A Man of Faith Meets the First American Pope
There are moments in life that transcend the personal. Moments so layered with history, faith, and meaning that you find yourself standing in them without quite having the words to describe what you’re feeling. That’s how I would describe what happened recently when my mentor, my friend, and one of the great moral giants of our time — civil rights icon Ambassador Andrew Young — walked into St. Peter’s Square in Rome and shook the hand of Pope Leo XIV.
I was not there, but my brother from another mother, and friend, Andrew ‘Bo’ Young III, Ambassador Young’s son — was. He said he will never forget it.
Ambassador Young has walked with Dr. King. He has stood in the halls of the United Nations. He has led one of America’s great cities. He has counseled presidents and prime ministers. And yet there is something about this man — something that has never changed across all those decades and all those rooms — that is rooted not in power, but in spirit. Andrew Young is, at his core, a man of faith. So when he made the journey to Rome with his son Bo to meet Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pope in the history of the Catholic Church, it felt right. It felt ordained.
Ambassador Young told reporters afterward that he had been to the Vatican before — with Dr. King, with Coretta Scott King — but that this was different. This was his first time meeting Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born Robert Prevost, whose election as the 267th successor of St. Peter sent a signal to the world: the American church had arrived at the center of global moral leadership in a new way. WSB-TVEWTN Vatican
The morning they arrived, the weather shifted. A thunderstorm rolled in over St. Peter’s Square just as they reached the stage where the Pope presides. Ambassador Young, with that laugh of his that fills any room he’s in, said it felt like God saying, “Oh sinner, why are you here?” WSB-TV
That’s Andrew Young. Ninety-something years of life, of struggle, of service, of loss, of victory — and still laughing. Still light. Still trusting God enough to joke with Him.
When the moment came and he stood before Pope Leo XIV, Ambassador Young said that what he felt was more spiritual than personal. And all he could get out was a thank you — a thank you for praying for our country. “If ever we needed prayer before,” he said, “we sure do need it now.” WSB-TV
Those words landed hard on me. Because they are true. They are absolutely true. We are living in an age of fracture — economic fracture, social fracture, spiritual fracture. And one of the things that I believe, that I have always believed, is that the work of healing has to be larger than any one movement, any one nation, any one institution. It has to be — as Ambassador Young has lived his entire life — rooted in something higher than us.
That is what I saw in those photos. An elder statesman and a new pope. A civil rights legend and a global religious leader. Two Americans — one from the streets of New Orleans and the movement, one from the streets of Chicago and the Church — standing together in the heart of Rome, talking about prayer.
I have spent my career building bridges. Between Wall Street and Main Street. Between faith communities and financial systems. Between the past this country came from and the future we are still trying to build. Ambassador Young has spent his lifetime doing the same work at a scale most of us can barely imagine. And in that moment at the Vatican, he was doing it again — carrying something bigger than himself across an ocean, and laying it at the feet of a new kind of moral authority.
Operation HOPE, Inc. is proud to call Ambassador Young our Global Spokesperson. But more than that, I am proud to call him my mentor. My elder. My friend. My personal hero. The person who showed me — and shows me still — what it means to walk by faith, not by sight.
To the Ambassador: thank you for this moment. Thank you for still walking. Thank you for still carrying. And thank you for reminding all of us, standing on that stage in the middle of a Roman thunderstorm, that the work never stops — and neither does the grace.
Let’s go.
— John Hope Bryant
Founder, Chairman & CEO, Operation HOPE, Inc.
John Hope Bryant — founder of Bryant Group Ventures, Operation HOPE, Inc, publisher of the Bryant Journal and author of his 7th book Capitalism for All: Inclusive Economics and the Future Proofing of America, now a bestseller. Bryant was recently named a member of the Forbes 250.
