Consistory documents show cardinals cautious at start of Leo XIV’s reign

The four documents Pope Leo XIV ordered drawn up to inform a recent gathering of cardinals at the Vatican each took a somewhat different approach, a Crux review has determined, with each document showing a member of the last pontificate’s leadership cohort in a cautious posture as the new pope comes into his own.

At the consistory convoked by Pope Leo for Jan. 7-8, four issues were on the table for discussion: Synod and synodality; Pope Francis’s reform law, Praedicate Evangelium, which...