Tiny Wonders: Please Look After This Church: Paddington and Pope Leo XIV
On stowaways, shared hospitality, and the marvels of welcome
Part of the Tiny Wonders series: short reflections on children’s books, faith, and everyday holiness
Paddington was originally published in 1958 and reread by our family on Mother’s Day, May 11, 2025.
Dear fellow wonderers,
We read Paddington: The Original Story of the Bear from Peru this Mother’s Day for a very special reason.
Like many Catholics around the world, we had been watching the conclave this past week with hopeful hearts. We checked each day, prayed for the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and talked as a family about the mystery and weight of it all. And then: the white smoke!
That moment always carries wonder, but to share it with one’s children brings a kind of specialness that’s almost indescribable. And I’ll admit: when we heard the name—Pope Leo XIV—and that he was from Chicago and had spent decades as a missionary in Peru, we all stared at each other in amazement. It felt almost unreal!
“Paddington!” my children chimed in.
For anyone who follows me, you probably know Paddington is one of our family’s most beloved storybooks. He’s not just a favorite character; he’s part of our household vocabulary. So this Mother’s Day, after the excitement of the conclave’s decision had settled a little, and, yes, in part to humor me, we all reread Paddington: The Original Story of the Bear from Peru in honor of our new pope.
Reading it with this new backdrop in mind, the scene that stood out to me this time was the one where Paddington first meets the Browns in that busy London train station:
“Good afternoon,” [the bear] said. “May I help you?”
“It’s very kind of you,” said Mr. Brown, “but as a matter of fact, we were wondering if we could help you.”
“You’re a very small bear,” said Mrs. Brown. “Where are you from?”
The bear looked around carefully before replying. “Darkest Peru. I’m not really supposed to be here at all. I’m a stowaway.”
There’s a lot of meaning packed into this brief exchange. First, note that Paddington offers help first. He isn't a charity case: oh no! He’s a participant in two-sided grace in action. “May I help you?” he asks first, even as he sits alone, out of food (that marmalade jar is almost empty), and with a tag around his neck that famously reads, “Please take care of this bear.” Paddington speaks politely, but also boldly in his own prudent way. And the Browns respond not with suspicion toward this stranger in their midst, but with hospitality. Again, it’s not a one-sided rescue. It’s mutual recognition: it’s a soul welcoming another soul.
Talk about the dignity of the human person.
It reminded me of Pope Francis’s words in Fratelli Tutti:
“Each of us is fully a person when we are part of a people.”
And now, Pope Leo XIV, it seems by all accounts, will carry that vision of friendship and hospitality forward. He holds dual citizenship—American by birth, Peruvian by heart. He belongs to both North and South America, and his papacy begins already steeped in the kind of encounter that defined his predecessor’s call to communion. We should welcome him as laypeople in the Church (in the same way metaphorically Paddington does to the Browns and vice versa) and I have no doubt that we will be responded to in kind.
After all, I noticed, and loved, that in his first homily, Pope Leo proclaimed:
“I will sing a new song to the Lord, because He has done marvels—and indeed, not just with me but with all of us.”
Marvels like this: a story about a bear from Peru, offered welcome in a busy train station by strangers, who reminded a family in the United States of their new religious leader—and helped them love him, and the Lord anew, through what he represents in both refreshed hope for the future and what he reminded them of in the now.
Moreover, it bears mention that Paddington as a narrative reminds us all we’re mere “stowaways” here on Earth anyway: we’re souls in transit, not quite at home in this world, needing one another for our sanctification until we get to the next. It may seem small on many levels, but this little story about a bear in a train station needing others, and a family who comes to learn they need him . . . Ah, it is the story of sanctification happening here on Earth! It is the Christian story wrapped in the trimmings of a cozy picture-book!
At the end of Paddington, once he’s had his delightfully merry and unexpectedly antic-ridden bath that makes me giggle a little each time I read it, the polite bear curls up in a soft chair in the Brown’s living room. Mrs. Brown leans in to him and says, “You must tell us all about yourself. I’m sure you must have had lots of adventures.”
“I have,” said Paddington earnestly. “Things are always happening to me. I’m that sort of bear.”
(After this eventful week in the Church, I’ve felt like I’m that sort of human too.)
And as the enire Brown family next leans in to listen him, their attention rapt, Paddington falls asleep, overcome by the warmth of being received, of being welcomed.
“Is it any wonder?” Mrs. Brown inquires, as the story ends. “Is it any wonder?”
And now, after all the pomp and the prayers, we as a Church are wondering, too. We are pausing, marveling, and catching our breath, like Paddington. A new pope. A new chapter in all our lives as faithful. We are all experiencing the first in a series of new stories and adventures we know we will now all be a part of. Indeed, as Americans, we know we are part of it in a new, surprising way. We have “main character” energy in the Church for the first time, so to speak. And, more seriously, as my husband said when we found out the news, the whole experience of knowing that a Pope could come from our country and have a family in our own backyard makes Jesus feel all the more real, too.
This moment in time has the feeling of the first book in a beloved series like Paddington where we’re waiting to see and hear what’s next and anticipating a future wrapped in our own individual stories that call us to be closer to those right next to us, and to our human brothers and sisters everywhere. Yes, we are a Church in the pause of beginning—settling, breathing, letting the joy sink in—nudged once again by the voice of a leader who sings:
“A new song to the Lord, because He has done marvels—and indeed, not just with me but with all of us.”
May we receive this marvel of a new pope with welcome. And may we, like Paddington, know how to offer welcome even as we receive it—dozing off in comfort, perhaps now that the frenzy has ended, and also knowing we’re the types who deserve both comfort and myriad adventures. Let the wonder begin!
What stories or traditions do you turn to repeatedly during moments of change or celebration? How do they help you find meaning and connection, perhaps even in unexpected ways?
In hope and holy curiosity,
LuElla
P.S. My children and I recently watched the new film Paddington in Peru, and it was a delight! I shared our reflections in a March article for Word on Fire: “Finding Family and Faith in Paddington in Peru.” You can read it here.