Homily of Pope Leo XIV at the ordination mass of 11 priests for the diocese of Rome

On the morning of May 31, a Visitation party of the blessed Virgin Mary, Pope Leo XIV presided in the Basilica of San Pedro a solemn mass during which he conferred the presbyteral ordination to 11 deacons for the diocese of Rome.

Seven of them come from the Pontifical Roman seminar and four of the Diocesan Redemptoris Mater School. During the homily, the Holy Father stressed the importance of the union with the people of God and the transparency of life as foundations of the priesthood.

The following text is a translation by ACI Press of the Original in Italianan Posted by the Vatican:

Homily of the Holy Father

Dear brothers and sisters!

Today is a day of great joy for the Church and for each of you, orders to the presbyterate, along with your families, friends and classmates during the years of training. As the rite of ordination underlines at various times, the relationship between what we celebrate today and the people of God is essential. The depth, amplitude and even the duration of the divine joy that we now share is directly proportional to the links that exist and will grow between you, ordering, and the people from which they come, from which they continue to be part and to which they are sent. I will stop in this aspect, always keeping in mind that the identity of the priest depends on the union with Christ, the utmost and eternal priest.

We are the people of God. The Second Vatican Council has vivified this awareness, almost anticipating a time in which belongings would become more fragile and the most diffuse sense of God. You are testimony that God has not tired of gathering your children, even if they are diverse, and to constitute them in a dynamic unit. It is not an impetuous action, but that soft breeze that returned hope to the prophet Elijah in the time of discouragement (cf. 1 re 19,12). The joy of God is not noisy, but history really changes and brings us closer to each other. Icon of this is the mystery of visitation, which the Church contemplates on the last day of May. From the encounter between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Isabel springs the Magnificat, the song of a town visited by grace.

The readings that we have just heard help us interpret what is also happening between us.

Jesus, first of all, in the Gospel does not appear overwhelmed by imminent death or disappointed by broken or incomplete ties. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary, intensifies those threatened links. In prayer, they become stronger than death. Instead of thinking about his own destiny, Jesus puts in the hands of the Father the links he has built here. We are part of them! The Gospel, in effect, has reached us through links that the world can wear down, but not destroy.

Dear orders, you reconcile yourself in the manner of Jesus! Being of God – Siervos de Dios, people of God – links us to earth: not an ideal world, but to real. Like Jesus, the people that the Father puts on his way are flesh and blood. To them, they consulted, without separating, without isolation, without converting the gift received into a kind of privilege. Pope Francis has noticed us many times against this, because self -referentiality turns off the fire of the mission.

The Church is constitutively outgoing, such as life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. You will be your words in every Eucharist: it is “for you and all.” No one has ever seen God. He went to us, came out of himself. The son became his exegesis, his living story. And gave us the power to become children of God. Don’t look for, let’s not look for another power!

The gesture of the imposition of hands, with which Jesus welcomed the children and cured the sick, renews in you the liberating force of his messianic ministry. In the Acts of the Apostles, that gesture that we will soon repeat is transmission of the creative spirit. Thus, the Kingdom of God now puts his personal freedoms in communion, willing to leave themselves, grafting his intelligences and his young forces into the jubilee mission that Jesus has transmitted to his Church.

In his greeting to the elders of the community of Ephesus, of which we have heard some fragments in the first reading, Paul transmits the secret of all mission: “The Holy Spirit has constituted them as custodians” (Acts 20,28). Not as owners, but as custodians. The mission belongs to Jesus. He has risen, therefore is alive and precedes us. None of us are called to replace it. The day of ascension educates us in its invisible presence. He trusts us, makes us space; He has even said: “They should be left” (Jn 16,7). We also, the bishops, dear orders, to involve them in the mission, today we make them space. And you make space to the faithful and each creature, in which the resurrected is close and in which he likes to visit and surprise us. The people of God are more numerous than we see. Let’s not delimit your borders.

From San Pablo, from that moving farewell speech, I would like to underline a second word. Actually, precedes all others. He can say: “You know how I have behaved with you during all this time” (Acts 20,18). Let’s keep this expression well recorded in the heart and mind! “You know how I have behaved”: the transparency of life. Known lives, legible lives, credible lives! We remain within the people of God to be in front of him with a credible testimony.

Together, then, we will rebuild the credibility of a wounded church, sent to a injured humanity, within a injured creation. It doesn’t matter to be perfect, but it is necessary to be credible.

Jesus resurrected shows us his wounds and, although they are a sign of rejection by humanity, forgives us and sends us. Let’s not forget it! He also blows today about us (cf. Jn 20,22) and makes us ministers of hope. “So we no longer look at anyone according to human criteria” (2 Cor 5.16): everything that appears before our eyes broken and lost now under the sign of reconciliation.

“The love of Christ, in effect, urges us,” dear brothers and sisters! It is a possession that releases and that enables us not to possess anyone. Liberate, not possess. We are from God: there is no greater wealth than this to value and share. It is the only wealth that, when shared, multiplies. We want to take her together to the world that God has loved so much that she gave her only child (cf. Jn 3,16).

Thus, it makes full meaning the life delivered by these brothers who will soon be ordered presbyters. We thank them and thank God that he has called them at the service of an entirely priestly people. Together, in effect, we join heaven and earth. In Mary, mother of the Church, this common priesthood shines that exalts the humble, unites generations and calls us blessed (cf. Lc 1.48.52). She, a virgin of trust and mother of hope, intercede for us.