VATICAN CITY (RNS) — At a Mass in the Sistine Chapel on Friday (May 9) attended by the cardinals who had elected him their leader the day before, Pope Leo XIV laid out his missionary vision for the church. But first he told the cardinals that his leadership would continue to depend on them.
“Through the ministry of Peter, you have called me to carry the cross and to be blessed with that mission,” he said in English before he began his homily, “and I know I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me as we continue, as a church, as a community of friends of Jesus, as believers, to announce the good news, to announce the Gospel.”
Drawing from the day’s reading, Leo XIV said his election was “for the sake of the entire mystical body of the Church” so that she may be “an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illuminates the dark nights of this world.”
As he preached in the frescoed hall, painted by the famed artists of the Italian Renaissance, Leo XIV said this goal can be achieved “not so much through the magnificence of her structures or the grandeur of her buildings — like the monuments among which we find ourselves — but rather through the holiness of her members.”
Leo said society today is divided between those who discard faith as a backward belief “meant for the weak and unintelligent,” and those who portray Jesus as merely a “charismatic leader or superman.”
The first place their trust in “technology, money, success, power or pleasure,” he said, while the second end up living “in a state of practical atheism.”
Preaching the gospel in these contexts is “not easy,” Leo said, noting that “believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied.” But it’s precisely for this reason that “our missionary outreach is desperately needed,” said the pope, a member of the missionary Augustinian order who spent two decades in Peru.
A world lacking faith, he said, “is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds.”
He remembered his predecessor, Pope Francis, who taught believers “to bear witness to our joyful faith in Jesus the Savior.”
He returned to his understanding of how leadership in the church works, honed in his 12 years as head of the Order of St. Augustine, a sprawling organization with missionaries in 47 countries around the globe.
The ministry of authority, he said, “is to move aside so that Christ may remain, to make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified, to spend oneself to the utmost so that all may have the opportunity to know and love him.”
In his greeting to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square immediately after his election on Thursday, Leo praised Francis’ project to create a church built on synodality, which called for leadership roles for non-clergy, inclusion and transparency in the church’s structures.
A hint of this model of leadership was revealed shortly after the Mass, when a statement was released announcing that the heads of the Vatican’s governing departments, who by church law are automatically dismissed when a pope dies, will remain in their positions for the time being.
“The Holy Father wishes, in fact, to reserve himself some time for reflection, for prayer and dialogue before making any definitive appointment or confirmation,” the statement read.
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