In four days, Leo XIV will move to Castel Gandolfo for a period of rest. As usual, this news has been handled by the media and commentators with their typical Vatican fetishism and the superficiality that characterises most of their work. Yet, contrary to what some claim—that going to Castel Gandolfo is a sign of wealth, pride, or other such nonsense—there is nothing more ordinary than withdrawing for a time of rest during the summer, including for spiritual renewal. Even the Pope needs rest. He too, like every human being, is called to “vacare”.
We live in a society that idolises efficiency, visibility, and constant productivity. Sadly, even in the Church, it sometimes seems that only what is done matters: conferences, travels, speeches, public appearances. But spiritual life—the true, deep, fruitful kind—grows at a different pace. As Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini once said: “The spiritual life is not a race, but a pilgrimage with stages, pauses, halts, silences.” Rest is human, and therefore sacred. As Enzo Bianchi often reminds us: “Learning to rest is not wasting time, but inhabiting it. It is not fleeing, but staying.” In an age where holidays have often become a form of consumption or a new performance—sporting, social, photographic—the Pope’s choice to retreat to the silence of Castel Gandolfo is a prophetic act. It is not an escape, but a testimony. It says the body matters, the mind must be renewed, the soul needs to catch its breath.
Even Augustine—so dear to Prevost—teaches us that the human heart is restless until it rests in God. But this "rest in God" is not an abstraction: it is built into the sabbatical rhythm of life, into the ability to stop, to stay, to listen. Monasticism has always known this: “Otia sancta non sunt vacua,” said Gregory the Great—holy rest is not empty, but filled with presence.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, too, in his De Consideratione written to a pope (Eugene III), warned: “Overwhelmed by a thousand tasks, you risk losing yourself. Return to yourself, take time for God, for your soul.” Words that seem to echo today for Leo XIV, who has found himself having to embrace a legacy—if we can call it that—that is highly controversial. His move to Castel Gandolfo is not a “departure,” but a return inward. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from prison, reminded us: “Solitude is not emptiness, but full relationship with God.” And Pope Benedict XVI, in his so often disregarded magisterium, had warned us: “Those who cannot stop will never know how to listen.” To stop is a high form of spiritual resistance.
So let the Pope rest. Let us not demand that he always be visible, active, on the front line. The Church also needs Fathers who rest, not just leaders who work. For in quiet daily faithfulness, in standing before God doing nothing, the mystery is safeguarded that makes the Church a body, not a machine, a Bride, not a corporation.
The Pope Retreats, the Hustlers Agitate
Especially since Leo XIV has, in recent months, experienced a personal revolution he could never have imagined. His time in Castel Gandolfo will be precious not only for much-needed rest but also to prepare him for a season of real and necessary change that will begin in September. Not the imaginary changes invented by certain frustrated fixers who, under the cloak of anonymity, turn the whispered ramblings of equally repressed cardinals into wastepaper, hoping someone—perhaps even the Pope—will fall for it.
The upcoming changes are natural: some need to retire, and it is necessary to build around the Pope a more harmonious environment, with people he can collaborate with in a serene and fruitful way for the good of the Church. Yet in recent days, some have even attributed words to Leo XIV that he never uttered, naturally “in strict confidence.” But from the Apostolic Palace, not only is no time wasted on these idiocies dreamed up by repressed young men in jackets and ties—the same ones who chase after bishops and cardinals like they would after MPs—but it is also pointed out how such expressions do not even resemble the sober style and essential language of a humble man like Prevost. After all, we’ve said it many times: these characters have no interest in the truth. They write systematic lies just to push their view of the world. And they don’t do it out of love for the Church, but out of revenge. Revenge for not being placed in the front row at a papal audience. Pathetic.
Quaerere deum
And if even the Pope retreats, perhaps we can learn to do the same. To learn to suspend the frantic pace, to turn off—at least for a while—our phones, to loosen the rhythm imposed by social media that demand we be always connected, always productive, always present. To learn to say nothing. To do nothing. Rest, after all, is a divine commandment: God Himself rested on the seventh day. Not because He was tired, but to teach us the beauty of stillness, of contemplation, of simply enjoying.
This gesture of Leo XIV is also a message. It is a personal invitation to priests, often overwhelmed by frantic schedules: youth groups, summer camps, celebrations, meetings, appointments… The Pope is showing a different path. He invites us to slow down, to rediscover God in silence, to embrace the value of inhabited solitude in order to recalibrate the soul. Once again, Leo XIV is not thinking only of himself. He is aware that every gesture of his is also a sign. An example. A reminder.
May this vacation, then, truly be a blessed time. To stop. To breathe. To find ourselves again in God.
p.E.F.
Silere non possum