first time in 450 by the emperor Theodosius in a letter to none other than Saint Leo I. This title had a prophetic character, because two years later, in August 452, a Roman delegation, led by Pope Leo, faced Attila, the leader of the Huns, on the Mincio River. We do not know the words that the pope addressed to him, but Attila, “the scourge of God”, left Italy for good, and the West was saved. Saint Prosper of Aquitaine, a disciple of Augustine, in his work De vocatione omnium gentium, presents Pope Leo I as the great protagonist of the rebirth of Christian civilisation in the darkness that enveloped the collapse of the Roman Empire.
A month has not yet passed since the election of the new pope: this is not the time for judgements on a pontificate, but it is the time of hope and good wishes for the one who is getting set to reign. Among these good wishes is that Leo XIV assume the role of patriarch and leader of the West in the world.
Notes
- Patriarca d’occidente? Storia e attualità (Edizioni Studio Domenicano, Bologna 2007). ↩︎
- Europaica, no. 89 (March 2006), p 14. ↩︎
- La Chiesa nella storia, Paideia, Brescia 1988, pp 300-302. ↩︎
- Corriere della Sera, 8 January 2014. ↩︎
- Europe Today and Tomorrow, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2007, p 11. ↩︎
- De Civitate Dei, lib. 19, ch 12, 1. ↩︎
- Address to participants in the jubilee of the Eastern Churches, 14 May 2025. ↩︎