Pope Leo XIV traveled to Assisi Aug. 5 to celebrate the Jubilee Year of St. Francis with 2,500 young people, urging them to become the “new saints” the world needs today.
Vatican
Returning to his weekly general audiences after a monthlong summer break, Pope Leo XIV urged Catholics to embrace the Liturgy of the Hours more fully in their daily lives, saying the Church’s public prayer is an antidote to a world shaped by technology, consumerism, and an efficiency-driven mindset.
At the age of 97, Cardinal Ernest Simoni returned to the former prison camp in Albania where he used to offer Mass in secret during his 18 years of sentenced forced labor, offering a public Mass July 31 in the memory of those who suffered and died at the labor camp.
Pope Leo XIV is inviting Catholics to pray “for evangelization in the city” as his August prayer intention, asking the Lord to accompany millions searching for meaning amid the noise and haste of urban life.
Pope Leo XIV will celebrate a public Mass every week of August after taking time to rest in Castel Gandolfo during the month of July.
Homelessness must be addressed to create sustainable cities that enable every person to flourish and contribute to the common good, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations said July 28.
Pope Leo XIV has named two American bishops as members of the Vatican’s highest court, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. The bishops, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco and Bishop Edward M. Lohse of Kalamazoo, Michigan, both hold doctorates in canon law.
Pope Leo XIV urged young people not to be “couch potatoes” in a video message on July 25, adding that the Church needs their missionary energy and “holy rebelliousness.”
Pope Leo XIV on July 26 renewed his urgent appeals for peace in the Holy Land and across the Middle East during his Angelus address in Castel Gandolfo, expressing deep concern over the escalating violence and calling for an immediate return to dialogue.
Pope Leo XIV took a road trip pilgrimage with his older brother to the scenic mountainside Sanctuary of the Most Holy Trinity in Vallepietra July 22 before stopping to pray in the Holy Cave in Subiaco, where a young St. Benedict sought refuge from the corruption of Rome in the early sixth century.