Pope Leo XIV Ordains 11 Priests at Mass with 55,000 and says "Christ’s love - is a love that frees and enables us not to possess anyone." FULL TEXT Homily
Pope Leo XIV celebrates an ordination, of 11 men, at Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, with 55,000 people present, and urges priests to welcome God’s grace so they might remain close to the people they serve as credible witnesses.
Pope Leo XIV ordained several men priests on Saturday during Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, reflecting on their mission and identity.
HOLY MASS WITH PRIESTLY ORDINATIONS
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS LEO XIV
Basilica of Saint Peter
Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Saturday, 31 May 2025
___________________
Dear brothers and sisters!
Today is a day of great joy for the Church and for each of you, ordinands, together with family, friends and companions on the journey during your years of formation.
As the Rite of Ordination highlights in several passages, the relationship between what we celebrate today and the people of God is fundamental. The depth, breadth and even duration of the divine joy that we now share is directly proportional to the bonds that exist and will grow between you ordinands and the people from which you come, of which you remain a part and to which you are sent. I will dwell on this aspect, always keeping in mind that the identity of the priest depends on the union with Christ the high and eternal priest.
We are the people of God. The Second Vatican Council has made this awareness more vivid, almost anticipating a time in which belonging would become weaker and the sense of God more rarefied. You are testimony to the fact that God has not tired of gathering his children, even if different, and of forming them in a dynamic unity. It is not a question of an impetuous action, but of that light breeze that gave hope to the prophet Elijah in the hour of discouragement (see 1 Kings 19:12). The joy of God is not noisy, but it truly changes history and brings us closer to one another. The mystery of the Visitation, which the Church contemplates on the last day of May, is an icon of this. From the encounter between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth we see the Magnificat spring forth, the song of a people visited by grace.
The Readings just proclaimed help us to interpret what is also happening among us. First of all, in the Gospel, Jesus does not appear to us crushed by imminent death, nor by disappointment over broken or unfinished bonds. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary, intensifies those threatened bonds. In prayer, they become stronger than death. Instead of thinking about his own personal destiny, Jesus places in the hands of the Father the bonds he has built here below. We are part of it! The Gospel, in fact, has come to us through bonds that the world can wear down, but not destroy.
Dear ordinands, then conceive of yourselves in the way of Jesus! Being of God – servants of God, people of God – binds us to the earth: not to an ideal world, but to the real one. Like Jesus, those whom the Father puts on your path are people of flesh and blood. Consecrate yourselves to them, without separating yourselves, without isolating yourselves, without making the gift received a sort of privilege. Pope Francis has warned us against this many times, because self-referentiality extinguishes the fire of the missionary spirit.
The Church is constitutively extroverted, just as the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus are extroverted. You will make his words your own in every Eucharist: it is “for you and for all”. No one had ever seen God. He turned to us, he came out of himself. The Son became the exegesis, the living story. And he gave us the power to become children of God. Do not seek, do not seek any other power!
May the gesture of the imposition of hands, with which Jesus welcomed children and healed the sick, renew in you the liberating power of his messianic ministry. In the Acts of the Apostles, that gesture that we will shortly repeat is the transmission of the Creator Spirit. Thus, the Kingdom of God now puts your personal freedoms in communion, willing to come out of themselves, grafting your intelligence and your young strength into the Jubilee mission that Jesus transmitted to his Church.
In his greeting to the elders of the community of Ephesus, of which we heard a few fragments in the first reading, Paul transmits to them the secret of every mission: “The Holy Spirit has made you guardians” (Acts 20:28). Not masters, but guardians. The mission is Jesus’s. He is Risen, therefore he is alive and precedes us. None of us is called to replace him. On the day of the Ascension he teaches us about his invisible presence. He trusts us, he makes room for us; he even went so far as to say: “It is to your advantage that I go away” (Jn 16:7). We Bishops too, dear ordinands, by involving you in the mission today, make room for you. And you make room for the faithful and for every creature, to whom the Risen One is close and in whom he loves to visit us and amaze us. The people of God are more numerous than we see. Let us not define their boundaries.
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS LEO XIV
Basilica of Saint Peter
Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Saturday, 31 May 2025
___________________
Dear brothers and sisters!
Today is a day of great joy for the Church and for each of you, ordinands, together with family, friends and companions on the journey during your years of formation.
As the Rite of Ordination highlights in several passages, the relationship between what we celebrate today and the people of God is fundamental. The depth, breadth and even duration of the divine joy that we now share is directly proportional to the bonds that exist and will grow between you ordinands and the people from which you come, of which you remain a part and to which you are sent. I will dwell on this aspect, always keeping in mind that the identity of the priest depends on the union with Christ the high and eternal priest.
We are the people of God. The Second Vatican Council has made this awareness more vivid, almost anticipating a time in which belonging would become weaker and the sense of God more rarefied. You are testimony to the fact that God has not tired of gathering his children, even if different, and of forming them in a dynamic unity. It is not a question of an impetuous action, but of that light breeze that gave hope to the prophet Elijah in the hour of discouragement (see 1 Kings 19:12). The joy of God is not noisy, but it truly changes history and brings us closer to one another. The mystery of the Visitation, which the Church contemplates on the last day of May, is an icon of this. From the encounter between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth we see the Magnificat spring forth, the song of a people visited by grace.
The Readings just proclaimed help us to interpret what is also happening among us. First of all, in the Gospel, Jesus does not appear to us crushed by imminent death, nor by disappointment over broken or unfinished bonds. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary, intensifies those threatened bonds. In prayer, they become stronger than death. Instead of thinking about his own personal destiny, Jesus places in the hands of the Father the bonds he has built here below. We are part of it! The Gospel, in fact, has come to us through bonds that the world can wear down, but not destroy.
Dear ordinands, then conceive of yourselves in the way of Jesus! Being of God – servants of God, people of God – binds us to the earth: not to an ideal world, but to the real one. Like Jesus, those whom the Father puts on your path are people of flesh and blood. Consecrate yourselves to them, without separating yourselves, without isolating yourselves, without making the gift received a sort of privilege. Pope Francis has warned us against this many times, because self-referentiality extinguishes the fire of the missionary spirit.
The Church is constitutively extroverted, just as the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus are extroverted. You will make his words your own in every Eucharist: it is “for you and for all”. No one had ever seen God. He turned to us, he came out of himself. The Son became the exegesis, the living story. And he gave us the power to become children of God. Do not seek, do not seek any other power!
May the gesture of the imposition of hands, with which Jesus welcomed children and healed the sick, renew in you the liberating power of his messianic ministry. In the Acts of the Apostles, that gesture that we will shortly repeat is the transmission of the Creator Spirit. Thus, the Kingdom of God now puts your personal freedoms in communion, willing to come out of themselves, grafting your intelligence and your young strength into the Jubilee mission that Jesus transmitted to his Church.
In his greeting to the elders of the community of Ephesus, of which we heard a few fragments in the first reading, Paul transmits to them the secret of every mission: “The Holy Spirit has made you guardians” (Acts 20:28). Not masters, but guardians. The mission is Jesus’s. He is Risen, therefore he is alive and precedes us. None of us is called to replace him. On the day of the Ascension he teaches us about his invisible presence. He trusts us, he makes room for us; he even went so far as to say: “It is to your advantage that I go away” (Jn 16:7). We Bishops too, dear ordinands, by involving you in the mission today, make room for you. And you make room for the faithful and for every creature, to whom the Risen One is close and in whom he loves to visit us and amaze us. The people of God are more numerous than we see. Let us not define their boundaries.
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