In 2002, an Augustinian friar from Mexico, from the Province of Michoacán, Father Jesús Guzmán, was appointed the full-time representative to the United Nations by the religious order, which only months earlier had elected Robert Francis Prevost as its prior general.
That is where one has to begin to understand how Leo XIV views the U.N. today: Prevost’s relationship with the United Nations was already strong when he led his order, and the positions the pope now takes on multilateralism and on reform of the organization can be traced to what he said back then.
The general chapter of September 2001, the same one that elected him general, decided to affiliate the order with the United Nations through a nongovernmental organization it established, “in order to speak more effectively in defense of human rights and human development.”
Prevost immediately made it a matter of governance. On March 2, 2002, in Iquitos, before the civil and military authorities of the Peruvian Amazon gathered for the centennial of the apostolic vicariate, he explained that NGO status “offers a new opportunity for evangelization, a new forum for sharing the Augustinian charism and spirituality.”
He recalled the campaign against antipersonnel mines, the campaign for the cancellation of foreign debt, for which the Augustinians had collected nearly 50,000 signatures during the Jubilee of 2000, and the long battle over conscientious objection. In 1970, only two countries had voted in favor, but by 1987 the UN Commission on Human Rights had approved the resolution on conscientious objection to military service by a vote of 26 to two, with 14 abstentions.
This was proof that those commissions “formulate policies capable of affecting the lives of millions of people.” He also quoted a question from the chapter that reads today like a key to the pontificate: “We often criticize policies, but are we willing to get involved in formulating them?”
Preacher turning “lobbyist”
That question contains a choice of method: denounce or sit down at the table where decisions take shape. Prevost chose the table, and he explained it using an image drawn from the order’s history.
In November 2002, writing to all Augustinians, he evoked Saint Alonso de Orozco, preacher at the court of Philip II: “Today we do not hold the office of court preachers, but as Augustinians we have a presence at the U.N., in New York.”
Eight years later, in the Philippines, he would repeat the same parallel, explaining that this kind of mission is now carried out “by joining other Catholic nongovernmental organizations at the United Nations.”
The king’s court has become the glass tower on the East River, and the preacher has become a “lobbyist” for human dignity.
In 2005, in Madrid, for the seventh centenary of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, the saint of the little loaves distributed to the poor, Prevost recalled the Millennium Development Goals and the commitment to halve the number of hungry people by 2015, “in the conviction that we are the first generation able to succeed.”
On Dec. 10, 2008, for the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he signed his most extensive letter on the subject. In it, he retraced the magisterium from Pacem in Terris to the popes’ addresses to the General Assembly and took up John Paul II’s image of the U.N. as a “moral center” where the nations feel themselves to be “a family of nations.”
But he added a note that we reread with attention today: the Church starts from an anthropology rooted “in the creative will of God,” and for this reason its point of view “does not fully coincide with that of other groups or institutions.” One can take note of this without giving up collaboration.
“The prior general, who in 2002 preferred policy formulation to criticism, is the pope who in 2026 calls for reforms rather than limiting himself to lamenting decline.”
In 2010, in Malolos, Philippines, he opened the first general chapter ever held in Asia, raised the possibility of a stable presence in Bangkok given the proximity of U.N. agencies, and admitted that “for many there is still little understanding of the reasons” for that commitment. He knew his confreres’ doubts and did not hide them.
Fifteen years later, the friar who wondered whether religious understood why they should be at the U.N. has found himself asking states whether they remember why they founded it.
The context has worsened. On Sept 22, António Guterres opened his final General Assembly as secretary-general by saying that “cracks have become canyons.” The session’s theme was the restoration of trust.
Purpose of multilateralism
Meanwhile, the pope’s native country has cut its contributions to the U.N. system and distanced itself from multilateral agreements, while in more than one region the use of force has once again been regarded as a normal instrument of policy.
Leo has responded in stages. On June 11, 2025, when receiving Guterres, he put on record that the Holy See supports “the United Nations’ commitment to world peace,” together with “the difficulties the Organization faces.”
In September, at the eightieth General Assembly, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher reaffirmed, in his name, the enduring importance of the U.N., with a warning: the original mission must not be diluted by new agendas.
On Oct. 16, at the FAO, the pope defended “unequivocally the importance of multilateralism in the face of harmful temptations that tend to establish themselves as autocratic in a multipolar and increasingly interconnected world,” asked that the voices of poor countries “be heard without filters,” and recalled Security Council Resolution 2417 on starvation as a method of warfare, a consensus that “seems to have been forgotten.”
“Zero Hunger,” he said, picking up the thread of the Millennium Goals evoked in Madrid, “will only be possible if there is a real will to do so, not just solemn declarations.”
The decisive text is the address to the diplomatic corps on Jan. 9 this year, based on The City of God.
There, the pope denounced “the weakness of multilateralism” and its replacement by “a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies,” and recalled that the United Nations was born “from those ashes” of the war, through the determination of 51 nations.
He acknowledged what it has accomplished and articulated the most pointed request of the pontificate: “Efforts are therefore needed to ensure that the United Nations not only reflects the situation of today’s world rather than that of the post-war period, but that it is also more focused and efficient in pursuing policies aimed at the unity of the human family instead of ideologies.”
The purpose of multilateralism is “to provide a place where people can meet and talk, modeled on the ancient Roman Forum or the medieval square,” he added. It is the same word, forum, that he had used in Iquitos.
The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas then gave doctrinal form to this diagnosis: the institutions established to safeguard “a global common good” appear to have been weakened; multilateralism has given way to “a disordered and conflictual multipolarism” in which distrust prevails; and the U.N. requires “profound reforms.”
On June 22, at the World Food Program, the pope pushed the question further, asking “what configuration of the global order is capable of producing, reproducing and, at times, normalizing” the crises that the agencies are then called upon to treat.
The Augustinian who is a keen UN observer
Placed in sequence, the two periods illuminate each other.
The prior general, who in 2002 preferred policy formulation to criticism, is the pope who in 2026 calls for reforms rather than limiting himself to lamenting decline.
The religious who in 2008 warned that Christian anthropology does not align with others’ while remaining at the table is the pontiff who wants a UN oriented toward “policies” rather than “ideologies,” and who, in his address to the diplomats, spoke of a “short circuit” of human rights.
And the image of the forum, used in Iquitos and then before the ambassadors, says what the organization’s value is for Prevost: a place where speaking to one another remains possible when elsewhere people have stopped doing so.
The Holy See sits at the U.N. as a permanent observer; it speaks but does not vote. The Augustinian who, more than twenty years ago, sent a confrere to New York knows, from the inside, the price and the meaning of that choice.
With thanks to Global Catholic and Antonio Spadaro SJ, where this article originally appeared.
