Jubileo 2025: Pope Leo XIV says that justice is the basis for the development of society

This Saturday, Pope Leo XIV has been found in the Plaza de San Pedro with the participants of the Jubilee of Justice operators, before whom he assured that justice is the basis “for the orderly development of the company.”

Thousands of pilgrims filled the square and the Holy Father welcomed them. Taking advantage of the occasion to reflect on justice and its function, he said that it “inspires and guides the awareness of each man and woman.”

“Justice, in fact, is called to perform a superior function in human coexistence, which cannot be reduced to the mere application of the law or the work of the judges, nor limit itself to the procedural aspects,” added Leo XIV.

He also remarked that in the human heart there is a “deep desire for justice” that is the “fundamental instrument to build the common good in every human society.” In justice, the Pope continued, “the dignity of the person, their relationship with the other and the dimension of the community formed by coexistence, structures and common rules are combined.”

According to the tradition of the Church, the virtue of justice consists of the “constant and firm will to give God and to others what corresponds to them,” explained the Holy Father. In that sense, justice invites “to respect the rights of each one” and to establish harmonic human relations, promoting “equity towards people and the common good.”

This “guarantees an order that protects the weak, who asks for justice because he is a victim of oppression, excluded or ignored,” he added.

Citing various passages of the Gospel in which this virtue is reflected, the Pope said that “it is the strength of forgiveness, typical of the commandment of love, which emerges as a constitutive element of a justice capable of combining the supernatural with the human.”

“Evangelical justice, therefore, does not move away from the human, but questions it and the redesign: it causes it to always go further, because it pushes it towards the search for reconciliation,” he said.

Evil, according to the logic of the Gospel, “should not only be sanctioned, but repaired, and for this it is necessary a deep look towards the good of people and the common good.” This, explained the Holy Father, is “an arduous, but not impossible task for those who, aware of performing a more demanding service than others, undertakes to bring an irreproachable life behavior.”

Justice and equality

Leo XIV told pilgrims that the objective of justice is “to achieve equality in dignity and opportunities among human beings.” However, he said that “effective equality is not the formal before the law.”

“This equality, although it is an indispensable condition for the correct exercise of justice, does not eliminate the fact that there are increasing discriminations whose first effect is precisely the lack of access to justice,” he explained.

“True equality, on the other hand, is the possibility given to everyone to carry out their aspirations and to see the rights inherent to their dignity by a system of common and shared values, capable of inspiring norms and laws on which to base the functioning of the institutions,” added the Pope.

Therefore, he assured that what drives justice operators must be “the search or recovery of forgotten values ​​in coexistence, their care and their respect”, especially “in the face of the rise of behaviors and strategies that show contempt for human life from their first manifestation, which deny the basic rights for personal existence and do not respect the awareness of which freedoms sprout”.

“Aspiring justice, therefore, requires being able to love it as a reality that can only be reached if constant attention, radical disinterest and regular discernment are combined,” he said.

“Blessed are those who are hungry and thirst for justice, because they will be satiated” (Mt 5,6).

Citing the Lord Jesus, the Pope recalled that, for Christians, to seek justice “it is equivalent to being aware that it demands a personal effort to interpret the law in the most human way possible.”

He also pointed out that the jubilee in the various realities of the world where justice is not taken into account, leading men to “unfair and inhuman” living conditions.

The Holy Father concluded citing St. Augustine: “Justice is, in effect, the virtue that distributes to each one what corresponds to him. Therefore, it is not the justice of man who subtracts the man from the true God.”

“The demanding words of St. Augustine inspire each one of us to always express the best of the exercise of justice at the service of the people, with the eye on God, to fully respect the justice, the right and dignity of the people,” said the Pope.