“I was chosen, without any merit of my own, and now, with fear and trembling, I come to you as a brother, who desires to be the servant of your faith and your joy, walking with you on the path of God’s love, for he wants us all to be united in one family”, said Leo XIV, first North American and Augustinian Pope in the history of the Church. He formally began his Petrine ministry as Bishop of Rome on Sunday, following his election on 8 May. For the Conclave, the Pontiff revealed, “coming from different backgrounds and experiences, we placed in God’s hands our desire to elect the new Successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, a shepherd capable of preserving the rich heritage of the Christian faith and, at the same time, looking to the future, in order to confront the questions, concerns and challenges of today’s world.”
In the homily, delivered in St. Peter’s Square, he highlighted two words with a distinctly Augustinian flavour: “love” and “unity.”
The homily of the new successor of Peter was punctuated by two quotations from the Bishop of Hippo: the first – ‘you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you’ – is the most celebrated phrase from the Confessions. The second concerns the future face of the Church: “the Church consists of all those who are in harmony with their brothers and sisters, and who love their neighbour.” Those words of Saint Augustine were chosen by the Pope to unveil his “first great desire”, which he hopes is also ours:
“a united Church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world.”
The other quotation exemplifying the style of the pontificate, commenting on a passage from Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, at the end of the homily, reads like a mission statement:
“With the light and the strength of the Holy Spirit, let us build a Church founded on God’s love, a sign of unity, a missionary Church that opens its arms to the world, proclaims the word, allows itself to be made ‘restless’ by history, and becomes a leaven of harmony for humanity”, the identikit of the ecclesial community, conveyed as an aspiration: “Together, as one people, as brothers and sisters, let us walk towards God and love one another.”
“In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest”, denounced Leo XIV: “We want to be a small leaven of unity, communion and fraternity within the world. We want to say to the world, with humility and joy: Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome his word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to his offer of love and become his one family: in the one Christ, we are one.”
“This is the path to follow together, among ourselves but also with our sister Christian churches, with those who follow other religious paths, with those who are searching for God, with all women and men of good will, in order to build a new world where peace reigns!”,
the programme of the pontificate: “This is the missionary spirit that must animate us; not closing ourselves off in our small groups, nor feeling superior to the world. We are called to offer God’s love to everyone, in order to achieve that unity which does not cancel out differences but values the personal history of each person and the social and religious culture of every people.”
“To be a ‘fisher’ of humanity in order to draw it up from the waters of evil and death”, the first image that takes us to the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus began the mission he received calling Peter and the other first disciples to be, like him, ‘fishers of men.’”
“To cast their nets again and again, to bring the hope of the Gospel into the ‘waters’ of the world, to sail the seas of life so that all may experience God’s embrace”,
Peter’s mission continues today, because today, too, Peter “is entrusted with the task of loving more and giving his life for the flock.” It is
“It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power.”
“Shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him”, the recommendation of Leo XIV. On the contrary, “Peter is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them, for all of us are ‘living stones’ (1Pt 2:5), called through our baptism to build God’s house in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity.” “Brothers and sisters, this is the hour for love!” the Pope said concluding his homily, after which the Pallium and the Fisherman’s Ring were presented to him. The symbolic rite of obedience to the Pope followed, performed by 12 representatives of the People of God. Cheers of “Long live the Pope!” and “Pope Leo!” filled St Peter’s Square as Pope Prevost made his first drive through the square in the popemobile, ahead of Mass. Starting at the Arco delle Campane, he passed along Via della Conciliazione, surrounded by a cheering crowd of an estimated 200,000 people.
