Pope Leo XIV delivered remarkably candid responses at a jubilee gathering for synodal teams and participatory bodies, in what senior Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell called “perhaps the most extraordinary session” he has witnessed since Leo’s election. Addressing resistance to synodality head-on, Pope Leo spoke about the fear and lack of understanding of synodality among some bishops and priests, and called in his homily the next day for “a humbler church.” Vatican correspondent Colleen Dulle notes the pope’s call for a humbler church “might go down in this pontificate the same way that Pope Francis’ early-papacy call for ‘a poor church for the poor’ went down” as a pontificate-defining message.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Raymond Burke’s celebration of the Tridentine Latin Mass on Saturday, Oct. 25 at the Altar of the Chair of St. Peter—for a pilgrimage group denied permission in 2023 and 2024—raised questions about whether Pope Leo will modify any of Pope Francis’s restrictions on the pre-Vatican II liturgy. Gerry says that while no one in the Vatican expects Leo to totally roll back those restrictions, “maybe he’d make some modifications.”
Also on the show: Producer Ricardo da Silva, S.J., joins from Rome to share his firsthand account of Pope Leo’s meeting with the leaders of the worldwide Jesuit order, where the pope called the Jesuits to the frontiers—identifying synodality as “a major frontier”—and urged Jesuits to remain “present where humanity’s needs meet God’s saving love.” Plus: King Charles III’s historic prayer with Pope Leo in the Sistine Chapel and the pope’s powerful address to grassroots movements condemning the treatment of migrants as “undesirables,’ as if they were garbage and not human beings.”
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