Ed note from ChatGPT: “Quo vadis?” is Latin for “Where are you going?” or more literally, “Where are you marching?”
It’s famously associated with a Christian tradition involving Saint Peter. According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, as Peter was fleeing Rome to escape persecution, he encountered a vision of Jesus. Peter asked, “Quo vadis, Domine?” (“Where are you going, Lord?”), and Jesus replied, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” This prompted Peter to return to Rome, where he was eventually martyred.
The phrase has since come to symbolize a moment of decision or turning point, especially one involving moral or spiritual direction.
From HCR:
Today, on the second day of the papal conclave, the cardinal electors—133 members of the College of Cardinals who were under the age of 80 when Pope Francis died on April 21—elected a new pope. They chose 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago, thus making him the first pope chosen from the United States. But he spent much of his ministry in Peru and became a citizen of Peru in 2015, making him the first pope from Peru, as well.
New popes choose a papal name to signify the direction of their papacy, and Prevost has chosen to be known as Pope Leo XIV. This is an important nod to Pope Leo XIII, who led the church from 1878 to 1903 and was the father of modern Catholic social teaching. He called for the church to address social and economic issues, and emphasized the dignity of individuals, the common good, community, and taking care of marginalized individuals.
In the midst of the Gilded Age, Leo XIII defended the rights of workers and said that the church had not just the duty to speak about justice and fairness, but also the responsibility to make sure that such equities were accomplished. In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, translated as “Of New Things,” Leo XIII rejected both socialism and unregulated capitalism, and called for the state to protect the rights of individuals. (continued on page 2 on Skyline Happenings website)