Pope, in final Saturday jubilee audience, says that ‘to hope is to generate’

December 22, 2025

In the eleventh and final special Saturday audience of the jubilee year, Pope Leo XIV said that to hope is to generate, as the Blessed Virgin Mary did (video).

“Hope is generative,” Pope Leo told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square on December 20. ‘Indeed, it is a theological virtue, that is, a strength of God, and as such it does not kill, but gives birth and rebirth.”

St. Paul’s statement that “the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now” (Rom. 8:22) helps us “to listen to and bring to prayer the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” Pope Leo continued. “But many powerful people do not hear this cry: the wealth of the earth is in the hands of a few, very few, increasingly concentrated—unjustly—in the hands of those who often do not want to hear the groaning of the earth and the poor.”

“God destined all the goods of creation for everyone to share in them,” the Pope added. “Our task is to generate, not to steal. Yet, in faith, the pain of the earth and the poor is that of childbirth. God always generates, God still creates, and we can generate with Him, in hope. History is in the hands of God and those who hope in Him.”

Turning to the theme of the Blessed Virgin Mary and hope, Pope Leo said:

Sisters and brothers, if Christian prayer is so deeply Marian, it is because in Mary of Nazareth we see one of us who generates. God made her fruitful and came towards us with her features, just as every son resembles his mother. She is the Mother of God, and our Mother. “Out hope”, we say in the Salve Regina. She resembles the Son, and the Son resembles her. And we resemble this Mother who gave a face, a body, a voice to the Word of God. We resemble her, because we can generate the Word of God here below, transforming the cry we hear into a birth. Jesus wants to be born again: we can give him body and voice. This is the birth that creation awaits.

“To hope is to generate,” the Pope concluded. “To hope is to see this world become God’s world: the world in which God, human beings and all creatures walk together again, in the garden city, the new Jerusalem. May Mary, our hope, always accompany our pilgrimage of faith and hope.”

---

Audiences in series:

• Pope Francis, To hope is to begin again—John the Baptist (11 January 2025)
• Pope Francis, To hope is to turn around. Mary Magdalene (1 February 2025)
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is to connect. Irenaeus of Lyon (14 June 2025)
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is to dig. Empress Helena (6 September 2025)
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is to intuit. Ambrose of Milan (27 September 2025) The Vatican has not published an English translation of this audience, though it has published an English summary.
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is to choose: Clare of Assisi (4 October 2025)
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is not to know. Nicola Cusano (25 October 2025)
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is to bear witness: Isidore Bakanja (8 November 2025)
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is to take a stand: Dorothy Day (22 November 2025)
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is to participate—Alberto Marvelli (6 December 2025)
• Pope Leo XIV, To hope is to generate. Mary, our hope (20 December 2025)

 

---

For all current news, visit our News home page.

---

 
Further information:

• To hope is to generate. Mary, our hope (Dicastery for Communication - Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 12/20/25)