Vatican City - This morning Pope Leo XIV presided over Holy Mass with the cardinals in St Peter’s Basilica, at the Altar of the Chair, opening the central day of the Extraordinary Consistory. Prevost led everyone back to what is essential: prayer, remaining before God, the primacy of the Eucharist. The unity invoked and indicated also yesterday does not arise from a balance of positions, but from the Lord’s altar, where the Church rediscovers her source and her measure.
“Unity attracts, division scatters. It seems to me that even physics confirms this, both in the micro- and the macrocosm. Therefore, to be a truly missionary Church, that is, capable of bearing witness to the attractive power of the charity of Christ, we must first of all put into practice his commandment, the only one he gave us after washing the disciples’ feet: ‘As I have loved you, so you also must love one another’,” he had said yesterday.
The homily delivered this morning by the Pontiff was not a formal introduction to the proceedings, but a true key for reading the Consistory itself and the service to the Church that the College of Cardinals is called to offer. And the liturgy, as we had anticipated, proved inspiring for the Pope. The exhortation from the First Letter of John - “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God” - was taken up by the Pontiff as the interpretative key for the entire day: the Consistory not as a place of strategies or personal and group agendas, but as a space of discernment that goes beyond human intentions and asks to be entrusted, without reservation, entirely to the Lord.
Reflecting on the meaning of the word Consistorium, Leo XIV proposed a dense reading of it: “to stop”. A verb that aptly describes what the cardinals have done by choosing to suspend commitments, travel, and pastoral responsibilities in order to be present. In a social context marked by haste and efficientism, this stopping becomes a prophetic gesture: pausing to pray, to listen, to reflect, and to refocus on the goal. Without this pause, the Pope warned, recalling Saint Paul, one risks running in vain. The heart of the homily was placed on the Eucharist as the decisive act of discernment. On the Altar, Leo XIV explained, desires, thoughts and projects must be laid down, together with the gift of one’s own life, so that everything may be purified and transformed in the Sacrifice of Christ. Only in this way does listening to the voice of God become authentic and capable of being translated into real communion, in recognising one another as a mutual gift within the College. Within this horizon, the Pope outlined the identity of the College of Cardinals: not a group of experts called to produce technical solutions, but a community of faith. Skills and personal gifts find their meaning only if offered to the Lord and returned, by grace, for the benefit of all. The love by which the Church lives, he recalled, is Trinitarian and relational love, the foundation of that spirituality of communion indicated by Saint John Paul II as the path for the Church of the third millennium.
The “stopping” of the Consistory was thus presented as a great act of love: towards God, towards the Church, and towards the whole of humanity. An act that takes shape in prayer and silence, but also in mutual regard, in listening and in the sharing of the pastoral responsibilities entrusted to the cardinals in different parts of the world. With demanding words, Leo XIV recalled the awareness that everything brought along this path is a gift received, a talent to be safeguarded and made fruitful, not to be hoarded or wasted. Recalling Saint Leo the Great, the Pontiff indicated the style with which the work must be lived: the ordered collaboration of all the members of the Body of Christ, so that no one seeks his own interest but that of others, and so that the common good of the Church prevails over every other consideration. A vision rooted in the Church’s two-thousand-year history and in her “polyhedral beauty”, also witnessed by the variety of origins and ages of the assembled gathering. There was no lack of a realistic gaze upon the challenges of the present. Faced with a humanity hungry for good and peace, marked by deep contradictions, the Pope acknowledged the sense of inadequacy that can affect even the Pastors. Yet, as in the Gospel, the decisive question remains: “How many loaves do you have?”. The answer is not individual, but communal. It is together that those “five loaves and two fish” can be recognised and offered, which Providence does not fail to provide, so that no one is left without what is necessary.
In conclusion, Leo XIV thanked the cardinals for the service rendered to the Church and for the responsibility shared with the Successor of Peter, described as serious and burdensome. Prevost wished to conclude with the words of the saint who inspired his order: the awareness of one’s own poverty and a radical trust in the grace of God, from whom everything comes and to whom everything must return.
Towards the conclusion, but not the end…
After the Eucharistic celebration, the day continues according to the programme of the Consistory. In the morning, following the opening prayer and introduction, group work is scheduled, followed by a break and the reports of the groups. At midday, free interventions on the theme will take place, before the recitation of the Angelus. At 1.00 p.m., lunch with the Holy Father in the Atrium of the Paul VI Hall marks a further moment of sharing. In the afternoon, the third session resumes with prayer and an introduction, continues with new group work, the reports and free interventions, until the Pope’s concluding address and the Te Deum. The words spoken by the Pope this morning, the shared lunch with the cardinals and what is maturing in the working groups offer a profoundly evangelical image of the Church: communion, sharing, prayer. It is a Church that does not allow itself to be defined by alignments or factions, because it belongs to Christ before human logics. Leo XIV is recalling this insistently, inviting all to look to this style and to allow themselves to be corrected by it, so that it may become a concrete criterion also for our monastic, parish, diocesan and seminary realities.
d.G.B.
Silere non possum