“It was a wonderful experience that I thank God” and “Pope León,” Father Guillermo Inca Pereda, deputy secretary of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference (CEP) that represented the priests of the world in the rite of obedience to Pope Leo XIV XIV, during the opening mass of his pontificate on Sunday May 18 in the Plaza de San Pedro in El Vaticano.
The Peruvian priest – ordered by San Juan Pablo II in February 1985 – said that on Saturday, May 17, in the morning, Pope Leo XIV secretary, Fr. Edgar Rimaycuna, to tell him that he should be in the essay of the Rite of Obedience at 9 of that morning, with which “breakfast ended at the same time and went out to the square” called him.
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Fr. Inca commented that the Holy Father is very grateful for thinking “in giving me that honor of representing the priests of the world at that time of oath of obedience to the high pontiff.”
“Fidelity and obedience to the vicar of Christ”
“I thought about those who work in the peripheries of the world, where there are so much poverty, difficulty and danger; those who work at the heights with our Andean communities, with so many hours of road and sacrifices, for those who enter the jungle thicknesses, spending a lot of time to reach a small community and renew their faith,” he continued.
“Jesus Christ knows of those who are martyrs for faith and that we do not know them, and that, however, with his testimony he holds the Church,” added the deputy secretary of the CEP, a position in which it has been for 15 years.
“Being able to be before the Pope in this oath of fidelity and obedience to the vicar of Christ on earth was like expressing to the same Lord what we started in baptism: the desire to fulfill his will while we live in this earth to reach it in eternity.”
It was also the opportunity to “join, to what so many priests keep in their heart every day in fidelity and love, to the gospel and the Church.”
On the words he exchanged in the rite of obedience with Pope León, Fr. Inca said that “what was said, and heard is something ineffable that he is in the heart and is stored in the joy of those who love the path of Jesus.”
The “deeply evangelical” goals horizon of Leo XIV
Fr. Inca also shared with ACI Press that, in his opinion, “the goals that the Pope is presented are deeply evangelical. The Pope has focused a lot on Christ.”
“The true Catholic Christian cannot build either his personal life neither a Church nor society but is in reference to Christ the Savior and our God,” he added.
At the same time, “the Pope has given a very beautiful message about peace, inviting us to peace, but that comes from risen Christ, not a peace that is won with negotiations, but with fidelity to the truth of Jesus Christ.”
To conclude, the Peruvian priest stressed that “peace demands a commitment to justice, an option for love, believe in the power of love and avoid the power that so bad and that only creates conflicts and violence in the world.”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.