The conclave of 133 Cardinals, 108 of whom were appointed by the late Pope Francis from far flung parts of the world, needed only four rounds of secret ballot to swiftly settle on Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as the new Pope. They could not have decided on a worthier successor to Pope Francis. The Chicago-born Prevost served as a lifelong missionary in Peru. Pope Francis made Prevost the Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru in 2015, and elevated him to the College of Cardinals eight years later in 2023. He was concurrently appointed as the Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, an influential position that looks after the appointment and guidance of Catholic Bishops everywhere.

This past February, the late Pope inducted Cardinal Prevost into the exclusive order of Cardinal Bishops. To Vatican insiders, this was a clear sign of “papal trust and favour” even though the two men of the cloth were not seen as always agreeing on everything.

Americans are lapping it up as the first selection of an American pope in history. Pope Bobby from Chicago. But an early news release from the Vatican would seem to have called Prevost the Second Pope from the Americas. It is Cardinal Prevost’s US-Peruvian dual national status that may have found a strong group of 18 cardinals from Latin America emerging as early supporters and facilitating the quick coalescing to achieve the required support of two-thirds of the cardinals.

The current diversity of the College would have certainly helped and many of the Cardinals apparently saw Prevost as one who would continue the legacy of Francis while reaching out to others who were not wholly inspired by the late pontiff. The new Pope demonstrated both continuity with Francis and a throwback to tradition in his first formal appearance, prayer and blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Unlike Francis who preferred the plain cassock, Prevost wore the traditional cape and the richly embroidered stole. He referred to his predecessor with genuine affection and respect and echoed Francis’ mission for “building bridges” in a world whose make up ought to be that of “one people.” More telling of the course of the new papacy is Prevost’s selection of Leo as the papal name and becoming Pope Leo XIV. More than 125 years after the last Leo, Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) who was pontiff from 1878 to 1903 in a long and consequential papacy.

Two weeks ago, in my obituary to Pope Francis, I referred to Rerum Novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour), the celebrated 1891 encyclical of Pope Leo III. It became the first book of Catholic teaching on social issues. I briefly compared Rerum Novarum to Pope Franci’s 2020 encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” (Fraternity and Social Friendship). With the new pope becoming Pope Leo XIV, the new papacy offers the prospect for a new synthesis between the Church’s early teachings on social policy and the tumults of the contemporary world.

Pope Leo or Pope Bobby

Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago, in 1955, to parents of Italian, French and Spanish roots. He studied in a high school run by Augustinian priests belong to the Order of St. Augustine, one of the older religious orders in the Church founded by Pope Innocent IV in 1244, and named after the great Saint Augustine (354-430), an intellectual Berber from North Africa and later the celebrated Bishop of Hippo. Prevost went to Villanova University near Philadelphia and obtained a degree in mathematics in 1977. From there, he answered his calling, joined the Catholic Theological Union, an Augustinian seminary in Chicago, for religious studies and ordination as priest in 1981. Prevost became the first CTU alumnus to become Cardinal, and now he is the first Augustinian Pope in Church history. After Francis, the first Jesuit Pope.

At CTU, Prevost earned his degree in Master of Divinity and completed his Doctorate in Canon Law in Rome, at the Dominican University of St. Thomas Aquinas. It was the Augustinian Order that took Prevost to Peru as a missionary, and he has since shuttled between Peru and Chicago. His clerical vocation has combined missionary work, academic stints and administrative roles, including at one point being the head (Prior General) of the worldwide Augustinian Order with headquarters in Rome. As a Bishop in Peru, he won praise as “a moderating influence” between the squabbling factions of Peruvian Bishops who are divided between Liberation Theology, on the left, and Opus Dei, on the right.

Both in Peru and in Chicago, Prevost came under criticism for not acting strongly enough against priests accused of sexual abuse of children, but in both instances he was found to have acted properly by independent parties. Prevost also headed a successful diocesan commission for child protection in Chiclayo, Peru. As Cardinal, Prevost was also considered to be somewhat of an unknown quantity on the internally vexing issues of the church, viz., the ordination of women as deacons or priests, accepting same-sex unions, or allowing the Latin Mass. This may have diluted potential opposition to him by conservative cardinals. As a Pope from Latin America, Francis went farther than any of his predecessors. Given his dual US-Mexican status and experience, the new pope might go even further than Francis.

Outside of the Church, the College of Cardinals may have wanted to project both a missionary and an apostle for the faith, on the one hand, and a world statesman to speak to the secular issues of humanity, on the other. In selecting an American born cardinal as pope, the Vatican might be sending a message to both the church and the state of the United States of America. The new Pope will bring an alternative voice to debates in America over the rights of immigrants and their denial including deportation.

He could also be an antidote to the politically conservative sections of the American Church as well as the growing contingent of Trump’s MAGA Catholics, including some of the Supreme Court justices. Trump has welcomed the selection of an American Pope as “a great honour to the country.” His predecessors, Biden, Obama, Bush and Clinton have been more fulsome in their praises and their wishes for the new papacy. Regardless of politics, to many Americans the new pope could just be their Pope Bobby.

by Rajan Philips

More revealing than the results of the local government elections are the political reactions to them. There are as many interpretations of the LG election results as there are political pundits constantly looking to chip away at the still budding NPP’s political goodwill. More disturbing than any other world news is the flashpoint on the subcontinent with India and Pakistan seemingly spoiling for yet another border fight between them. For now, each side would seem to have served its military purpose and claimed victory. But belligerent rhetoric continues at the political level and in the social media that now includes the online expansion of the once stoic print medium.

The continuing rhetoric, including India’s for-now largely rhetorical threat to dam the downstream flow of the Indus waters to Pakistan, means that tensions in the subcontinent are not going to ease any time soon. With the current political changes in Bangladesh souring the relationship between Dhaka and Delhi, India is now flanked east and west by recalcitrant neighbours. The landlocked Himalayan countries aside, Sri Lanka might be India’s only friend now in South Asia. Sri Lanka can comfortably sit on the fence, to borrow Jawaharlal Nehru’s felicitous phrase, mind its own business and grow its exports, while avoiding the fruitless diplomatic forays of the 1960s and the non-alignment rhetoric of the 1970s.

Who won the LG Elections?

The answer depends on who is replying. So, here’s mine among several others. One regular commentator in an English newspaper admitted to harbouring reservations that the election of an NPP government may have taken Sri Lanka to seeing the last of a free and fair election in the country. So, with great relief he announced that regardless of the election results the NPP had “passed with flying colours” the test of the “commitment to multiparty democracy”. Not at all funnily, the commentator also asserted that his reservations were “not an unfounded fear, as the experience in many countries, where political fundamentalists or the militant left had won national power, has almost uniformly revealed.”

That in fact flies in face of history of many countries where electoral democracy has been threatened by political fundamentalists of a different kind or militants of the other hand. The darkest current example is of course the US, where an elected president is unabashedly trying to upend the oldest constitutional democracy in the world. Until the Supreme Court put an end to it India’s central governments, especially when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, frequently ran roughshod over the functioning of electoral democracy at the state level. Mrs. Gandhi infamously tried that even at the centre by imposing Emergency Rule in 1975.

In Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, President Jayewardene and President Ranil Wickremesinghe have used different methods to postpone or cancel elections. As for fairness and freeness of elections, it is the (parliamentary) political Left in Sri Lanka that has been their most consistent guardians from the two national elections and the infamous Dedigama by-election before independence, to every election held after independence. It has also been the hallmark of the Sri Lankan Left not to challenge an election result in court.

The JVP emerged as the antithesis to parliamentary democracy, but over the last 20 years it has mellowed, evolved and expanded as the NPP into a practitioner of parliamentary democracy. The JVP’s violence is past, and no one has accused the JVP/NPP of resorting to violence, corruption, vote-purchasing, or vote-impersonation to achieve electoral wins. It is not the best in every political aspect, but it is certainly far better in many aspects than every other political party. And at a time when politics is quite turbulent in many countries including our three large neighbours, Sri Lanka is quite even-keeled. While the people and the voters of Sri Lanka deserve a ton of credit for Sri Lanka’s even-keeled status at present, the NPP government also deserves due credit, perhaps far more than any of its predecessors this century.

Apart from giving credit to the NPP government for not subverting elections and for facilitating political stability, let us also look at some of the interpretive questions that have been raised about the results of the LG elections. There is a hugely feigned surprise that the NPP fell far short of the 61.56% vote share it got in the 2024 parliamentary election and dropping to 43.76% in Tuesday’s LG election. What is conveniently unmentioned is that the voter turnout also fell from 69% in the parliamentary election to 62% in the LG election. In the September 2024 presidential election, the voter turnout was a high 79% and President AKD polled 42.31%.

A parallel take on the election is to compare the results this week and those of the February 2018 LG election that was won by the newly minted SLPP. The point that is emphasized is that the SLPP won that election from the opposition while the NPP fought the recent election with all the resources of the state at its disposal. The fact is also that the UNP and the SLFP then in an unholy tandem government fought the 2018 LG election with all the state resources they could muster and still came up woefully short.

That might be beside the point, but the real point is that the voter turnout in that election was a high 80% and the SLPP polled 40.47% (not 44.6% as mistakenly noted by some), the UNP 29.42% and the SLFP 12.1%. The still more relevant point is also that the NPP polled 5.75% in the 2018 LG election and is now at 43.76% in 2025, while the SLPP has slid from 40.47% in 2018 to a paltry 9.19% in 2025. The combined SJB (21.69%) and UNP (4.69%) vote total share of 26.38% is also lower than the 29.42% share that the then undivided UNP managed in 2018.

In terms of seats captured, between 2018 and 2025 the NPP ballooned from 434 seats to 3,927 seats while the SLPP has shrunk from 3,436 seats to 742 seats, while the SJB that was unborn in 2018 has managed to win 1,767 seats in 2025. The SLPP won 231 Councils in 2018 and has zero councils now, while the NPP has grown from zero Councils in 2018 to winning 265 Councils now, although it is not having absolute majority of the seats in all the Councils where it has won the largest number of seats. The SJB with 14 Councils is actually placed third after the ITAK with 35 Councils, but only 377 seats and 3% of the total vote. The abnormality is the manifestation of the relative territorial advantage of the ITAK, which is also more illusive than of any practical benefit.

Who Lost in the North & East?

The LG electoral map displayed by Ada Derana (and copied here) is splashed up by just two colours: the ITAK’s purple bordering the northeast coastline and bulging into the Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts, while the rest of the island is a mass of NPP red, with sprinklings of SJB yellow here and there including Mannar.

Much has been made of ITAK’s return to electoral supremacy in the north and east, reversing the NPP’s landslide success in the November parliamentary election. It has also been suggested that inasmuch as the NPP government and President AKD personally invested heavily in their campaign in the two provinces, the results are a repudiation of their efforts to woo the Tamils and expand the NPP base in the North and East. I for one see the results quite differently.

Of the five northern districts, the ITAK swept three – Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu, but the NPP came second in all three of them. The NPP also came first in both Mannar, which was actually a three-way split between the NPP, SJB and the ITAK; as well as Vavuniya, where the NPP and the SJB shared the spoils leaving the ITAK to hold on to the Vavuniya Urban Council only. In the Eastern Province, NPP won Trincomalee and Ampara, while the ITAK held on to Batticaloa – the only district that the NPP lost in the parliamentary election. So, it is more even-stevens than repudiation of any kind.

There are two other aspects to the northeast results. The pre-election writeups in the Tamil universe focused more on the challenge to the ITAK from the other Tamil parties than its contest with the NPP. Specifically, parties and alliances involving the ACTC and DTNA were expected to outperform the ITAK and even challenge the latter’s leadership in Tamil politics. Whether he was being set up as a strawman or not, the LG elections were fancied to propel Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam as the next Tamil leader filling the void left by the late R. Sampanthan. Those expectations have been frustrated by the election results. The ITAK is still the ‘accredited’ (AJ Wilson’s term) Tamil political party, and it has put its detractors in their place. As well, the ITAK may find it more congenial to work with the NPP than collaborate with its Tamil competitors.

What is remarkable at the national level is that the NPP is the first political party in Sri Lanka’s history to systematically try to establish itself spatially and socially, in every part of the country and among all sections of its people, and it is now showing some consistent rewards for its efforts. What the Local Government electoral map is showing is that the NPP came first in all the red areas and second in all the purple as well as yellow areas. That is something that should be celebrated and not cavilled at as repudiation in the North and East.

What is also noteworthy at the national level is the disarray of the opposition parties in comparison to the political discipline shown by the NPP. Going forward, the NPP must hasten to add tangible results that are commensurate with the people’s goodwill that it continues to command. In the absence of an effective opposition, the government may want to consider setting up its own sounding boards of independent people to provide criticisms and suggestions on the performance of individual ministers and the government as a whole. Perhaps the current system of parliamentary committees could be used to provide forums for consistent public interventions. Without a mechanism for public feedback and responsive changes the government may lose itself in the intoxication of its own rhetoric. The NPP could and should do better. And the country deserves even better.

by Rajan Philips