After a two-day conclave in the Vatican City, Pope Leo XIV was elected to the Papacy, and Lead by the Illusive Man, Cerberus is a humanity-first paramilitary outfit that acts as Commander Shepard's employer in Mass Effect 2 after reconstructing their body and bringing them back from death, but also serves as a major antagonist throughout the series.

As noted by Reddit animalnitrateinmind, a Pope Leo XIV canonically exists within the Mass Effect universe. This fictional version of Leo XIV ascended to the Papacy as part of a plot by Cerberus, who assassinated the previous Pope, Clement XVI, with rosary beads coated in toxins. Leo XIV's ambitions for Catholicism in the 2170s aligned with Cerberus' belief that humanity's best route forward was to aggressively militarize and subjugate the Milky Way's other sentient races.

Cerberus Assassinated More Than Just A Pope In Mass Effect

Drastic Measures To Secure Humanity's Dominance

Cerberus' rise to prominence as the leading human-supremacist faction in Mass Effect's Milky Way was ruthless and bloody. The organization's hit list also included United North American States president Enrique Aguilar, Chinese People's Federation premier Ying Xiong, and Claude Menneau, who was poised to become the leader of the pro-human Terra Firma party. The Illusive Man preferred another, more radical person to lead Terra Firma, Charles Saracino, who can be encountered on the Citadel in Mass Effect.

Beyond assassination, Cerberus would also exert influence via other atrocities. Most infamously, the organization orchestrated a series of industrial accidents involving Mass Effect's Element Zero. Eezo freighters were destroyed over colony planets, exposing colonists to high levels of the element in dust form. Cerberus hoped this would result in more Biotics being born, those with natural telekinetic powers, which usually require implants for humans. Biotic births did rise on the colony planets, but so did birth defects.

Pope Leo XIV Was Named 146 Years Before Mass Effect Predicted

Only 123 Years Until We Have FTL Travel

While the connection between the new Pope and Mass Effect is quite entertaining, it didn't take nearly as long as BioWare predicted for an elected Pope to take the name Leo XIV. Mass Effect's Leo XIV was named in 2171, 146 years after 2025. Funnily enough, BioWare would have almost hit the mark if the writers had chosen Leo XV instead. Leo XIII's Pontificate began in 1823, 147 years before Leo XIV's in 2025. If BioWare, when writing the original Mass Effect trilogy in the 2000s, had predicted a Pope Leo between XIII and the fictional XIV, the timeline would have been even more bizarrely accurate.

Such things would, of course, be impossible to predict – no one knows which name a Pope will choose when they're elected; sometimes they even take the same name as their predecessor. Still, it's a funny connection to have a Pope Leo XIV elected in 2025, with a fictional Pope of the same name appearing in Mass Effect. Luckily, the circumstances of the real election were not as dire as those fictionalized by BioWare.

Source: animalnitrateinmind/Reddit