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“The impression that I got in our conversation was that he was a listener,” Sister Margaret Obrovac, who recently concluded a stint at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, said in a telephone interview. 

She and the then-cardinal had “a very enlightening and very insightful” theological discussion while accompanying the late Pope Francis on a September 2024 journey to Belgium and Luxembourg.

“It was an informal conversation, and we just happened to get into some deeper issues in that conversation,” the Daughters of St. Paul nun said.

Although Obrovac didn’t detail those “deeper issues,” she said the new pope, a 69-year-old Augustinian who until Thursday headed the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, genuinely heard her comments. 

“He looked for what he could agree with and what he could and then be able to nuance it in a way that was enlightening also for me,” she said.

While Obrovac said she doesn’t “know if he even remembers” their chat, Leo’s approach impressed her.

“If he can bring that to the papacy, and I believe he will, we can look at a church that will be more united, if we ourselves are willing to be nuanced, if we are willing to be enlightened by someone else and not just have an echo chamber for our own thoughts, I think that to me, that’s what it means to be unassuming,” she explained.

Las Vegas Archbishop George Thomas, who spent 90 minutes with Leo during a 2023 visit to Rome, remembers the cleric who advanced the Nevada episcopate to the rank of a metropolitan see, but also had him promoted to the rank of archbishop.

“He’s a man who had considerable influence and power during the Pope Francis administration, but he just does not wear that power image in the public forum,” Thomas said.

When they met over lunch at the Vatican, Thomas didn’t even know he was dining with a high-ranking Vatican official.

“His dress and demeanor were more indicative of a parish priest who would come to offer his congratulations to me, and I quickly found out through the guys that were surrounding me that this is the Prefect for the Congregation for Bishops,” Thomas recalled in a telephone interview.

The Las Vegas Catholic leader said Leo’s low-key style will make its mark with Trump and others on the global stage — even after the pontiff boosted online criticism of the president’s policies for years.

“I think Pope Leo will bring a disarming humility to the table right away, and a vulnerability that to me, at least, has the capacity for opening doors,” Thomas said. “He brings intellectual prowess to the table as well. I know he’s committed deeply to the power of dialogue and persuasion over dictates and polemics.”

And the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit who was close to Francis, believes that the new pontiff’s experience as a missionary in Peru and head of the Order of Saint Augustine — as well as helming the Dicastery of Bishops — will serve Leo well in his new role.

“I know him to be a down to earth, kind, modest, reserved guy, hard working, decisive, not afraid of speaking his mind. It’s a great choice,” Martin wrote on X.