Habemus Papam! This year’s papal conclave may be over, but speculation of what happened behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel is only just beginning. Once again, the Vatican demonstrated to all and sundry that what happens in a conclave is known only to those who participate in it – and to God.

The recent conclave marked several achievements. It was the largest and most international in history, as 133 electors from the College of Cardinals – from over 70 countries – cast their votes. Most strikingly, the chosen one, Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, is the first Augustinian to be elected as the Holy Father, and the first American – a characteristic long deemed to reduce one’s chances of election.

Although it should be noted that the new pope spent much of his clerical life in Peru rather than the United States, Leo XIV will go down in history as the first pontiff from the global hegemon. The question now is: what theological and geopolitical challenges will the Chicago-born pope choose to address, as the world enters a new Cold War?

Although the third US President, Thomas Jefferson, called for a ‘wall of separation’ between church and state, history reveals how pontifical mediation – and even intervention – in geopolitical crises is hardly uncommon. In 1959, the then-Pope John XXIII convened the far-from-uncontroversial Second Vatican Council, in which he sought to ‘update’ the Catholic Church ‘to meet the needs and conditions of our times’.

Three years later, one such need arose, namely, to avert nuclear war as the Cuban Missile Crisis gained momentum. With nuclear deterrence on the precipice of collapse, the Pope communicated with the US and Soviet leaders – the Catholic John F. Kennedy and the atheist Nikita Khrushchev – and ensured that his messages would be broadcast globally on Vatican Radio.

Calling on governments to ‘spare the world from the horrors of a war whose terrifying consequences no one can predict’, the Pope’s message also featured on newspapers worldwide, including Pravda, the official Soviet mouthpiece. This was no mean feat. Khrushchev, the man who had declared the importance of ‘peaceful coexistence’ between Moscow and Washington, was in a dilemma. He could either refuse to heed the Pope’s message and be seen as a hypocrite or de-escalate and be seen as a man of ‘peace’. Khrushchev chose the latter.

As the Cold War continued, another pontiff would face the limelight, Pope John Paul II. The former Archbishop of Kraków had witnessed first-hand the ills of communism in his native Poland, as it transitioned from Nazi to Communist rule after the end of the Second World War. Having become the first Pope to visit a Communist-ruled country, when he visited his homeland in 1979, his ‘revolution of conscience’ paved the way for the demise of Communism across the Soviet bloc. In doing so, he played a vital role in what is now seen as one of the pivotal periods in international history.

One hotspot, however, has remained elusive from pontifical mediation: North Korea. While there have been several papal visits to South Korea (now home to six million Catholics), a Pope is yet to visit the hermit kingdom, which, akin to China, has no formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See. For all the North Korean constitution’s claims that ‘freedom of religious belief’ is guaranteed, the ruling regime’s persecution of religious believers has been a mainstay since the inception of the North Korean state in 1948.

Historically, however, religiosity was anything but alien to the northern half of the Korean peninsula. Prior to becoming a Japanese protectorate in 1905, the then-unified Korea was home to more churches and US missionaries than any other city in Asia. Ironically, it was Pyongyang – which would later become the North Korean capital – which earned the moniker of the ‘Jerusalem of the East’, an albeit short-lived designation as the anti-Christian Japanese occupation continued until 1945.

As one Korea became two, Syngman Rhee, a Christian convert, would be elected the country’s first president in 1948. However, while American missionaries, who had fled Korea following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, were allowed to enter the capitalist South postwar, they were barred from the communist North. As Kim Il Sung consolidated power as North Korea’s first Supreme Leader, he would imprison the only official Catholic Bishop of Pyongyang, Francis Hong Yong-ho, in 1949 – who was never to be seen again. These actions bear more than a hint of irony. Kim Il Sung’s parents were devout presbyterians: his mother was a deaconess, and his father an elder.

In the years to come, hopes that religious leaders and organisations could catalyse change in North Korea would be quickly quashed. Even after Billy Graham first visited Pyongyang in 1992, at Kim Il Sung’s request, any improvement in US-North Korea relations failed to materialise. Amid the shifting sands of North Korea’s subsequent ties with its southern counterpart and the United States, Pyongyang’s egregious human rights violations and development of nuclear weapons would only worsen.

Yet, North Korea has not ignored the Holy See completely. State media has predictably reported pontifical statements which have criticised – however mildly – the United States. In 2012, media outlets echoed Pope Benedict XVI’s calls for an end to the US trade embargo on Cuba.

Two years later, North Korea would launch a spate of missiles as Pope Francis visited South Korea, a year after becoming Pope. The North Korean Academy of National Defence Science – a state-run organisation responsible for research into advanced weapons systems, which is sanctioned by Washington – issued a statement demanding to ‘ask the pope why he set about his south Korean trip the day when we are making [our] latest tactical rocket test-fire’.

In 2018, the then-South Korean President, Moon Jae-in – himself a Catholic – sought to leverage the brief thaw in inter-Korean ties to convey a message from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, to Pope Francis, inviting the Holy Father to Pyongyang. Nevertheless, scant progress was made.

By the time the Argentinian pontiff offered to visit the country, four years later, times had changed. As North Korea’s relations with the West plunged to a nadir amid failed dialogue with the United States, the Holy See’s ability to engage in talks with North Korea waned, as the former’s soft power would become usurped by the tragedy of great power politics.

To paraphrase St Peter: Quo Vadimus? Where do we go from here? North Korea today shows no intention of denuclearising, let alone improve the lives of its 26 million people. Those who hoped that a South Korean cardinal would be elected as Pope will have to continue waiting. It is no surprise that Donald Trump took no time in congratulating his fellow countryman upon his election to the papacy, deeming it a ‘very meaningful moment’ and a ‘Great Hono[ur] for our Country’.

Yet only time will tell whether Pope Leo XIV will effect meaningful change on the Korean Peninsula, and if a delinquent North Korea will welcome a pope from what it calls its ‘hostile’ enemy. In his inaugural address, the new Pope called for ‘a missionary Church’ which ‘builds bridges and dialogue’. As past popes have shown, however, doing so is easier said than done.

In January 1890, the last pope to choose the name Leo, namely, Leo XIII, wrote in his encyclical, Sapientiae Christanae, that ‘nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as a lack of courage on the part of the good’. Over a century later, much akin to his predecessors, Pope Leo XIV faces the myriad geopolitical needs of our time. The serial human rights and nuclear norm violations of North Korea and the persecution of Christians in China are only two such issues.

The 266th successor to Saint Peter will indeed need courage in facing both a fractured church and a divided world of multiple, simultaneous geopolitical crises, from Eastern Europe to East Asia – for it is the consequences of both that no one can predict.