Vatican City - This afternoon, in the Synod Hall, the first Extraordinary Consistory presided over by Pope Leo XIV opened, an event that marks a tangible turning point at the beginning of his pontificate. Following this morning’s announcement in the Paul VI Hall, in which Prevost announced and inaugurated the catecheses on the Council, the Holy Father addressed the College of Cardinals in the New Synod Hall, immediately clarifying the framework of the proceedings: not a “framing” event, but a time deliberately set aside for listening.
The number of those present is also significant: 190 cardinals who chose to attend despite health issues, pastoral commitments, and age. This is not a numerical detail, but the expression of a shared responsibility that Church law defines with precision. Canon 353 clarifies that cardinals assist the Roman Pontiff in Consistories through collegial action, and clearly distinguishes between the ordinary form - in which at least the cardinals present in the City are convened - and the extraordinary form, celebrated when particular needs of the Church or the treatment of matters of special gravity so require, in which the entire College is convoked.
This clarification is also necessary in order to frame correctly what was stated by Cardinal Leopoldo José Brenes Solórzano, Metropolitan Archbishop of Managua, who declared that he had not been invited. This account does not correspond to the truth: the convocation was sent to all cardinals by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, as предусмотрed for an extraordinary Consistory. Within this framework, Leo XIV understood the Consistory as an ecclesial worksite: a laboratory of mutual listening, dialogue, and shared discernment, aimed at allowing a common orientation to mature, with method and sobriety, regarding the priorities of the next stage of the journey. Not, therefore, a sequence of merely formal interventions, but an exercise in concrete collegiality, in which the Pope’s word - from the outset - was placed within a dynamic of real consultation.
Radcliffe: listening to the Spirit
Cardinal Timothy Peter Joseph Radcliffe, O.P., a Dominican and preacher of recognised theological refinement, already listened to attentively on several occasions by members of the Sacred College, opened the proceedings with a meditation capable of disposing the assembly to an ecclesial listening, that is, rooted in faith and ordered to communion. Radcliffe began with an essential question: “We are gathered in this Consistory to offer our help to the Holy Father in the exercise of his ministry at the service of the universal Church. But how can we do this?”. The answer, woven in filigree on the Gospel of John, was clear: peace and love, not as good feelings, but as real conditions for effective assistance to the Pope. If the Barque of Peter, he observed, were filled with disciples tearing one another apart, the College would be useless; if instead one lives in peace and love even when divergences emerge, then God can make himself present precisely where, humanly speaking, he seems absent. From this spiritual foundation, the cardinal broadened his gaze to the present time, describing it as a season of “terrible storms”: growing violence, from armed crime to war; a gap between rich and poor that continues to widen; the erosion of the global order born after the last world war; the irruption of artificial intelligence, of which - he noted - we do not yet know what effects it will produce. “If we are not already uneasy, we should be,” he said, without apocalyptic complacency, but with lucidity. In this scenario, Radcliffe identified the most common temptation: feeling alone, worn down, exhausted. And yet, he insisted, “we must not be afraid”: Jesus keeps watch and, precisely when he seems distant, can make himself “closer than ever”. The same reading, he added, applies to the Church, itself crossed by storms such as the ideological divisions that shake it from within. He then exhorted: the Lord calls the Church to sail into these storms, facing them with truth and courage, without taking refuge in a prudence that becomes immobility. If the Consistory is able to assume this style - Radcliffe suggested - then Christ coming to meet us will be recognised; if instead one limits oneself to remaining “on the shore”, protected and hidden, the encounter will not take place.
Pope Leo XIV: “Let us make a real exercise of communion and discernment”
It was, however, the intervention of the Holy Father that gave the Consistory its precise profile. Pope Leo XIV chose a register that was elevated and at the same time extremely linear, clarifying from the outset that the heart of these days would not be the drafting of documents, but a real exercise of communion and discernment. The Pope adopted the theme of light as the theological and pastoral key for reading the entire ecclesial journey. Recalling the prophet Isaiahand setting that text alongside the incipit of Lumen gentium, Leo XIV proposed an organic reading of the Second Vatican Council: the Church lives and understands herself only starting from Christ, the light of the nations, and her mission does not consist in affirming herself, but in allowing herself to be traversed and reflected by this light so that peoples may walk amid the darkness of the world.
From this perspective, the Pope reread the great pontificates of the second half of the twentieth century as a coherent development of the conciliar vision, culminating in the synthesis offered by Benedict XVI and Francis in the category of attraction. Leo XIV then insisted that the Church’s attractive force does not lie in strategies, structures, or languages, but in the Charity of God - the Charis, the Agape - which has been incarnated in Christ and is continually given to the Church in the Spirit. It is not the Church that attracts, the Pope reiterated, but Christ himself; and if a Christian community is credible, it is only because it allows the vital sap that flows from the Heart of the Saviour to pass through without opacity. In this sense, he recalled the path of Pope Francis, from Evangelii gaudium to Dilexit nos, as a single arc centred on the divine and human love of Christ. From here he drew an ecclesial consequence: unity.
Leo XIV stated clearly that unity possesses an intrinsic attractive force, whereas division produces dispersion and sterility. This is not an organisational principle, but a law that runs through reality itself, and which for the Church translates into obedience to the one commandment left by the Lord after the washing of the feet: to love one another as he has loved. Only this love renders Christian witness credible. On this foundation the Pope placed the theme of collegiality. The College of Cardinals, with its variety of origins, cultures, formative paths, and pastoral experiences, is not a difficulty to be managed but a richness to be embraced. However, for this plurality to become fruitful, it is necessary to know one another, to dialogue, and to learn to work together. Leo XIV explicitly indicated the Consistory as a place of mutual learning, called to offer a concrete model of ecclesial communion. In outlining the working method, the Pope repeatedly emphasised a key word: listening. Listening of the mind, of the heart, and of the spirit; mutual listening; brief and essential interventions, so that everyone can take the floor. Not “many things”, but “much” in depth. Within this logic he explained the choice of themes - mission, Curia, synodality, liturgy - and the organisation of the groups, stressing that the Consistory is not oriented towards the production of texts, but towards an ecclesial conversation capable of orienting its service to the governance of the universal Church. The day and a half of work, Leo XIV concluded, is intended as a prefiguration of the future journey: a style of Church that walks together, allows itself to be guided by the Holy Spirit, and finds precisely in the fraternal way of working the beginning of something new, capable of shaping the present and the future of the ecclesial mission.
The chosen themes and the discussion
The cardinals chose, by vote, the two themes on which to focus during these days: Synod and synodality and Evangelisation and missionarity in the Church in the reading of Evangelii gaudium. A decision that, in practice, contradicts the image often projected by media narratives: there is a “told” Church, noisy and polarised, and a real Church that - at least here - tries to work on substantive priorities. In the media circuit, in fact, visibility is gained above all by groups capable of imposing agenda and language, sometimes guided by figures who are vulnerable even on an economic level and quickly enlisted as the banner of the “right” of the moment, with particular resonance in the American sphere. It is these dynamics that systematically distort the debate on liturgy, reducing it to identity, fan bases, and propaganda. In recent days Silere non possum has clearly revealed the most toxic outcome of this short circuit: the inability to hold together exteriority and Christian life, up to the vulgarity of public scandal, with cardinals mocked and insulted. The “new wind”, however, is equally explicit: no tolerance for those who fuel divisions, no room for blackmail, threats of retaliation, vendettas, or appeals to the “powerful on the hierarchical ladder”. Leo XIV reiterated this today as well with a firm stance: division does not build, does not generate, does not bear fruit.
Once the themes were chosen, the cardinals organised themselves around a circular table, divided into 20 groups on a linguistic basis, with timed and brief interventions - about three minutes each - to ensure that everyone could contribute. The first part of the work was presided over by Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, S.D.B., Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. The opening followed a clearly spiritual rhythm: the singing of the Veni Creator, the reading of a passage from chapter 6 of the Gospel of Mark, then two minutes of silence. This was followed by a greeting from Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals, with a greeting and “a bit of his usual show”, a cardinal reports. It was Cardinal Timothy Peter Joseph Radcliffe who brought the atmosphere back to prayer after the cardinal’s words. The Pope’s intervention then followed.
From 4.20 p.m. to 6.00 p.m. the cardinals then moved to the Paul VI Hall for group work, in which Leo XIV did not take part: the Pope chose not to “enter” the discussions, reserving himself to listen. He did indeed return for the final reports. For reasons of time, only the secretaries of the first nine groups - those composed of cardinals from the local Churches - were able to present in three minutes a synthesis of the discussion and the reasons that led to the selection of the two themes. The secretaries of the other eleven tables, instead, communicated only the titles of the preferences expressed.
“I feel the need to count on you. You have called this servant to this mission; it is important that we discern together,” Pope Leo XIV concluded before taking leave and setting the appointment for tomorrow. Then he asked: “Is there life in our Church?”. “A Church that looks beyond itself, whose reason for being is to proclaim the Gospel.”
The College looks to the Pope with admiration
This evening, at dinner, some cardinals gathered together with a curial archbishop and a bishop present in the City. With enthusiasm they recalled today’s events, dwelling also on the group work in the Paul VI Hall: they recounted that the Pope sat at one of the tables with them, participating directly in the discussion. They were enthusiastic about the preacher’s words and about what emerged in the groups. What emerged, they said, was a cheerful, serene, and relaxed atmosphere. They were struck by Leo’s choice to live this moment also as a response to the requests that emerged before the election. Particularly significant, they added, was the attention given to the groups coming from the local Churches, perceived as anything but formal. Leo also appears to the Sacred College as a man of profound prayer and, at the same time, of surprising concreteness: pragmatic, aware of the dossiers, and precise in what he speaks about. “Seeing the Paul VI Hall once again filled with ‘bishops’ and not others is a fine sight,” joked the archbishop who in recent months had taken part, with the same Prevost but in a different role, in the Synod on Synodality.
fr.E.S.
Silere non possum