Addressing cardinals, Pope Leo discusses choice of name, ‘fundamental points’ of Church’s path
May 12, 2025
In a May 10 address to the College of Cardinals, Pope Leo XIV described the cardinals as his closest collaborators and invited them to offer “advice, suggestions, proposals” in the closed-door meeting that immediately followed.
Beginning his address with prayers in Latin, the Pope emphasized the role of the Pope as “humble servant of God and of his brothers and sisters, and nothing more than this.”
“It has been clearly seen in the example of so many of my Predecessors, and most recently by Pope Francis himself, with his example of complete dedication to service and to sober simplicity of life, his abandonment to God throughout his ministry and his serene trust at the moment of his return to the Father’s house,” he said. “Let us take up this precious legacy and continue on the journey, inspired by the same hope that is born of faith.”
The Pope then called upon the cardinals to be “docile listeners” to the voice of the Holy Spirit and to lead the faithful to silent prayer:
It is the Risen Lord, present among us, who protects and guides the Church, and continues to fill her with hope through the love “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). It is up to us to be docile listeners to his voice and faithful ministers of his plan of salvation, mindful that God loves to communicate himself, not in the roar of thunder and earthquakes, but in the “whisper of a gentle breeze” (1 Kings 19:12) or, as some translate it, in a “sound of sheer silence.” It is this essential and important encounter to which we must guide and accompany all the holy People of God entrusted to our care.
The Pontiff invited the cardinals “to renew together today our complete commitment to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis masterfully and concretely set it forth in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, from which I would like to highlight several fundamental points.”
These fundamental points (citations omitted) are
- “the return to the primacy of Christ in proclamation”
- “the missionary conversion of the entire Christian community”
- “growth in collegiality and synodality”
- “attention to the sensus fidei, especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety”
- “loving care for the least and the rejected”
- “courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities”
Pope Leo described these fundamental points as “evangelical principles that have always inspired and guided the life and activity of God’s Family. In these values, the merciful face of the Father has been revealed and continues to be revealed in his incarnate Son, the ultimate hope of all who sincerely seek truth, justice, peace and fraternity.”
“Sensing myself called to continue in this same path, I chose to take the name Leo XIV,” he continued. “There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”
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