I confess that on Divine Mercy Sunday, when I should have been praying, "Jesus, I trust in you," I was fretting over the conclave and the next pope. As if my opinion counted, I ran a mental list of Cardinals whom I would rejoice to see in white - and a second, more worrisome, list of those for whom white would be unbecoming.

But since then, the cardinals of our holy Catholic Church have spoken: Cardinal Robert Prevost is now Pope Leo XIV.

The rush is on to analyze the cardinals' rationale, and the scrutiny of every tiny piece of the pope's time on St. Peter's loggia - the name, the mozzetta, the prepared text, the languages, the words themselves, the emotion he showed. We seek a program, an agenda, a hint of what the new pope will do, what needs he will address first.

As I realized after Mercy Sunday, and even more as we recover from today's excitement, I believe that we humans fret over the wrong things. Because God does not think this way.

The image of the Lord Jesus asleep in the boat that is the floundering Church has endured through the ages, even longer than the old joke that divine protection alone explains how the Church has survived the ineptitude of her leaders. Many of the successors of St. Peter have contributed to this narrative with their gross incompetence, sloth, lust, greed, and even malice.

It's, therefore, fair to ask: Is God as worried as we are over what we deem to be the Church's pressing needs, given all the sins He has permitted His vicars to commit?

This is a point worth pondering as we greet our new Holy Father with filial reverence. This question, a particular spin on the eternally nagging problem of evil, reminds us that God does not always give us what we want, which is usually just the smooth navigation of the Barque of St. Peter. He gives us, rather, what we need for salvation, and very often that means enduring trials of infidelity and suffering evils inflicted by others. Our Lord endured these Himself on the Cross, God's curious way of bringing about the greater good of our redemption.

But distinguishing the good that arises from the Church's human failings often requires high-powered lenses. Where is the good in the Great Schism that split western and eastern churches? The Avignon Papacy? The so-called Reformation? The theological debates during Pope Francis's pontificate? Closer to home, where is the good when a pastor neglects, or, worse, abuses his flock? When a Catholic school teacher promotes immorality and heresy?

Amidst these evils we learn a most difficult lesson: God alone is good. Upon Him and His grace flowing through the Church and her organs do we depend. Nothing more. Not even the proper functioning of the Body of Christ, which we are right to work for and pray for, is necessary in God's providence.

Sometimes God grants us a pope - or bishop or pastor or teacher - whose holiness and leadership inspire us, console us, and help us grow in faith. We pray for this as Pope Leo XIV loosens the sails. Yet when the ship sails on smoothly, a danger looms: we can grow complacent, overly reliant on the shepherd to do what God wants each of us to do: to love Him above all things and to bring the Gospel to each person we meet.

Our hope for salvation rests not in princes, not even ecclesiastical ones, but in the Lord. Of course, what the pope says and does is of great importance. But his particular program and personal sensibilities - whether he is a great leader or a timid one, wise or foolish, peaceful or confrontational - does not change our vocation as baptized Catholics to bring the Gospel to the corners of the world that we each inhabit.

It's easy to forget this in the grand pageantry of a papal election. And even as we admit that it is the most exciting event left in the modern world, still, the pope is not the summit and source of Catholic life. God is. Whatever Pope Leo does in the future, he will not change, and cannot change, the mission that each one of us has as baptized child...