Leo XIV to Eastern Catholics: You are precious. Continue to be outstanding for your faith, hope, and charity, and nothing else

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – “You are precious”. “The Church needs you”. “Continue to be outstanding for your faith, hope, and charity, and nothing else”. Pope Leo XIV receives in audience a multitude of baptized men and women of the Eastern Catholic Churches in the Paul VI Hall who have come to Rome accompanied by their Patriarchs and Bishops to celebrate their Jubilee of Hope. And he addresses them with an intense and important speech for the entire universal Church. He uses words which highlight the great “contribution that the Christian East can offer us today is immense”. Words that recall the suffering endured by the Eastern Christian in many war scenarios and are transformed into a new, passionate appeal for peace by the new Bishop of Rome, determined in repeating "I will make every effort so that this peace may prevail", and that "the Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace".

The topicality of Leo XIII

"Christ is risen. He is truly risen". Pope Leo thus greets the multitude that today, Wednesday, May 14, welcomed him joyfully in the Nervi Hall, and immediately recalls that with those words, "Eastern Christians in many lands never tire of repeating during the Easter season, as they profess the very heart of our faith and hope, a hope unshakably grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ".
Then the Pontiff born in Chicago weaves a speech full of gratitude for the treasure of faith represented by the Churches of the East, a wealth that draws from the source of the faith of the Apostles.
Pope Prevost quotes Pope Francis, to repeat that the Eastern Churches with their spiritual heritage "have so much to say to us about the Christian life, synodality, and the liturgy"; he quotes John Paul II, for whom the Churches of the East have "a unique and privileged role as the original setting where the Church was born", and some of their liturgies still use the language of the Lord Jesus.

The Pontiff also disseminates in his speech quotations from Eastern Fathers, from Ephrem the Syrian to Isaac of Nineveh; he also cites Pope Leo XIII, the Pontiff who inspired him in choosing his name as Successor of Peter.

Pope Pecci – recalls Leo XIV – “was the first Pope to devote a specific document to the dignity of your Churches, inspired above all by the fact that, in his words, “the work of human redemption began in the East”, and above all “made a heartfelt appeal that the “legitimate variety of Eastern liturgy and discipline... may redound to the great honor and benefit of the Church”. His concern at that time – Pope Prevost recognizes that – “In our own day too, many of our Eastern brothers and sisters, including some of you, have been forced to flee their homelands because of war and persecution, instability and poverty, and risk losing not only their native lands, but also, when they reach the West, their religious identity. As a result, with the passing of generations, the priceless heritage of the Eastern Churches is being lost”. Leo XIII, in his time, took concrete measures to promote the preservation of the rites of the Eastern Catholic Churches, prohibiting missionaries of the Latin Church from “attracting any Eastern-Rite Catholic to the Latin Rite”. With the same concreteness, Pope Leo XIV emphasized today that “in addition to establishing Eastern circumscriptions wherever possible and opportune, there is a need to promote greater awareness among Latin Christians. In this regard, I ask the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches – which I thank for its work – to help me to define principles, norms, and guidelines whereby Latin Bishops can concretely support Eastern Catholics in the diaspora in their efforts to preserve their living traditions and thus, by their distinctive witness, to enrich the communities in which they live”.

Familiarity with the Mystery

The help that can come from the East to Christians throughout the world touches the most intimate fibers of their baptismal faith. “We have great need”, Pope Leo recognized, “to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty”. And “it is likewise important”, continued the US-born Pontiff, “to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of Eastern spirituality: constant intercession, penance, fasting, and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity (penthos)! It is vital, then, that you preserve your traditions without attenuating them, for the sake perhaps of practicality or convenience, lest they be corrupted by the mentality of consumerism and utilitarianism”.

"Your traditions of spirituality,” Pope Leo recalled in one of the most intense passages of his reflection, “are medicinal. In them, the drama of human misery is combined with wonder at God’s mercy, so that our sinfulness does not lead to despair, but opens us to accepting the gracious gift of becoming creatures who are healed, divinized and raised to the heights of heaven.”

The peace of Christ and the Manichean “notions”

Christians of the East – Pope Leo acknowledged – often find themselves “singing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence” and amid the horrors of war. “From the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray and the Caucasus, how much violence do we see! And rising up from this horror,” the Pontiff continued, “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: the appeal not so much of the Pope, but of Christ himself, who repeats: “Peace be with you!”


Looking at the tribulations of the Christians of the East, the Successor of Peter repeated words full of suggestions and referable to the evil roots of all the conflicts that tear the world apart. “Christ’s peace,” said the Bishop of Rome, “is not the sepulchral silence that reigns after conflict; it is not the fruit of oppression, but rather a gift that is meant for all, a gift that brings new life.” After reiterating his and the Holy See's involvement in safeguarding and making every possible seed of peace flourish, Pope Leo XIV addressed the "leaders of the peoples: let us meet - he said -, let us talk, let us negotiate! War is never inevitable. Weapons can and must be silenced, for they do not resolve problems but only increase them. Those who make history are the peacemakers, not those who sow seeds of suffering. Our neighbours are not first our enemies, but our fellow human beings; not criminals to be hated, but other men and women with whom we can speak. Let us reject" added the Pontiff "the Manichean notions so typical of that mindset of violence that divides the world into those who are good and those who are evil", adding that "the Church will never tire of repeating: let weapons be silenced. I would like to thank God for all those who, in silence, prayer and self-sacrifice, are sowing seeds of peace. I thank God for those Christians – Eastern and Latin alike – who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them. Christians - continued the Bishop of Rome - must be given the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence. Please, let us strive for this!" (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 14/5/2025)

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