The Archbishop of Panama, Mons. José Domingo Ulloa, Agustino as Pope Leo XIV, said that the first American and Peruvian Pope in history wants “that things in the church are clearer.”
“He is a great man, creator of bridges, dialogant, but also with that desire that things in the church are clearer. This is important. He has always said it, every Augustinian has to live this reality, it is feeling with the church, work where the church needs it,” said the Panamanian prelate in an interview with Vatican News May 21.
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Mons. Ulloa meets Pope León for more than 30 years. With him he worked on the renewal of the Agustina Order, being the prior general pontiff. “That is why, from the perspective not only Augustine but also of the Latin American Church, I think we have to listen to what the spirit tells us, the commitment that the order of St. Augustine has for each one, to reform and renew itself,” he added.
The Pope, when he was a prior Agustino, attended the episcopal ordination of Mons. Ulloa in 2004, when he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Panama; Also to his inauguration as Archbishop of Panama in 2010. For its part, Mons. Ulloa was able to attend the episcopal ordination of Mons. Robert Prevost as Bishop of Chiclayo in 2014, and its creation as a cardinal in the Vatican in 2023.
“I am convinced that the change begins for us the bishops, priests, consecrated and laity, and from here to be a light amid the darkness that the world can live,” said the Panamanian archbishop.
Pope Leo XIV, he continued, “is a methodical man, we cannot forget that he is mathematician, canonist, but with a pastoral heart. Those opportunities that we had many years ago, he was clear about the concepts and where he has to go. And so he will happen with his pontificate.”
“We also expect new times, but I also believe it is important to open the new changes that Pope León wants to present to the Universal Church,” he added.
A 2004 anecdote with Robert Prevost
“I think one of the personal anecdotes that I thanked, was when I was appointed auxiliary bishop of Panama on April 17, 2004, being (prior) general traveled, arrived at four in the afternoon and returned at nine o’clock at night,” the prelate recalled.
“It was a trip that I had and took the time to pause, and be there accompanying brother Augustine at that fundamental moment and that service that the Church then asked me in Panama,” he said.
To conclude, Mons. Ulloa encouraged not only to pray for Pope León but also to collaborate with him “especially with our coherence of life.” “That people, when they talk about Latin America, can see that simple, evangelical and especially delivered to others,” he concluded.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.