Pope Leo Eucharistic Celebration 27.10.25

With students from Pontifical Universities

Dear brothers and sisters,

To gather in this place during the Jubilee Year is a gift that we must not take for granted. Above all, it is a gift because to go on a pilgrimage, to pass through the Holy Door, reminds us that life makes sense only when it is lived as a journey, when it knows how to keep moving forward, that is, when it is capable of making the reality of Easter present.

It is good, then, to think how the Church, through celebrating the Jubilee in these months, has been remembering that she constantly needs to undergo conversion and that she must always walk behind Jesus without hesitation and without the temptation to move on ahead of him. Indeed, she is always in need of Easter, that is, of “passing over” from slavery to freedom, from death to life. I hope that all of you experience within yourselves the gift of this hope, and that the Jubilee may be an opportunity through which your lives can begin anew.

Today, I would like to address you who are part of university institutions and all those who, in various ways, dedicate themselves to study, teaching and research. What is the grace that can touch the life of a student, a researcher, a scholar? I would respond in this way: it is the grace of an overarching vision, a perspective capable of grasping the horizon, of looking beyond.

We can see this insight in the Gospel passage just proclaimed (Lk 13:10-17), which presents the picture of a woman who was bent double and, healed by Jesus, can finally receive the grace of a new perspective, a broader vision. This woman’s condition resembles the condition of ignorance, which is often linked to being closed in on ourselves and lacking spiritual and intellectual restlessness. She is bent double, turned in on herself, and thus unable to look beyond herself. When human beings are incapable of seeing beyond themselves, beyond their own experiences, ideas and convictions, beyond their own projects, then they remain imprisoned, enslaved and incapable of forming mature judgements.

Like the bent-over woman of the Gospel, the risk is always that of remaining prisoners of our self-centered perspective. Yet, in reality, many of the things that truly matter in life – we might say, the most fundamental things – do not come from ourselves; we receive them from others. They come to us through our teachers, encounters and life experiences. This is an experience of grace, for it heals us from self-absorption. This is a genuine healing that, just as for the woman in the Gospel, allows us once again to stand upright before life and its reality, and to look at them with a wider perspective. The healed woman receives hope, for she can finally lift her eyes and see something different, can see in a new way. This especially happens when we encounter Christ in our lives, when we open ourselves up to a life-changing truth capable of making us step out of ourselves and freeing us from our self-absorption.

Those who study are “lifted up,” broadening their horizons and perspectives in order to recover a vision that does not look downward, but is capable of looking upward: toward God, others and the mystery of life. Indeed, the grace of being a student, researcher or scholar means accepting a broad vision that can see far into the distance; that does not simplify problems nor fear questions; that overcomes intellectual laziness and, in doing so, also defeats spiritual decay.

Let us always remember that spirituality needs this perspective, to which the study of theology, philosophy and the other disciplines contribute in a particular way. Today, we have become experts in the smallest details of reality, yet we have lost the capability of an overarching vision that integrates things through a deeper and greater meaning. The Christian experience, however, wishes to teach us to look at life and reality with a unified gaze, capable of embracing everything while rejecting merely partial ways of thinking.

I thus urge you, students, researchers and teachers alike, not to forget that the Church needs this unified perspective for both today and tomorrow. We can look to the example of men and women such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Edith Stein and many others who knew how to integrate research into their lives and spiritual journey. We likewise are called to advance in our intellectual endeavors and the search for truth without separating them from life. It is important to cultivate this unity so that what happens in university classrooms and educational environments of all kinds does not remain an abstract intellectual exercise. Instead, it becomes capable of transforming life, and helps us to deepen our relationship with Christ, to understand better the mystery of the Church, and makes us bold witnesses of the Gospel in society.

Dearest friends, study, research and teaching bring with them an important educational responsibility, and I wish to encourage universities to embrace this calling with passion and commitment. To educate is similar to the miracle recounted in today’s Gospel, for the activity of the educator is to lift people up, helping them become themselves and able to develop informed consciences and the capacity for critical thinking. Pontifical universities must be able to continue this “activity” of Jesus. This is a true act of love, for it is a form of charity expressed through study, knowledge and the sincere search for what is true and worth living for. To feed the hunger for truth and meaning is an essential task, since without them we would fall into emptiness and even succumb to death.

On this journey, each of us can also rediscover the greatest gift of all, which is to know that we are not alone and that we belong to someone, as the Apostle Paul affirms: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’…” (Rom 8:14-15). Indeed, what we receive while we are searching for the truth and devoting ourselves to study helps us to discover that we are not creatures cast by chance into the world, but that we belong to someone who loves us and who has a plan of love for our lives.

Dear brothers and sisters, together with you I ask the Lord that the experience of study and research during your university years may render you capable of this new perspective. May your academic journey help you to know how to speak, narrate, deepen and proclaim the reasons for the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pet 3:15). May the university form you to be men and women who are never bent in on themselves but always upright, capable of bringing the joy and consolation of the Gospel wherever you go.

May the Virgin Mary, Seat of Wisdom, accompany and intercede for you.

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Pope Leo Angelus 26.10.25

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

Dear brothers and sisters, happy Sunday!

Today’s Gospel (cf. Lk 18:9-14) presents two individuals, a Pharisee and a tax collector, who are praying in the Temple.

The first boasts a long list of merits. He has done many good works, and for this reason he feels superior to others, whom he judges contemptuously. He stands with his head held high. His attitude is clearly presumptuous, denoting a strict observance of the law, but one that is poor in love, made up of “giving” and “taking,” of debts and credits, devoid of mercy.

The tax collector is also praying, but in a very different way. He is in great need of forgiveness: he is a tax collector paid by the Roman Empire, and he works under a contract that allows him to speculate on the proceeds to the detriment of his own countrymen. Yet, at the end of the parable, Jesus tells us that it is the tax collector who returns home “justified,” that is, forgiven and renewed by his encounter with God. Why?

First, the tax collector had the courage and humility to present himself before God. He did not close himself off in his own world or resign himself to the evil he has done. He left the places where he was feared, safe and protected by the power he wielded over others. He went to the Temple alone, without an escort, even at the cost of facing harsh glances and sharp judgments, and he stood before the Lord, at the back, with his head bowed, uttering a few words: “God, be merciful to me a sinner” (v. 13).

Jesus gives us a powerful message: it is not by flaunting our merits that we are saved, nor by hiding our mistakes, but by presenting ourselves honestly, just as we are, before God, ourselves and others, asking for forgiveness and entrusting ourselves to the Lord’s grace.

Commenting on this passage, Saint Augustine compares the Pharisee to a sick man who, out of shame and pride, hides his wounds from the doctor. The tax collector is compared to another who, with humility and wisdom, lays bare his wounds before the doctor, however unpleasant they may be to look at, and asks for help. The saint concludes: “It is not surprising that it was the tax-collector… who went away cured, since he had not been ashamed of showing where he felt pain” (Sermo 351,1).

Dear brothers and sisters, let us do the same. Let us not be afraid to acknowledge our mistakes, lay them bare, take responsibility for them and entrust them to God’s mercy. That way, his Kingdom — which belongs not to the proud but to the humble and is built through prayer and action, by practicing honesty, forgiveness and gratitude — can grow in us and around us.

Let us ask Mary, the model of holiness, to help us grow in these virtues.

I express my heartfelt closeness to the people of eastern Mexico, which in recent days was hit by flooding. I pray for the families and for all who are suffering because of this calamity, and I entrust to the Lord, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, the souls of the deceased.

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FAMINE

Pope Francis

Hunger

Hunger is an injustice that destroys men and women because they have nothing to eat, even if there is a lot food available in the world. Human exploitation; different forms of slavery; recently I saw a film shot inside a prison where migrants are locked up and tortured to turn them into slaves. This is still happening 70 years after the Declaration of Human Rights. Cultural colonization. This is exactly what the Devil wants, to destroy human dignity – and that is why the Devil is behind all forms of persecution.

01.06.18

Pope Leo Holy Mass 26.10.25

Jubilee of the Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

As we celebrate the Jubilee of the Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies, we are invited to contemplate and rediscover the mystery of the Church. She is not merely a religious institution, nor is she simply identified with hierarchies and structures. The Second Vatican Council reminds us that the Church is the visible sign of the union between God and humanity, where God intends to bring us all together into one family of brothers and sisters and make us his people: a people made up of beloved children, all united in the one embrace of his love.

Contemplating the mystery of ecclesial communion, generated and preserved by the Holy Spirit, we can also understand the meaning of synodal teams and participatory bodies. They express what occurs within the Church, where relationships do not respond to the logic of power but to that of love. The former – to recall a constant warning from Pope Francis – is a “worldly” logic. Conversely, in the Christian community, primacy belongs to the spiritual life, which reveals to us that we are all children of God, brothers and sisters, called to serve one another.

The supreme rule in the Church is love. No one is called to dominate; all are called to serve. No one should impose his or her own ideas; we must all listen to one another. No one is excluded; we are all called to participate. No one possesses the whole truth; we must all humbly seek it and seek it together.

The very word “together” expresses the call to communion in the Church. Pope Francis reminded us of this in his final Message for Lent: “…to journey together. The Church is called to walk together, to be synodal. Christians are called to walk at the side of others, and never as lone travellers. The Holy Spirit impels us not to remain self-absorbed, but to leave ourselves behind and keep walking towards God and our brothers and sisters. Journeying together means consolidating the unity grounded in our common dignity as children of God” (Message for Lent, 25 February 2025).

Walking together: this is apparently what the two characters neglect to do in the parable we have just heard in the Gospel. Both the Pharisee and the tax collector go up to the Temple to pray. We could say that they “go up together” or, at least, they find themselves together in the sacred place. Yet they are divided; and there is no communication between them. Both take the same path, but they do not walk together. Both are in the Temple; but one takes the first place, and the other remains behind. Both pray to the Father, but without being brothers and without having anything in common.

This division depends above all on the Pharisee’s attitude. His prayer, though seemingly addressed to God, is only a mirror in which he looks at, justifies and praises himself. As Saint Augustine writes, he “went up to pray: he had no mind to pray to God, but to laud himself” (Discourse 115, 2). Feeling superior, he judges the other with contempt and looks down on him. The Pharisee is obsessed with his own ego and, in this way, ends up focused on himself without having a relationship with either God or others.

Brothers and sisters, this can also happen in the Christian community. It happens when the ego prevails over the collective, causing an individualism that prevents authentic and fraternal relationships. It also occurs when the claim to be better than others, as the Pharisee does with the tax collector, creates division and turns the community into a judgmental and exclusionary place; and when one leverages one’s role to exert power, rather than to serve.

We should, however, focus our attention on the tax collector. With the same humility that he showed, we too must recognize within the Church that we are all in need of God and of one another, which leads us to practice reciprocal love, listen to each other and enjoy walking together. It is based on the knowledge that Christ belongs to those who are humble, not to those who elevate themselves above the flock (cf. Saint Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, c. XVI).

The synodal teams and participatory bodies are an image of this Church that lives in communion. Please trust me when I tell you that by listening to the Spirit in dialogue, fraternity and parrhesia, you will help us to understand that, prior to any differences, we are called in the Church to walk together in the pursuit of God. By clothing ourselves with the sentiments of Christ, we expand the ecclesial space so that it becomes collegial and welcoming.

This will enable us to live with confidence and a new spirit amid the tensions that run through the life of the Church: between unity and diversity, tradition and novelty, authority and participation. We must allow the Spirit to transform them, so that they do not become ideological contrapositions and harmful polarizations. It is not a question of resolving them by reducing one to the other, but of allowing them to be purified by the Spirit, so that they may be harmonized and oriented toward a common discernment. As synodal teams and members of participatory bodies, you know that ecclesial discernment requires “interior freedom, humility, prayer, mutual trust, an openness to the new and a surrender to the will of God. It is never just a setting out of one’s own personal or group point of view or a summing up of differing individual opinions” (Final Document, 26 October 2024, 82). Being a synodal Church means recognizing that truth is not possessed, but sought together, allowing ourselves to be guided by a restless heart in love with Love.

Dear friends, we must dream of and build a more humble Church; a Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all; a Church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone. Let us commit ourselves to building a Church that is entirely synodal, ministerial and attracted to Christ and therefore committed to serving the world.

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Pope Leo – October 2025

For collaboration between different religious traditions

Let us pray that believers in different religious traditions might work together to defend and promote peace, justice and human fraternity.

Lord Jesus, You, who in diversity are one

and look lovingly at every person, help us to recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters, called to live, pray, work, and dream together.

We live in a world full of beauty, but also wounded by deep divisions. Sometimes, religions, instead of uniting us, become a cause of confrontation.

Give us your Spirit to purify our hearts,

so that we may recognize what unites us

and, from there, learn again how to listen and collaborate without destroying.

May the concrete examples of peace, justice and fraternity in religions inspire us to believe that it is possible to live and work together, beyond our differences.

May religions not be used as weapons or walls, but rather lived as bridges and prophecy: making the dream of the common good credible, accompanying life, sustaining hope and being the yeast of unity in a fragmented world.

Amen

October 2025

Pope Leo Ecumenical Prayer for the Care of Creation 23.10.25

The Gospel in your pocket

How do we receive the Word of God? The response is clear: As one receives Jesus Christ. The Church tells us that Jesus is present in the Scripture, in His Word.

Always carry a small Gospel with you in your purse, in your pocket, and read a passage from the Gospel during the day. Not so much to learn something, but mostly to find Jesus, because Jesus actually is in His Word, in His Gospel. Every time I read the Gospel, I find Jesus. - Pope Francis 01.09.14

Daily Readings - read the entire New Testament over a 2 year period (reading plan courtesy of Gideon International)

The Bible Online

Thank you, Francis

Every month, you have invited us to pray with you for the challenges of humanity and the mission of the Church, teaching us to learn compassion for others from the heart of Christ. Thank you, Francis, for your life and your witness.

Your Worldwide Prayer Network.

Pope Francis Easter Message and Urbi et Orbi Blessing 20.04.25

Easter Sunday