What we learned about Pope Leo through the Knights of Malta

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jun 27, 2025

Pope Leo offered a striking message to the Knights of Malta on the Solemnity of Saint John the Baptist, who is the Order’s patron. The Pope expressed what is already becoming a hallmark of his pontificate, that is, an emphasis on the central and foundational duty of the followers of Christ to proclaim the Gospel. Thus Pope Leo continued to stress the primary obligation of the Christian, which is the obedience of faith to Jesus Christ.

The entire message specifically opposes the idea that the Order of Malta (or, indeed, any Catholic) can settle for mere material service while ignoring the central message of the Gospel—that we can and must be freed from sin and reconciled to God through Christ. Emphasizing either a lowest common denominator brotherhood of man or a merely material service to those in need is simply not enough. Instead, the pope deliberately stressed the Christic purposes of the Order by stating that its patron, “John the Baptist, ever since his birth, fulfilled the mission he received from God to be the herald of Jesus.”

Authentic renewal

Noting that the purposes of the Order are the tuition fidei (protecting, defending, observing, and imparting the Faith) and the obsequium pauperum (deference and service to the poor), Pope Leo emphasized: “Do not limit yourselves to meeting the needs of the poor, but announce to them God’s love with the word and witness. If this were lacking,” the Pope warned, “the Order would lose its religious nature and would be reduced to being a philanthropic organization.” Indeed: “The Spirit uncovers the deceptions of the evil one, so we are called to continually discern whether we are being led by the Spirit or by the evil one or by our own interest.”

The Order of Malta is in the midst of reviewing its statutes, methods and commitment to the Church, and Leo emphasized that this renewal “must first of all be interior, spiritual, because this gives meaning to the changes of the rules.” Recognizing that the process of renewal was just beginning, he stressed that the Order’s members of the First Class must overcome any temptation to secularization, that is, “to a life not inspired by the evangelical radicalism that is proper to a religious Order.” Without this commitment on the part of the First Class, he said, it cannot be expected of the Second and Third Classes.

The Pope stressed that the Order’s members are called to embody in today’s world “an ever-greater evangelical authenticity, the fruit of continuous purification.” This authenticity must manifest itself through service such that it “may be a witness to the love of God, who makes himself present”. Leo also noted a growing desire among some professed members to live in community, praising this “because community life concretely forges mutual charity and the authentic observance of the three evangelical counsels.”

Themes of a pontificate?

What is clear in this message to the Order of Malta is that Pope Leo is emphasizing the key features of any authentic Christian commitment, and of any properly Christian life and work. One cannot fail to notice the forceful emphasis on spiritual growth and on the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the keys to any authentically Catholic life and mission. What we are beginning to see in this pontificate is a clear focus on what that “mission” ought to mean in every aspect of the Christian life, rooted in our baptism into Christ as “priests, prophets and kings”. Just as the Order of Malta can undergo effective renewal only by actualizing the baptismal promises of its members as the impetus for the Order’s particular mission and charism, so too is this true for all of us.

Now, in other words, we are hearing things that were too often, at key moments, obfuscated or submerged in the emphases of the last pontificate. No longer are specifically Christian prayer and Christian witness submerged under so many other concerns and recommendations that they seemed to be praiseworthy only in private devotions among those who are interested in them. No longer is the good Samaritan the primary (and essentially secular) model for the brotherhood of man. Pope Leo, quite clearly, is here to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Though he has been in office only a very short time, Leo has already set a pattern of insisting that as Catholics we must, at every level and in every walk of life, make sure that Christ Himself is distinctively visible in our goals, our habits, our speech, and our service.

I do not think it is possible to mistake this tendency of the current pontificate. Like the Knights of Malta, all the rest of us must learn again not just to emphasize a corporate or personal sovereignty which insists that each of our habits and desires be recognized, praised and baptized by the Church. Rather we are to make sure our lives are marked by supernatural grace, overflowing with goodness, and—perhaps above all—recognizable as flowing into us through the Church directly from Christ Himself, Who remains always the Way, the Truth and the Life.

We are no longer to place a convenient emphasis on our own personal goodness, however defined. We are to put the emphasis back where it belongs: On prayer and service that is actuated in us by Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Christ is the Head and we are His members. This is pure Catholicism. It may come to us by fits and starts at times, but it must be manifested in every genuinely Catholic institution—and in every genuinely Catholic life. Perhaps it is no surprise that one of the greatest theologians and doctors of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, famously taught this same point: The communication of the truth is the greatest of the works of mercy, and in the very first place is the truth about God.*

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* ST II-II, q. 32, a. 2, allowing for emergencies which take temporary priority. See the discusison by Thomas Joseph White, OP, Contemplation and the Cross: A Catholic Introduction to the Spiritual Life,,The Catholic University of America Press, 2025, pp. 270-272.