A Protestant Pastor/Professor of Preaching Ponders Papal Preparation and Potential

To Pope Leo XIV

Your Holiness,

Esther 4:14: Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this. (New Revised Standard Version of the Bible)

Image: “Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus,” Printmaker: Francesco Bartolozzi. Used with the gracious permission of the Smithsonian, online open access.

Neither faith nor imagination are required to see how likely it is that you are God’s Esther for a dangerous and unsettling time such as this.

I am supremely grateful that these gifts of yours allow us already to describe you as:

• P pastoral

• O oracular

• N numinous

• T transformational

• I insightful

• F fearless

• I inspiring

• C contemporary

• A alert

• L liberating

Your life journey astounds. Your compassion and concern for strugglers warm our hearts. Your vision for the worldwide community of faith to be all that we can be in living out God’s love as Jesus lived it out—thereby overturning hatreds—stirs us to keep trying. Your integrity reminds us that only truth makes for spiritual freedom.

Holding you in my prayers and positive thoughts.

The Reverend David Albert Farmer, Ph.D., USA, A Little South of Chicago, May 2025