Pope Leo in boots

As Bishop Robert Prevost in a flooded area in Peru

This was written by Jennifer Miranda, a native of Peru, who saw Robert Prevost as she wants the rest of  the world to know him.

A Pope in Muddy Boots: The Unmistakable Footprint of Leo XIV

He did not emerge from behind gilded curtains but from the muddy lanes of a flood-ravaged town in Peru. Long before he appeared on the Vatican balcony, Pope Leo XIV had already made his message clear — not with encyclicals, but with a pair of black boots and rolled-up sleeves.

In Peru, he walked through rising waters, not as a visiting dignitary but as one among the afflicted. He served food in a modest kitchen, not as an act of charity, but as a gesture of kinship.

These images — serving rice, listening to grief, walking through ruins — have already etched a theology more potent than sermons: one of proximity, presence, and shared humanity.

His chosen name — Leo — reaches back to another turning point in Church history. Pope Leo XIII, who gave voice to exploited workers in the age of industry, reshaped Catholic conscience with Rerum Novarum, the Church’s first social encyclical. Leo XIV inherits that legacy not merely in word, but in living example. If Leo XIII defended labor with his pen, Leo XIV affirms dignity with his hands and feet. He does not arrive to restore power but to restore nearness.

There is something unmistakable in his posture — less a ruler than a companion; not one who visits the poor, but one who understands what it means to be poor in spirit and circumstance.

His papacy will speak in the language of humble witness, not clerical command.

This is not leadership from above, but alongside.

Bishop Robert Prevost serving food to the poor in Peru.

At a time when the world teeters under the weight of nationalism, cruelty, and widening inequality — when brute strength is too often mistaken for vision — Leo XIV brings a different kind of authority: that of one who walks with, not over.

The word pontiff comes from pontifex — bridge-builder. With Leo XIV, the Church has perhaps found a man who can build bridges across our most painful divides: between privilege and poverty, doctrine and doubt, power and tenderness.

He may not shout reform. But his life already whispers revolution — the kind rooted not in strategy but in solidarity.