Pope Leo XIV says "As Christ loved with the heart of man, you are called to love with the Heart of Christ!" to Nearly 4000 Seminarians - FULL TEXT + Video
Pope Leo XIV welcomes some 4000 seminarians, who were jubilant and shouting "Papa Leone" loudly, and formators to the Vatican for their Jubilee, offering them a meditation on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the priestly life.
MEDITATION OF THE HOLY FATHER LEO XIV
TO THE SEMINARIANS ON THE OCCASION OF THEIR JUBILEE
St. Peter's Basilica, Altar of the Confession
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
___________________________________
Thank you, thank you everyone!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Peace be with you!
Your Eminences, Excellencies, to the trainers and especially to all of you seminarians, good morning to all!
I am very happy to meet you and I thank you all, seminarians and formators, for your warm presence. Thank you first of all for your joy and your enthusiasm. Thank you because with your energy you feed the flame of hope in the life of the Church!
Today you are not only pilgrims , but also witnesses of hope : you bear witness to me and to everyone, because you have allowed yourselves to be involved in the fascinating adventure of the priestly vocation in a difficult time. You have accepted the call to become gentle and strong heralds of the Word that saves, servants of an open Church and a Church that goes forth as a missionary.
And I say a word also in Spanish, thank you for having accepted with valor the invitation of the Lord to follow, to be a disciple, to enter the seminary. Let them be worthy and not take me.
[And I also say a word in Spanish: thank you for having courageously accepted the Lord's invitation to follow him, to be disciples, to enter the Seminary. You have to be courageous and not be afraid!]
To Christ who calls you are saying “yes”, with humility and courage; and this “here I am”, which you address to Him, sprouts within the life of the Church and allows itself to be accompanied by the necessary path of discernment and formation.
Jesus, as you know, calls you first of all to live an experience of friendship with Him and with your climbing companions (see Mk 3:13); an experience destined to grow permanently even after ordination and which involves all aspects of life. There is nothing in you, in fact, that must be discarded, but everything must be taken up and transfigured in the logic of the grain of wheat, in order to become happy people and priests, "bridges" and not obstacles to the encounter with Christ for all those who approach you. Yes, He must grow and we must decrease, so that we can be shepherds according to His Heart [1] .
Speaking of the Heart of Jesus Christ, how can we not remember the Encyclical Dilexit nos given to us by beloved Pope Francis ? [2] Precisely in this time that you are living, that is, the time of formation and discernment, it is important to turn your attention to the center, to the "engine" of your entire journey: the heart! The seminary, in whatever way it is conceived, should be a school of affections. Today in a particular way, in a social and cultural context marked by conflict and narcissism, we need to learn to love and to do so like Jesus [3] .
As Christ loved with the heart of man [4] , you are called to love with the Heart of Christ! To love with the heart of Jesus. But to learn this art, you must work on your interior life, where God makes his voice heard and where the most profound decisions come from; but which is also a place of tension and struggle (cf. Mk 7:14-23), to be converted so that all your humanity may smell of the Gospel. The first work must therefore be done on the interior life. Remember well the invitation of Saint Augustine to return to the heart, because there we find the traces of God. Descending into the heart can sometimes frighten us, because there are also wounds. Do not be afraid to take care of them, let yourselves be helped, because it is precisely from those wounds that the ability to stand beside those who suffer will be born. Without the interior life, even the spiritual life is not possible, because God speaks to us precisely there, in the heart. God speaks to us in our hearts, we must know how to listen to him. [God speaks to us in our hearts, we must know how to listen to him]. Part of this interior work is also training to learn to recognize the movements of the heart: not only the rapid and immediate emotions that characterize the soul of young people, but above all your feelings, which help you discover the direction of your life. If you learn to know your heart, you will be increasingly authentic and will not need to put on masks. And the privileged path that leads us interiorly is prayer: in an age in which we are hyperconnected, it becomes increasingly difficult to experience silence and solitude. Without the encounter with Him, we cannot even truly know ourselves.
I invite you to invoke the Holy Spirit frequently, so that he may form in you a docile heart, capable of grasping the presence of God, also by listening to the voices of nature and art, poetry, literature [5] and music, as well as the human sciences [6] . In the rigorous commitment of theological study, also know how to listen with an open mind and heart to the voices of culture, such as the recent challenges of artificial intelligence and those of social media.[7]. Above all, as Jesus did, know how to listen to the often silent cry of the little ones, the poor and the oppressed and of so many, especially young people, who seek meaning for their lives.
If you take care of your heart, with daily moments of silence, meditation and prayer, you can learn the art of discernment. This too is an important task: learning to discern. When we are young, we carry within us many desires, dreams and ambitions. The heart is often crowded and we sometimes feel confused. Instead, following the model of the Virgin Mary, our interiority must become capable of guarding and meditating. Capable of synballein – as the evangelist Luke writes (2:19.51): putting together the fragments [8] . Guard against superficiality, and put together the fragments of life in prayer and meditation, asking yourselves: what does what I am experiencing teach me? What is it saying to my journey? Where is the Lord leading me?
Dearest, have a meek and humble heart like that of Jesus (see Mt 11:29). Following the example of the Apostle Paul (see Phil 2:5ff), may you take on the sentiments of Christ, to progress in human maturity, especially affective and relational. It is important, indeed necessary, from the time of the Seminary, to focus a lot on human maturation, rejecting all disguise and hypocrisy. Keeping our gaze on Jesus, we must learn to give name and voice also to sadness, fear, anguish, indignation, bringing everything into the relationship with God. Crises, limitations, fragilities are not to be hidden, they are rather occasions of grace and Easter experience.
In a world where there is often ingratitude and thirst for power, where at times the logic of waste seems to prevail, you are called to witness the gratitude and generosity of Christ, the exultation and joy, the tenderness and mercy of his Heart. To practice the style of welcome and closeness, of generous and disinterested service, allowing the Holy Spirit to “anoint” your humanity even before ordination.
The Heart of Christ is animated by immense compassion: he is the Good Samaritan of humanity and he tells us: "Go and do likewise" ( Lk 10:37). This compassion drives him to break the bread of the Word and of sharing for the crowds (cf. Mk 6:30-44), allowing us to glimpse the gesture of the Cenacle and of the Cross, when he would have given himself to eat, and he tells us: "You give them something to eat" ( Mk 6:37), that is, make your life a gift of love.
Dear Seminarians, the wisdom of Mother Church, assisted by the Holy Spirit, over time always seeks the most suitable methods for the formation of ordained ministers, according to the needs of the places. In this commitment, what is your task? It is to never play for less, to never be satisfied, to never be just passive recipients, but to be passionate about priestly life, living the present and looking to the future with a prophetic heart. I hope that this meeting of ours will help each of you to deepen your personal dialogue with the Lord, in which you can ask Him to increasingly assimilate the sentiments of Christ, the sentiments of His Heart. That Heart that beats with love for you and for all humanity. Have a good journey! I accompany you with my blessing.
Dear seminarians,
I am pleased to be able to accompany you this morning, on the occasion of your Jubilee, together with the priests who accompany you on your formative journey. You come from various Churches in the world and have very different life experiences, but in the Lord we all form one body. In fact, there is only one hope to which you have been called, that of your vocation (cf. Eph 4:4). Today, at the tomb of the Apostle Peter and together with me, his Successor, you solemnly renew the faith of your Baptism. This Creed is the root from which springs the “here I am” that you will joyfully say on the day of your priestly ordination. May God, who began his work in you, bring it to completion.
[recitation of the Creed in Latin]
Let us pray. Father, in this Jubilee Year, open to your Church the way of salvation, welcome our good intentions and grant our desire to convert our lives to you to become authentic witnesses of the Gospel. With the grace of the Holy Spirit guide our steps toward the blessed hope of meeting your face in the heavenly Jerusalem, where your Kingdom will reach its full and perfect fulfillment and all will be realized in Christ your Son. He lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.
[blessing]
Best wishes to you all and have a good pilgrimage of hope!
_________________
[1] Cf. St. John Paul II, Exhortation. Ap. Pastores dabo vobis (25 March 1992), 43.
[2] Encyclical Letter Dilexit nos , on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ (24 October 2024).
[3] Cf. ibid. , 17.
[4] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Past. Constitution Gaudium et spes , 22.
[5] Cf. Francis, Letter on the role of literature in education , 17 July 2024.
[6] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Past. Constitution Gaudium et spes , 62.
[7] Congregation for the Clergy, Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis , The Gift of the Priestly Vocation (8 December 2016), 97.
[8] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter Dilexit nos, on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ (24 October 2024), 19.
TO THE SEMINARIANS ON THE OCCASION OF THEIR JUBILEE
St. Peter's Basilica, Altar of the Confession
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
___________________________________
Thank you, thank you everyone!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Peace be with you!
Your Eminences, Excellencies, to the trainers and especially to all of you seminarians, good morning to all!
I am very happy to meet you and I thank you all, seminarians and formators, for your warm presence. Thank you first of all for your joy and your enthusiasm. Thank you because with your energy you feed the flame of hope in the life of the Church!
Today you are not only pilgrims , but also witnesses of hope : you bear witness to me and to everyone, because you have allowed yourselves to be involved in the fascinating adventure of the priestly vocation in a difficult time. You have accepted the call to become gentle and strong heralds of the Word that saves, servants of an open Church and a Church that goes forth as a missionary.
And I say a word also in Spanish, thank you for having accepted with valor the invitation of the Lord to follow, to be a disciple, to enter the seminary. Let them be worthy and not take me.
[And I also say a word in Spanish: thank you for having courageously accepted the Lord's invitation to follow him, to be disciples, to enter the Seminary. You have to be courageous and not be afraid!]
To Christ who calls you are saying “yes”, with humility and courage; and this “here I am”, which you address to Him, sprouts within the life of the Church and allows itself to be accompanied by the necessary path of discernment and formation.
Jesus, as you know, calls you first of all to live an experience of friendship with Him and with your climbing companions (see Mk 3:13); an experience destined to grow permanently even after ordination and which involves all aspects of life. There is nothing in you, in fact, that must be discarded, but everything must be taken up and transfigured in the logic of the grain of wheat, in order to become happy people and priests, "bridges" and not obstacles to the encounter with Christ for all those who approach you. Yes, He must grow and we must decrease, so that we can be shepherds according to His Heart [1] .
Speaking of the Heart of Jesus Christ, how can we not remember the Encyclical Dilexit nos given to us by beloved Pope Francis ? [2] Precisely in this time that you are living, that is, the time of formation and discernment, it is important to turn your attention to the center, to the "engine" of your entire journey: the heart! The seminary, in whatever way it is conceived, should be a school of affections. Today in a particular way, in a social and cultural context marked by conflict and narcissism, we need to learn to love and to do so like Jesus [3] .
As Christ loved with the heart of man [4] , you are called to love with the Heart of Christ! To love with the heart of Jesus. But to learn this art, you must work on your interior life, where God makes his voice heard and where the most profound decisions come from; but which is also a place of tension and struggle (cf. Mk 7:14-23), to be converted so that all your humanity may smell of the Gospel. The first work must therefore be done on the interior life. Remember well the invitation of Saint Augustine to return to the heart, because there we find the traces of God. Descending into the heart can sometimes frighten us, because there are also wounds. Do not be afraid to take care of them, let yourselves be helped, because it is precisely from those wounds that the ability to stand beside those who suffer will be born. Without the interior life, even the spiritual life is not possible, because God speaks to us precisely there, in the heart. God speaks to us in our hearts, we must know how to listen to him. [God speaks to us in our hearts, we must know how to listen to him]. Part of this interior work is also training to learn to recognize the movements of the heart: not only the rapid and immediate emotions that characterize the soul of young people, but above all your feelings, which help you discover the direction of your life. If you learn to know your heart, you will be increasingly authentic and will not need to put on masks. And the privileged path that leads us interiorly is prayer: in an age in which we are hyperconnected, it becomes increasingly difficult to experience silence and solitude. Without the encounter with Him, we cannot even truly know ourselves.
I invite you to invoke the Holy Spirit frequently, so that he may form in you a docile heart, capable of grasping the presence of God, also by listening to the voices of nature and art, poetry, literature [5] and music, as well as the human sciences [6] . In the rigorous commitment of theological study, also know how to listen with an open mind and heart to the voices of culture, such as the recent challenges of artificial intelligence and those of social media.[7]. Above all, as Jesus did, know how to listen to the often silent cry of the little ones, the poor and the oppressed and of so many, especially young people, who seek meaning for their lives.
If you take care of your heart, with daily moments of silence, meditation and prayer, you can learn the art of discernment. This too is an important task: learning to discern. When we are young, we carry within us many desires, dreams and ambitions. The heart is often crowded and we sometimes feel confused. Instead, following the model of the Virgin Mary, our interiority must become capable of guarding and meditating. Capable of synballein – as the evangelist Luke writes (2:19.51): putting together the fragments [8] . Guard against superficiality, and put together the fragments of life in prayer and meditation, asking yourselves: what does what I am experiencing teach me? What is it saying to my journey? Where is the Lord leading me?
Dearest, have a meek and humble heart like that of Jesus (see Mt 11:29). Following the example of the Apostle Paul (see Phil 2:5ff), may you take on the sentiments of Christ, to progress in human maturity, especially affective and relational. It is important, indeed necessary, from the time of the Seminary, to focus a lot on human maturation, rejecting all disguise and hypocrisy. Keeping our gaze on Jesus, we must learn to give name and voice also to sadness, fear, anguish, indignation, bringing everything into the relationship with God. Crises, limitations, fragilities are not to be hidden, they are rather occasions of grace and Easter experience.
In a world where there is often ingratitude and thirst for power, where at times the logic of waste seems to prevail, you are called to witness the gratitude and generosity of Christ, the exultation and joy, the tenderness and mercy of his Heart. To practice the style of welcome and closeness, of generous and disinterested service, allowing the Holy Spirit to “anoint” your humanity even before ordination.
The Heart of Christ is animated by immense compassion: he is the Good Samaritan of humanity and he tells us: "Go and do likewise" ( Lk 10:37). This compassion drives him to break the bread of the Word and of sharing for the crowds (cf. Mk 6:30-44), allowing us to glimpse the gesture of the Cenacle and of the Cross, when he would have given himself to eat, and he tells us: "You give them something to eat" ( Mk 6:37), that is, make your life a gift of love.
Dear Seminarians, the wisdom of Mother Church, assisted by the Holy Spirit, over time always seeks the most suitable methods for the formation of ordained ministers, according to the needs of the places. In this commitment, what is your task? It is to never play for less, to never be satisfied, to never be just passive recipients, but to be passionate about priestly life, living the present and looking to the future with a prophetic heart. I hope that this meeting of ours will help each of you to deepen your personal dialogue with the Lord, in which you can ask Him to increasingly assimilate the sentiments of Christ, the sentiments of His Heart. That Heart that beats with love for you and for all humanity. Have a good journey! I accompany you with my blessing.
Dear seminarians,
I am pleased to be able to accompany you this morning, on the occasion of your Jubilee, together with the priests who accompany you on your formative journey. You come from various Churches in the world and have very different life experiences, but in the Lord we all form one body. In fact, there is only one hope to which you have been called, that of your vocation (cf. Eph 4:4). Today, at the tomb of the Apostle Peter and together with me, his Successor, you solemnly renew the faith of your Baptism. This Creed is the root from which springs the “here I am” that you will joyfully say on the day of your priestly ordination. May God, who began his work in you, bring it to completion.
[recitation of the Creed in Latin]
Let us pray. Father, in this Jubilee Year, open to your Church the way of salvation, welcome our good intentions and grant our desire to convert our lives to you to become authentic witnesses of the Gospel. With the grace of the Holy Spirit guide our steps toward the blessed hope of meeting your face in the heavenly Jerusalem, where your Kingdom will reach its full and perfect fulfillment and all will be realized in Christ your Son. He lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.
[blessing]
Best wishes to you all and have a good pilgrimage of hope!
_________________
[1] Cf. St. John Paul II, Exhortation. Ap. Pastores dabo vobis (25 March 1992), 43.
[2] Encyclical Letter Dilexit nos , on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ (24 October 2024).
[3] Cf. ibid. , 17.
[4] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Past. Constitution Gaudium et spes , 22.
[5] Cf. Francis, Letter on the role of literature in education , 17 July 2024.
[6] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Past. Constitution Gaudium et spes , 62.
[7] Congregation for the Clergy, Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis , The Gift of the Priestly Vocation (8 December 2016), 97.
[8] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter Dilexit nos, on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ (24 October 2024), 19.
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