Unity, Not Uniformity — Pope Leo’s Big Tent Lesson for Democrats

Pope Leo XIV isn't obsessed with moving the Church left or right so much as making it bigger. If Democrats want to start winning elections again, they should take note.

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Over the coming weeks, I’ll be publishing a new series on how Pope Leo XIV — the Church’s first American pontiff — is turning Pope Francis’s prophetic dream of a “synodal Church” into institutional reality.

As I wrote in TIME earlier this year, “If Francis was the dreamer, Leo will be the doer.”

Today’s essay applies that same lesson to American politics. Drawing on Ezra Klein’s New York Times column this morning, I argue that Democrats can learn from Pope Leo’s model of unity without uniformity — building a broader coalition that listens, includes, and represents rather than preaches, purges, and polarizes.

You can read Klein’s full piece thanks to a gift link I’ve included here.

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Thank you, as always, for reading — and for walking this journey with me.

The late political commentator Mark Shields liked to say a strong movement spends more time seeking converts than punishing heretics.

Pope Leo XIV and the late Pope Francis seem to get that.

They’re not obsessed with moving the Church left or right so much as making it bigger.

Their guiding vision is a Church of unity without uniformity — and if Democrats want to start winning elections again, they should take note.

A Church That Listens and Grows

In Rome last fall, Pope Francis convened a global Synod with a simple premise: listen first, include more voices, and let different parts of the world find different paths.

Pope Leo XIV, Francis’s successor (and the first American Pope), has embraced that same big tent ethos.

He’s less interested in ideological litmus tests than in authentic representation of the diverse global Church.

As Pope Leo’s own motto In Illo Uno Unum (“In the One, we are one”) suggests, it’s about unity — not uniformity.

The genius of Francis and Leo’s approach is that they aren’t trying to shove the Church left or right on a spectrum. They’re trying to widen the circle.

Under Francis, the Church has welcomed debate on previously taboo topics and reached out to those on the margins; under Leo, those lofty ideals are being hammered into concrete policies.

If Francis was the dreamer, Leo is the doer — turning inclusive vision into action. Their shared initiative of a listening Synod, which empowers bishops and laypeople from every continent, shows leadership unafraid of internal differences.

Unity in the Catholic context doesn’t mean everyone prays or votes the exact same way; it means rallying around core values of the Gospel while allowing local variation in practice.

Democrats Need a ‘Synod’ Mindset

This morning in The New York Times, Ezra Klein made a compelling case that the Democratic Party needs a similar big-tent revival.