Earlier this week, I was reminded of what I was doing last year on May 8 by a friend who is a Missionary Sister of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When the white smoke appeared in St. Peter’s Square a year ago today, we were both about to begin the final session in a reading group on faith, women, and leadership for faculty and staff at Villanova University. About fifteen of us were already assembled together and ready to discuss the last chapters of Mother Cabrini: Italian Immigrant of the Century by Mary Louise Sullivan, MSC. Instead, we decided to leave the discussion for another day, turned on a Vatican livestream, and chatted excitedly as we waited for the news.

To be honest, I was very surprised to see the face of Villanova’s own Robert Prevost, OSA, emerge as the new head of the Catholic Church. Many of the Augustinians at Villanova know him – some quite well – and there had been some discussion that week about the fact that one of their brothers was a cardinal in the conclave. But I am not sure if they truly expected to see him on the central balcony of St. Peter’s.

It seems fitting that we were preparing to talk about Cabrini when we heard the news of Pope Leo XIV’s election. It was Pope Leo XIII who sent Mother Cabrini on her mission to America to serve the Italian immigrants. Frances Xavier Cabrini and her institute, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, would go on to establish missions across the world. In Mother Cabrini’s telling, “the world is too small” for all that she wanted to do for Christ.

While the world may have seemed too small for Mother Cabrini at the start of the twentieth century compared to her zeal for missionary work, today the world feels quite vast – or at least, the global problems we face do. Throughout his first year in the papacy, Pope Leo has called repeatedly for peace amid war and dialogue over violence. Today, he marked the one-year anniversary of his election with a celebratory mass in Pompeii.

Before the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, whose feast is celebrated on May 8 in Pompeii, Pope Leo said during his homily, per Vatican News, “I therefore had to come here, to place my service under the protection of the Blessed Virgin…having chosen the name Leo places me in the footsteps of Leo XIII, whose many merits include the development of an extensive Magisterium on the Holy Rosary.” Pope Leo has called on Catholics to pray the Rosary especially this month of May, which is dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God and Mother of the Church. Praying the Rosary, Pope Leo noted, helps us to direct our hearts to the needs of the world: “Through [Mary’s] intercession may there come from the God of peace an overflowing outpouring of mercy, touching hearts, calming resentment and fratricidal hatred, and enlightening those who bear special responsibilities of government.”

During Augustine’s lifetime, the Rosary as we understand it today, particularly in its emphasis on Marian devotion, did not exist. The Rosary as a practice dates back to the Desert Fathers, though they used stones and prayer ropes, rather than beads, to keep track of the 150 Psalms they prayed. Even though Augustine never prayed the Rosary, he still believed deeply in the importance of prayer.

While on the papal plane last month during his 11-day apostolic visit to Africa, Pope Leo was asked about his favorite spiritual readings. He recommended Augustine’s Letter to Proba (Letter 130), a wealthy Roman widow who had fled mainland Italy and migrated to North Africa as a refugee, alongside her daughter-in-law Juliana and grand-niece Demetrias, after the 410 sack of Rome. In the letter, Augustine tries to answer Proba’s question about how we should pray. Per OSV News, Pope Leo remarked that “Augustine gives some wonderful guidelines and hints, if you will, about how our prayer can really be meaningful.”

What Pope Leo XIV’s papacy will mean is still being determined. But I have greatly appreciated that throughout the first year of his papacy he, a self-described “son of Augustine,” continues to draw from and recommend Augustine as a source of wisdom.

I’ll close with one of my favorite passages from Augustine’s Letter to Proba:

Since this is so, it is not wrong or useless also to pray for a long time when one is free, that is, when it does not interfere with other duties involving good and necessary actions, though even in them one should always pray, as I said, with that desire. For praying for a longer time does not mean, as some suppose, praying with many words. Much talking is one thing; a lasting love is another. For scripture says even of the Lord himself that he spent the night in prayer and that he prayed at great length. In doing this what else did he do but offer us an example, insofar as he suitably offered prayers in time and, as eternal, heard them along with the Father?

The brothers in Egypt are said to say frequent prayers, but very brief ones that are tossed off as if in a rush, so that a vigilant and keen intention, which is very necessary for one who prays, may not fade away and grow dull over longer periods. And in this way they show that, just as this intention should not grow dull if it cannot last long, so it should not be quickly broken off if it does last. Let many words, after all, be kept far from our prayer, but let our petitions not lack persistence, if the intention remains fervent. For to speak much in praying is to do something necessary with superfluous words, but to petition him much to whom we pray is to knock with a long and pious stirring of the heart. For this task is very often carried out more with sighs than words, more with weeping than with speaking. But he places our tears in his sight, and our sighing is not hidden from him who created all things by his Word and does not seek human words. (Letter 130.10.19-20; tr. Roland Teske, S.J.).

I read this Letter to Proba this past semester with a group of Villanova students in a class on Augustinian Spirituality and Women. Later this month, we will be going on pilgrimage to Augustinian sites in Italy. As we prepare, I have been thinking about how one prays without ceasing and what it means to pray “more with sighs than words, more with weeping than with speaking.” I imagine that Pope Leo’s continuing papacy will help us all to consider this together more deeply.