Being religious does not automatically mean someone is compassionate, and yet for a Christian compassion is a clear sign of following Christ, Pope Leo XIV said.
Vatican
Pope Leo XIV has named Father Renzo Pegoraro, a bioethicist who earned a medical degree before entering the seminary, to be the new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Pope Leo XIV has advanced the sainthood causes of two missionaries whose murders in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador led to the protection of remote Indigenous peoples from encroaching extractive industries.
The Gospel parable of the “wasteful sower” who casts seeds on fertile soil as well as on a rocky path “is an image of the way God loves us,” Pope Leo XIV told visitors and pilgrims at his first weekly general audience.
God’s love, mercy, and goodness lie at the foundation of every vocation, including that of the pope, Pope Leo XIV said.
During a special audience with religious leaders who came to Rome for the inauguration of his papal ministry, Pope Leo XIV vowed to continue working toward Christian unity and promoting dialogue among all religions.
Launching his papacy with a call for reconciliation and communion, Pope Leo XIV formally began his ministry as the successor of St. Peter by calling for “a united church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world.”
The Catholic Church wants to reach out and embrace all people who need and yearn for truth, justice, and peace, Pope Leo XIV said in his first meeting with the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.
Teaching should be lived as ministry and mission, Pope Leo XIV told the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the De La Salle Brothers or the Christian Brothers.
Cardinal Michael Czerny said that when Cardinal Robert F. Prevost was elected pope and chose the name Leo XIV, “I rejoiced; I really rejoiced.”