Pope Leo XIV: I Will Do Everything Possible to Help Bring Enemies Together

Pope Leo XIV to Eastern Catholics: The Church needs you

Vatican News

Pope Leo XIV welcomes Eastern Catholics to the Vatican for the Jubilee of Eastern Churches, and highlights the need to preserve their traditions and pray for true peace, “which is reconciliation, forgiveness, and the courage to turn the page and start anew."
 
Pope Leo XIV welcomed Eastern Catholics to the Vatican with the traditional Easter greeting, “Christ is risen! He is truly risen!”

Addressing the faithful from the 23 sui iuris Churches in full communion with Rome, the Holy Father said, “You are precious in God’s eyes,” and expressed his happiness at being able to devote one of the first encounters of his pontificate to the Eastern faithful.

“Looking at you,” he said, “I think of the diversity of your origins, your glorious history, and the bitter sufferings that many of your communities have endured or continue to endure.”

At the same time, he reaffirmed “the conviction of Pope Francis that the Eastern Churches are to be ‘cherished and esteemed for the unique spiritual and sapiential traditions that they preserve, and for all that they have to say to us about the Christian life, synodality, and the liturgy’.”

Recalling the teachings of previous Popes, including Leo XIII and St. John Paul II, Pope Leo XIV emphasized the importance of Eastern traditions, especially the liturgy.

He also expressed concern for “many of our Eastern brothers and sisters” who have been exiled from their homelands “and risk losing not only their native lands,” but also their religious identity.

Pope Leo insisted on the importance of preserving the Eastern rites and asked the Dicastery for Eastern Churches “to help define principles, norms, and guidelines” to help Latin Bishops support Eastern Catholics in the diaspora to preserve their heritage.

The Church needs the East
“The Church needs you!” Pope Leo said. “The contribution that the Christian East can offer us today is immense,” he continued, pointing to the need to recover the sense of mystery expressed in Eastern liturgies; the importance of rediscovering the sense of the primacy of God and of mystagogy; and the need for “penance, fasting, and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity.”

“It is vital then, that you preserve your traditions without attenuating them," he said.

The Holy Father went on to highlight the “medicinal” value of eastern traditions of spirituality that combine “the drama of human misery with wonder at God’s mercy.”

“Who better than you,” he asked, “can sing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence.”

Taking up Pope Francis’ recognition of eastern communities as “martyr Churches,” Pope Leo lamented the violence that continues to plague regions as diverse as the Holy Land, Ukraine, the Middle East, Tigray, and the Caucasus.”

“Rising up from this horror, from the slaughter of so many young people, which ought to provoke outrage because lives are being sacrificed in the name of military conquest, there resounds an appeal” for peace.

He made the appeal, he said, “not so much of the Pope, but of Christ Himself, who repeats, ‘Peace be with you!’”

“Let us pray for this peace,” the Pope said, “which is reconciliation, forgiveness, and the courage to turn the page and start anew.”

Commitment to peace
Pope Leo XIV forcefully expressed his commitment “to make every effort so that peace may prevail,” reaffirming the Holy See’s willingness to do everything possible “to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another,” to dialogue, “so that peoples everywhere may find hope and recover… the dignity of peace.”

Appealing directly to the people of the world and their leaders, Pope Leo made a heartfelt appeal: “Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate!”

He insisted that “war is never inevitable” and called for the silencing of weapons, “which do not resolve problems, but only increase them.”

He went on to thank God for all those who are “sowing peace,” while also expressing gratitude for those Christians, “who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them.”

The Pope affirmed the need for eastern Christians to be given “the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence.”

Recalling once again that “Jesus, the Son of Justice, dawned” in their lands, he thanked Eastern Christians “for being ‘lights in the world’” and encouraged them to “be outstanding for your faith, hope, and charity, and nothing else.”

He called for the pastors of the Eastern Churches to promote “community with integrity,” so that their communities might be “places of fraternity and co-responsibility.”

"Today more than ever," concluded Pope Leo XIV, "the splendour of the Christian East demands freedom from all worldly attachments, and from every tendency contrary to communion, in order to remain faithful in obedience and in evangelical witness.”