Preface and acknowledgments
Chapter 1: A radical choice
Profile of a pope
Pope Leo: What happened?
The Challenge of Reform
What reform looks like
No "Golden Age"
Chapter 2: A restless heart
(Extra)ordinary beginnings
Cerca y personal: Augustinian, missionary, prior
Prior general, bishop, cardinal
The hand of providence
Chapter 3: "Peace be with all of you."
Radically moderate
The power-and limits-of gestures and signs
Strange bedfellows: The College of Cardinals in brief
The conclave of May 2025 in context
Vicar of Christ: The man and the office
Chapter 4: An Augustinian pope
Power and order in the Augustinian mind
One commonwealth of all Christians: In illo uno unum
Journeying together
Pope Leo XIV: Two keys to understanding
Human nature and power in society: an Augustinian view
Citizen and stranger
Augustinian optimism
Chapter 5: A Lion of springtime
Technological eclipse
Worse (and also better)
Attention deficit
How the Church communicates
Leo XIV and the "culture of encounter"
From the personal to the institutional - continuities and discontinuities
Interlude: The State of the Vatican (and the state of the Church)
Reform "on the go"
Teaching and governance: Fernández in the DDF
In form for action(?): The Church on the international stage
The Church's shifting centre of gravity
Things come to a head: Fiducia supplicans
Unsustainable: Vatican finances in crisis
Looking forward: The papal in-tray
Chapter 6: Communications, curial culture, Synodality
The challenge of reform: Vatican Communications
Communication as listening: "Synodality" and the Synod of Bishops
Romanitas
Institutional memory
In short
Chapter 7: Financial reform
Misconceptions
Peter's Pence: Myth, facts, conjecture
Signs of the times
A threefold challenge for Pope Leo XIV
A long time coming
The bottom line
Chapter 8: Reform of justice
Leo XIV: Unfinished business
Justice in a fallen world
Practical challenges: Justice as closeness to victims
The requirements of natural justice
Natural justice and judicial independence
Reserve powers
The conciliarist controversy and its aftermath
Chapter 9: The nature and limits of papal governing power
Governing power as such
Justice in the ecclesiastical system
Twin challenges: transparency and judicial independence
Secretly untenable
What could Pope Leo XIV do?
Preliminary indications: theory and practice
An investigative arm
A Matter for the Synod of Bishops?
Making the pallium mean something (again)
Conclusion: Drivers of crisis
Notes