What authentic Church leadership looks like

By Johnny Zokovitch

A gift of having spent 35 years of my life ensconced in the Catholic peace and justice community has been working alongside the (often too few) bishops who manage to weave together the pastoral and prophetic vocations of the place they hold within the larger church. I had the privilege of being supported and mentored by men like Bishop Tom Gumbleton and Bishop John Snyder, men who were kind and down-to-earth, attending to the real life needs of the people they served while also never shrinking from speaking truth to power. 

I have cherished deep conversations with the likes of Bishop Leroy Matthiesen, who solidly challenged the church to declare nuclear deterrence as morally unjustified once and for all, and to work on a homily with Patriarch Michel Sabbah, nonviolent defender of the Palestinian people, when he preached at an international gathering of Pax Christi members. These and others – Bishops Walter Sullivan, Gabino Zavala, and Kevin Dowling, to name a few – managed in ways large and small to remind the Church what authentic, gospel-centered authority looks like. Each, in one facet or another, mirrored the leadership that many of us locate in the witness of Archbishop Oscar Romero; a witness we continue to long-for from our own religious leaders. 

Romero emerged at a time in El Salvador’s history when the only institution strong enough to oppose the corruption and violence of those who ruled that country was the Catholic Church. The question of who the Church would stand with in that struggle was an open one; some in the hierarchy were deeply entrenched with government officials and military commanders, a position that came with its own benefits. Romero ultimately cast his lot with the people, with those with whom Jesus identifies, the “least of these” who Romero recognized to be the true church. 

Today, most of our institutions lack either the will or the moral clarity to take on an administration that has killed its own people, condemned to death hundreds of thousands around the world by withholding aid, rounded up and detained and deported migrants and refugees guilty of no crime other than crossing a border, and carried out extrajudicial killings on “suspected” drug runners in boats in international waters.

While in the past, the US Catholic hierarchy has sometimes had, at best, a mixed response to the inhumanity of this and previous administrations, the wind seems to be shifting and more bishops are stepping up. One bishop for whom this is not new territory is Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv, who for the past decade has demonstrated what consistent prophetic and pastoral leadership looks like. (Full disclosure: For five years I worked closely with Bishop Stowe while I was the executive director and he was the bishop-president of Pax Christi USA.)

In his role as bishop, Stowe has unfailingly witnessed to the values of Jesus, standing in clear opposition on every occasion when the powerful have assaulted the human dignity of the vulnerable, when state-sponsored violence has been unleashed, and when lies are being trumpeted as truth. This week, Stowe joined 19 other US bishops in issuing a statement hours before President Trump’s State of the Union address, decrying the use of ICE tactics that intimidate and abuse immigrant communities and the policies that deny them due process or separate their families. Immediately following the military attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Maduro, he issued a statement challenging the administration’s disregard for human life and the rule of law. Such actions are typical for Stowe; he has repeatedly challenged the US government on everything from protecting the dignity of members of the LGBTQ community to reallocating military funds to address human needs to promoting efforts which further diversity, equality and inclusion, creating the beloved community of which Dr. King dreamed. 

As Christians around the world entered the Lenten season, Stowe’s pastoral orientation was evident in his opening reflection in Peace compels us: Reflections for Lent 2026. 

“Many of us find ourselves rather vulnerable this Lent: hungering for justice and peace, especially in solidarity with the Sudanese, with Palestinians, with Ukrainians, and all who are living the daily devastation of war. … We are also vulnerable because we are angry at the injustices seen day in and day out, towards migrants and refugees, towards those lacking health care, towards hungry families who suffer the insults and indignities of those who wish to deny their humanity and worth.”

And he clearly engages the prophetic, connecting our shared vulnerability to our ongoing “resistance to the policies of cruelty” and the “madness coming from our national leader.” 

Nearly 50 years ago, Archbishop Romero wrote, “A church that doesn’t provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed–what gospel is that? … Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do not light up the world they live in.”

As more bishops follow the example that Bishop Stowe has set, I find myself hoping that the full power of the institutional church might be the counter needed to arrest this cruelty and inhumanity. That our bishops lock arms with the people of God so we might bear together the light needed to dispel this present darkness. 

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Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/ and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.