First Thing’s First: Leo XIV, the January Consistory, & the Church’s “Order of Operations”
Editor’s Note: This reflection was submitted to the National Catholic Register. Given the rapidly unfolding conversation surrounding the January consistory, I am publishing it here to ensure timely engagement. If it appears elsewhere, I will redirect readers accordingly.
When Pope Leo XIV announced a consistory for January (somewhat earlier and more unexpectedly than most Vatican watchers predicted), it sent ripples through the Church. Many were surprised; some were energized; others began speculating. Yet perhaps the consistory shouldn’t surprise us at all. In fact, it may well offer a window into the inner logic of a pontificate that is only beginning to reveal its shape. Recent reporting by Diane Montagna has helpfully clarified the specific themes Pope Leo XIV has placed on the agenda (including evangelization, synodality, ecclesial governance, and the liturgy) confirming that this consistory is less about abrupt change than about restoring coherence and proper sequence.
Commentators have already noted that Pope Leo XIV once studied mathematics as an undergrad. That fact was repeated frequently in the weeks following his election. But what interests me in this moment is not simply that he once solved equations. Instead, what matters is how he thinks: his instinct for clarity, sequence, order, and properly aligned relationships. What most observers miss is that these instincts shine just as brightly in his little-known 1987 Canon Law dissertation as they do in his undergraduate transcript.
I had the opportunity to study the Holy Father’s dissertation earlier this year (long before its October publication by Catholic University Press), and it consistently emphasizes that proper order is the key to authentic communion and rightly exercised authority. Pope Leo’s earliest theological writing, therefore, insists that discernment begins with God’s will before any communal need, preference, or initiative can be addressed. Encountering that work and having met him (briefly) more than a decade ago confirmed the consistency between his early formation and the leadership style emerging now. That intellectual framework now finds its clearest ecclesial expression in the upcoming January 2026 consistory. Others may point to his background in math; fewer can point to how deeply he has reflected on order as a theological category. And it is precisely this depth that makes the present moment in his pontificate so revealing.
Mathematical Order and Augustinian Rhythm
The Church has had popes who were philosophers, linguists, diplomats, theologians, and scholars. A pope shaped by mathematics is, admittedly, unusual. Add to this his identity as an Augustinian friar, and the combination becomes even more striking. Anyone who knew him before his election often recalls a man whose calm order and measured responsiveness foreshadowed the clarity now visible in his early papacy. And in truth, his sense of sequence is not foreign to any of us; it echoes the simple lesson first learned in middle school - that the order of operations matters, because getting the steps right is what allows clarity to emerge. Mathematics alone does not produce a governing style. Formation does.
At Villanova University, the young Robert Prevost learned the disciplined habits of mind that mathematics demands - not simply calculating, but discerning patterns, establishing relationships, and placing elements in their proper sequence. That early analytical training was later deepened by something very different: his Augustinian formation. Before studying Canon Law or assuming leadership roles, Prevost spent an intensive novitiate year in St. Louis, within the Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel of Chicago. This largely cloistered period was marked by daily prayer, silence, community life, and deep study of Augustine’s Rule. It was there that the abstract clarity of mathematics met Augustinian interiority.
As a friar steeped in Augustine’s theology of rightly ordered love, he also learned that the spiritual life works the same way: love misordered leads to chaos; love rightly ordered leads to peace. In his juridical training (culminating in his dissertation), he learned that authentic leadership cannot be improvised. It must be structured, obedient, and proportioned, always beginning with God’s will and flowing outward into the life of the community.
His mathematical, Augustinian, and canonical instincts form one integrated lens: first things first… and everything else in its proper place.
The Gospel Teaches the Same Logic
This instinct is not foreign to Christianity. Scripture itself runs on order - not as an abstract idea, but as the structure of God’s own revelation. At every Mass, we proclaim, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of goodwill.” The sequence is the proclamation: glory first, peace second. The angels at Bethlehem announce not a vague sentiment but a divinely arranged design. Peace does not give rise to glory; glory gives rise to peace. Disrupt these, and both gifts become thin imitations of themselves.
Jesus reinforces this same logic in His teaching. When a scholar of the law asks Him which commandment is the greatest, He does not simply list two good things. He gives an order that anchors the entire moral and spiritual life: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The second is “like it,” but it is not the first. Jesus names an order: God first, then neighbor. The love of neighbor flows from the love of God, receives its clarity from it, and is purified by it. If the sequence is blurred, charity loses its center and drifts toward activism without adoration, sentiment without sacrifice, and a unity unrooted in truth. The Gospel’s coherence rests on keeping the first commandment first.
St. John the Evangelist echoes this principle when he writes, “We love because He first loved us.” God’s initiative establishes the sequence: divine love precedes human love, and human love becomes possible only because of this primacy. St. Paul likewise grounds the harmony of the Christian community in the precedence of God’s action, reminding us that peace is always received before it is lived.
Scripture, then, presents a clear hierarchy of loves and a divinely revealed order of operations. Love flows outward from its source. Peace emerges from rightly directed hearts. And discipleship begins not with what we do for God, but with who God is for us. This is the very logic Augustine will later formalize, and it is the same logic Pope Leo XIV seems poised to restore.
Augustine’s Insight, Leo XIV’s Instinct
As an Augustinian friar, Pope Leo XIV knows this logic not as theory but as formation. Augustine’s ordo amoris (the “order of loves”) teaches that spiritual disorder arises not from loving the wrong things, but from loving good things in the wrong sequence. Place God first, and every other love finds its proper measure; place anything else first, and even noble desires become burdensome. This is Augustine’s enduring insight: love becomes luminous only when it is ordered.
Leo XIV’s instinct mirrors this tradition. When I spent time with his 1987 doctoral dissertation, what struck me most was how consistently he returned to this same conviction: authentic discernment must begin with God’s will before a community can hope to understand its own needs. Even in that early scholarly work, the future Pope argued that genuine communion rests on rightly ordered loves and responsibilities. The coherence between that early writing and his present leadership is unmistakable. The point for this moment is simple: Leo XIV’s emerging papal style reflects an Augustinian vision in which order is not rigidity, but the very condition that allows charity to become real.
The January Consistory: Clarifying the Sequence
Consistories always matter, but this one matters uniquely. Not only because it comes early in the pontificate, and not merely because of the names that will emerge, but because it gives Leo XIV his first opportunity to clarify the sequence in which he believes the Church must move forward. Until now, the Holy Father has made remarkably few personnel changes and has largely honored the schedule and rhythms set by his predecessor. His governance has been marked by continuity, expressed through a patient, observant, and almost deliberately restrained style. But 2026 marks the period when posture will shift from receiving to shaping. For those who knew him before his election, this shift carries a sense of continuity rather than departure: the same patient attentiveness that marked his friendships now marks his governance.
Seen through a mathematical and Augustinian lens, the consistory becomes something like the moment when parentheses are finally placed around the first expression in a long, wandering equation. Everything that follows depends on getting this initial grouping right. The gesture organizes and clarifies; it gathers what belongs together and brings the whole expression into focus. And above all, it underscores what must come first.
Leo XIV appears drawn to pastors who combine doctrinal clarity with spiritual depth, canonical coherence with pastoral charity, and fidelity to tradition with lived communal wisdom. This emerging pattern mirrors the same logic visible in his early canonical writing: begin with God, and allow every subsequent judgment to flow from that primacy. Authority must start with obedience to the divine will, not with administrative agility or political calculus.
This is why the consistory matters. It is not simply staffing; it is sequencing - the Pope’s first deliberate act of setting the equation in order, so that everything that follows can unfold in right harmony.
When the Order Is Right, the Church Flourishes
When we put multiplication before parentheses, the answer fails. When we place peace before glory, communion fractures. When neighbor-love (or self-love) is elevated above God-love, even charity becomes thin. But when the first term is set where it belongs, everything else can follow with coherence.
A Church that begins with God can love the world without losing itself. A Church that begins with worship can build unity without sacrificing doctrine. A Church that begins with rightly ordered love can offer peace that is more than sentiment - a peace that is salvation. This is Augustine’s wisdom. This is the Gospel’s structure. And it increasingly appears to be the “mathematics” of Leo XIV’s emerging pontificate.
The January consistory will not simply reveal his priorities; it will unveil the guiding logic of his pontificate and the inner order by which he intends to lead the Church. If Leo XIV can restore the order he has spent a lifetime discerning, then peace, charity, and unity will cease to be distant hopes and will become incarnate once more in the Church’s life. Renewal will not be forced; it will rise steadily and recognizably from a Church rediscovering its center. And when, God willing, he succeeds in setting the Church’s order of operations aright, then the life of faith (like a problem finally worked in the proper sequence) will once more display its clarity, coherence, and grace. Those who glimpsed this order in him years ago will not be surprised; he is leading the Church precisely as he was formed to lead: God first, everything else in its proper place.
