Pope visits Vatican Library, says reading books can feed the desire for God
September 15, 2026
Pope Leo XIV visited the Vatican Apostolic Library on September 14, his 71st birthday, and said that “if on the one hand a book brings calm, on the other it awakens a restlessness, feeding the desire and daring to search.”
After recalling that his mother was a librarian, Pope Leo spoke about the place of books in the life of St. Augustine.
When St. Augustine “heard the voice of a child singing: ‘take and read, take and read,’“ and he read from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, “the doubt was dispelled, but not the desire, which became even stronger, driving him to explore the breadth and depth of Sacred Scripture,” said the Pope. “The book of Scripture that reached Augustine was the same book that opened up his spirit.”
“Dear friends, by preserving, studying and making available to scholars the books of the successor of Peter, you help the Church and humanity to reach the depths of desire,” Pope Leo commented. “Without it, everything withdraws from the living God, the source of truth and love.”
The Pope added that the Vatican Apostolic Library “stays alive insofar as it keeps its systole and its diastole”:
The systole: may the Apostolic Library continue to be a place marked by discretion, quiet, respect and care ...
The heart, however, also lives through diastole, and so does our Library ... There are not only European and Christian books, but also volumes written in other religious contexts and originating from every corner of the world. All of this happened many centuries before this practice became a universally shared value. Through this approach, the Apostolic Library bears witness to the Church’s ancient and ever-new cultural openness.
“Be faithful to the past and faithful to the future, using the languages and means proper to your work, and keep finding new pathways towards reconciliation,” Pope Leo added.
During his visit, the Pontiff also inaugurated an exhibit: “AQVA: Catastrophe and Wonder.”
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Further information:
- Visit to the Vatican Apostolic Library and Inauguration at the Vatican Apostolic Library of the Series of Exhibitions “Catastrophe and Wonder” (Dicastery for Communication - Vatican Media, 9/14/26)
- Pope: A library is not just place of books but of relationships and exchange (Vatican News, 9/14/26)
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