🇮🇹 Versione italiana
Vatican City – In the magnificent setting of the Sistine Chapel, beneath Michelangelo’s majestic fresco of the Last Judgement, His Holiness Leo XIV this morning celebrated his first Holy Mass as Pontiff, the day after his election to the See of Peter, which took place yesterday, 8 May.
The entire College of Cardinals participated in the celebration, including those over the age of eighty, in an atmosphere of deep ecclesial communion and reverence. With his sober and reserved demeanour, the new Pope, born Prevost, began the liturgy by intoning the opening greeting in Latin: «In nomine Patris». His words, tremulous with emotion, moved those present, revealing the awareness and spiritual weight of the ministry he had just received. The Gospel proclaimed during this solemn celebration was the passage in which Jesus entrusts Peter with the leadership of the Church: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” A passage chosen with clear intent, providing a fitting frame for the beginning of the new pontificate, marked by this “Pro Ecclesia” Holy Mass.
During his homily, Pope Leo XIV reflected on the apostle Peter’s profession of faith as the synthesis of the treasure the Church has preserved for two thousand years. He stated plainly: “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the only Saviour, the face of the Father who draws near and becomes accessible to man.” Recalling how Christ reveals himselfthrough the stages of life — in the eyes of a child, in the mind of a youth, in the face of a man — the Pope pointed to Him as the model of holy humanity to be imitated, and as the promise of eternal life which transcends all human limits. Commenting on the Petrine mandate, he emphasised that this role is not a privilege but a call to responsibility and service. He affirmed that the salvation entrusted to the Church is both a gift and a task: “Entrusted to us by Him, chosen before we were formed in the womb, regenerated in baptism, sent forth so that the Gospel may be proclaimed to every creature.” Addressing directly the cardinals who elected him, he said: “God, in calling me through your vote to succeed the first of the apostles, entrusts me with this treasure, so that, with His help, I may be a faithful steward of it.”
With great realism, Leo XIV denounced the two responses the contemporary world still gives to Jesus’s question: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” On one hand, the dominant culture which regards Christ as irrelevant or bothersome; on the other, a more respectful yet reductive view, which sees Him merely as one righteous prophet among many. Both, he noted, reveal a weak faith, unable to withstand the challenges of the present. He then issued a strong and direct appeal: “Even today there are contexts in which the Christian faith is mocked, deemed absurd, incompatible with modernity. Yet it is precisely in these places that the proclamation of Christ is most needed — to restore meaning, dignity, and hope.”
In conclusion, the Pope entrusted his pontificate to the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, and spoke words that echo like a spiritual programme: “The words of Ignatius of Antioch point, more broadly, to a non-negotiable commitment for anyone who exercises a ministry of authority in the Church: to disappear, so that Christ may remain. To become small, so that He may be known and glorified. To spend oneself entirely, so that no one may be denied the opportunity to know and love Him. May God grant me this grace, today and always.”
A simple prayer, spoken in the sacred silence of the Sistine Chapel, already reveals the heart of the new Successor of Peter: a gentle shepherd, rooted in the Gospel, who seeks to lead the Church along the path of humility and truth, bringing Christ Jesus — not man — back to the centre.
d.V.P.
Silere non possum