For Immediate Release From Vatican News!
Pope Leo Invites Lay Faithful To Join In Mission To Families
Addressing a seminar on “Evangelizing with Families of Today and Tomorrow,” Pope Leo XIV calls on the faithful – clergy and laity – to be “fishers of families” by promoting an encounter with God.
By Christopher Wells
In an age “marked by a growing search for spirituality,” the Church must be “farsighted in discerning the challenges of today’s world and in nurturing the desire for faith present in the heart of every man and woman,” Pope Leo said on Monday.
In a Message to a seminar focused on “Evangelizing with the Families of Today and Tomorrow,” the Holy Father emphasized the need to reach out especially to those families that are “spiritually most distant from us,” who for various reasons do not feel involved or who feel excluded from the Church, but that nonetheless desire to be part of a community.
How many of these people, the Pope asked “simply do not hear the invitation to encounter God?”
Instead, Pope Leo worried that “an increasingly widespread ‘privatization’ of faith often prevents these brothers and sisters from knowing the richness and gifts of the Church.”
Church called to be a 'fisher' of humanity
Too often, he continued, in searching for happiness and meaning in their lives, they end up relying on “false footholds” based on illusory lifestyles often promoted by modern media – potentially good means that can “prove harmful when used to convey misleading messages.”
The Church, on the other hand, is called precisely to be a “‘fisher’ of humanity, to save it from the waters of evil and death through an encounter with Christ.”
Faith, the Pope said, “is primarily a response to Christ’s love,” and encounter with a person. Too often, he lamented, Christians have forgotten this truth, and presented Christianity as a set of rules, “a moralistic, burdensome, and unappealing tradition.”
While it is primarily the responsibility of Bishops “to cast their nets into the sea and become ‘fishers of families’,” the lay faithful, too, are called to participate in this mission, becoming fishers of couples, young people, and men and women of every age and circumstance, so that all may encounter Jesus.
“I ask you, then,” the Pope said, “to join in the work of the whole Church in seeking out those who no longer come to us, in learning how to walk with them and to help them embrace the faith, and become, in turn, ‘fishers’ of other families.”
He encouraged the faithful not to be discouraged but to be open to “new ways of seeing things and different ways of acting,” which are necessary to respond to the challenges of each new generation.
After thanking participants for their work, Pope Leo prayed that the Holy Spirit would guide them in their discernment as they strive to support and promote the Church’s ministry to families.
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Pope at Regina Coeli: ‘I think of families suffering from war’
Pope Leo greets families gathered for the Jubilee for Families during the Regina Coeli address in St. Peter’s Square and reflects on the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord.
By Linda Bordoni
Greeting delegations from 131 countries from every part of the world gathered in the Vatican for the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly, Pope Leo XIV turned his thoughts to those families suffering due to war in the Middle East, in Ukraine and in other parts of the world.
“May the Mother of God help us to press forward on the path of peace,” he said.
The Pope was speaking to those gathered for the recitation of the Regina Coeli prayer following the conclusion of the Eucharistic celebration for the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly.
Families
Expressing particular joy for the presence of children and for the hope they bring, the Pope described families as “small domestic churches where the message of the Gospel is received and passed on.”
And quoting from Saint John Paul II’s Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, he said, “The family has its origin in that same love with which the Creator embraces the created world.”
“May faith, hope and love always increase in our families,” the Pope added, with a special thanks to grandparents and the elderly, who, he said, “are a model of genuine faith and an inspiration for the younger generation.”
Solemnity of the Ascension
Pope Leo went on to remind the faithful that in many parts of the world, the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is being celebrated on this Sunday.
“It is a beautiful feast, which makes us look forward to the goal of our earthly journey,” he said.
Beatifications
Thus, he recalled the beatification on Saturday in Poland of Cristofora Klomfass and fourteen other Sisters of the Congregation of Saint Catherine Virgin and Martyr.
The sisters, he explained were killed in 1945 when the Red Army invaded Poland. “Despite a climate of hatred and of terror against the Catholic faith, they persevered in their service to the sick and orphans.”
The Holy Father then commended to the intercession of the new Blessed Martyrs “all those women religious throughout the world who devote themselves generously for the sake of God’s Kingdom.”
World Day of Communications
The Pope also remembered that today marks the 59th World Day of Social Communications - established in 1967 by Pope Paul VI. He expressed his gratitude to "media professionals who, by upholding the ethical quality of their messages, support families in their educational role."
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Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV, and The Urgency of Listening
On the eve of World Communications Day, we recall how the late Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV have invited the world to place listening at the heart of communication, which requires us to listen in complete inner availability, as taught in different eras by St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi. By Alessandro Gisotti
“When someone speaks to you, wait until they finish to understand them well, and then, if you feel led, say something. But the important thing is to listen.”
A few days after his death, a brief video of Pope Francis recorded in January 2024 was released. Less than a minute long and addressed to young people, the video highlights the late Pope’s urge to listen as an urgency for life, as well as the testament of a Pope who, over twelve years, made himself available to listen to everyone, especially to the most distant, the inconvenient, the discarded of this world. His focus, in short, was on those whom we prefer not to hear because their words, their stories, often make us uncomfortable.
Pope Francis made the primacy of listening the golden rule of communication, whether referring to professional journalists or to interpersonal communication—the kind that rhymes with relationship and is, at bottom, the salt of every human bond.
Listen first, and then speak. Listening as the first act of communicating. Listening, seeing, and experiencing firsthand before reporting—especially on the many deep wounds that lacerate the body of our humanity.
These verbs echo once again on the eve of World Communications Day, celebrated on Sunday, June 1, for the fifty-ninth time.
Certainly, on the broad theme of communicating, both Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV (even before being elected to the Chair of Peter) emphasized, with great conviction, the centrality of listening in communication. They urge us to give time and space to the other, to meet them in silence before—in fact even more than—in the word.
As is well known, Pope Francis—a promoter of what he called “listening therapy” and “pastoral care of the ear”—often recalled the Poor Man of Assisi, who urged his friars to “incline the ear of the heart.”
This echoes what the Bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine, had already asserted eight centuries earlier: “Do not let your heart be in your ears, but let your ears be in your heart.” The Augustinian Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, has made this maxim both a way of life and a method of pastoral action. No friend or collaborator—whether from his years in Peru, his time as Prior General of the Augustinians, or then as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops—has failed to highlight this quality first and foremost: “He is a man who listens.”
Interviewed about the new Pope by L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, stressed that Pope Leo XIV “is endowed with a capacity for deep and patient listening. Before making any decision, he devotes himself to careful study and reflection. He expresses his feelings and preferences without seeking to impose them.”
Today, unfortunately, we live in a world where influence and importance no longer come from listening, but only from having “the last word.” This is certainly true even in the digital realm, where the temptation to close a conversation with an attention-grabbing post makes us forget that communication should have no winners or losers, but should be a mutual enrichment—even (and perhaps especially) when we disagree.
Listening, then, means attending to the humanity of the other, to their uniqueness. This is something Pope Leo XIV learned from his youth: first in the Order of St. Augustine and even before that in his family home in Chicago.
As he recounted in an interview as a Cardinal, when he was about to enter the novitiate, he had a long conversation with his father. “Even if I had heard my formators’ teaching a hundred times,” he confided, “when my father spoke to me in such a deeply human way, I said to myself: ‘Here is so much to listen to, so much to think about in what he told me.’”
We need women and men capable of listening. And the higher their level of responsibility, the more necessary this virtue becomes.
Today, at their very heart, the gravest crises afflicting the world stem precisely from the inability to listen to one another, to “put ourselves in the other’s shoes.” During the Covid-19 pandemic—a terrible period from which we should have learned some lessons—we were forced to return to the essence of communication: dialogue with our neighbor and, first of all, with ourselves and our imperfect interiority.
As noted by psychiatrist Eugenio Borgna, during lockdown there arose “an unbounded desire to be heard,” a desire that will always accompany us.
This desire is one that no Artificial Intelligence can satisfy. Even the most advanced computer technology can indeed respond to a question. But it can never address our silence or our primordial need to have by our side a heart that listens to us.
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Pope Leo XIV: If you want peace, Prepare Institutions of Peace
Speaking with participants in last year’s Arena of Peace, Pope Leo says the Gospel and the Church’s social doctrine are a constant source of support for Christians, and a compass for everyone in efforts to build peace. By Christopher Wells
Pope Leo on Friday received more than 300 representatives of associations and movements that took part in the 2024 “Arena of Peace” in the Italian city of Verona.
The encounter, which took place in the Vatican, marked a “return visit,” repaying Pope Francis' participation in last year’s event, and aimed to relaunch the traditional Verona gatherings as a forum for discussions and proposals concerning the Church’s social doctrine.
Standing With Victims
In his remarks to the group, Pope Leo XIV echoed Pope Francis, who said that “building peace starts by standing alongside victims and seeing things from their point of view.” “This approach is essential,” he said, “for disarming hearts, approaches, and mentalities, and for denouncing the injustices of a system that kills and is based on the throwaway culture.”
The pope highlighted the “courageous embrace” of an Israeli and a Palestinian, each of whom had had family members killed during the conflict in Gaza. “They are now friends and work with one another,” the Pope said, adding that their gesture “remains as a testimony and sign of hope.”
Pope Leo explained that “the path to peace requires hearts and minds trained and formed to be attentive to the other, and capable of recognizing the common good in today’s context.”
In this regard, he said that the commitment of those taking part in the Arena of Peace events “is particularly precious” because their concrete projects and actions “generate hope.”
Educating Young People In Peacebuilding
Lamenting the violence in our world and in our societies, Pope Leo said that young people need “to be able to experience the culture of life, dialogue, and mutual respect,” especially through good examples. Those who “resist the temptation to seek revenge” after having suffered injustice and violence “become the most credible agents of nonviolent peace-building processes.”
Nonviolence, he said, “as a method and a style, must distinguish our decisions, our relationships, and our actions.”
The Holy Father said the Gospel and the Church’s social doctrine are “a constant source of support for Christians in this effort,” as well as a “compass for everyone” since peacebuilding is “a task entrusted to all.”
Preparing Institutions of Peace
Concluding his remarks, Pope Leo said, “If you want peace, prepare institutions of peace” – not just political institutions, but educational, economic, and social ones as well. “For this reason,” he said, “I encourage you to remain committed and present: present within history as a leaven of unity, communion, and fraternity,” adding that “fraternity must be recovered, loved, experienced, proclaimed and witnessed, in the confident hope that it is indeed possible, thanks to the love of God ‘poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.’”
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Caritas: ‘Crippling’ debt weighing down developing countries
Vatican officials, charity workers, and internationally-recognised economists come together to discuss debt reform in an online town hall organised by Caritas Internationalis.
By Joseph Tulloch
3.3 billion people – or nearly half the world’s population – live in countries that spend more money on debt than on healthcare.
That was one of the more shocking statistics to emerge from a recent online town hall organised by Caritas Internationalis, the charitable arm of the Catholic Church.
Held on Wednesday, the webinar brought together more than 200 individuals – humanitarian workers, internationally-recognised economists, and senior Vatican officials – to discuss debt, climate, and development.
Read the full article HERE:
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2... ********
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Posted By: agnes levine
Monday, June 2nd 2025 at 1:56PM
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