Vatican City, May 28, 2025 / 15:21 pm (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV held the second general audience of his pontificate today in which he reflected on the parable of the good Samaritan.
At the beginning of his catechesis, addressed to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square, the Holy Father recalled that the parables of the Gospel offer an opportunity “to change perspective and open ourselves up to hope.”
The lack of hope, the pontiff explained, is sometimes due “to the fact that we fixate on a certain rigid and closed way of seeing things,” and the parables “help us to look at them from another point of view.”
He then recalled that Jesus proposes this parable to “a doctor of the law,” who asks him: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk 10:25-37), and then Jesus invites him to love his neighbor.
‘The practice of worship does not automatically lead to compassion’
The scene of the parable of the good Samaritan is a road “as difficult and harsh as life itself,” the pope said. In fact, the man who crosses it “is attacked, beaten, robbed, and left half dead.”
“It is the experience that happens when situations, people, sometimes even those we have trusted, take everything from us and leave us in the middle of the road,” the pontiff emphasized.
Leo XIV then added that “life is made up of encounters, and in these encounters, we emerge for what we are. We find ourselves in front of others, faced with their fragility and weakness, and we can decide what to do: to take care of them or pretend nothing is wrong.”
At his General Audience, Pope Leo XIV speaks to the English-speaking pilgrims reflecting on the parable of the Good Samaritan, reminding us that Christ is our healing hope and calls us to show mercy and become true neighbors. Sacred Heart of Jesus, make our hearts more like… pic.twitter.com/6Qu8QfG89J
— EWTN Vatican (@EWTNVatican) May 28, 2025
He recalled that the priest and the Levite went down that same road and didn’t stop to help him. “The practice of worship does not automatically lead to being compassionate. Indeed, before being a religious matter, compassion is a question of humanity! Before being believers, we are called to be human,” he emphasized.
Haste as an obstacle to compassion
The pope pointed out that “haste, so present in our lives, very often impedes us from feeling compassion. One who thinks his or her journey must be the priority is not willing to stop for another.”
However, the Samaritan, who belonged to a despised people, decided to stop to help the man. Thus, Leo XIV emphasized that “religiosity does not enter into this. This Samaritan simply stops because he is a man faced with another man in need of help.”
He also affirmed that compassion “is expressed through practical gestures,” recalling that the Samaritan “approaches, because if you want to help someone, you cannot think of keeping your distance; you have to get involved, get dirty yourself, perhaps be contaminated.”
“One truly helps if one is willing to feel the weight of the other’s pain,” Pope Leo XIV noted.
“When will we, too, be capable of interrupting our journey and having compassion? When we understand that the wounded man in the street represents each one of us. And then the memory of all the times that Jesus stopped to take care of us will make us more capable of compassion,” he said.
Finally, Pope Leo invited the faithful to pray to “grow in humanity, so that our relationships may be truer and richer in compassion.”
“Let us ask the heart of Jesus for the grace to increasingly have the same feelings he does,” he concluded.
After greeting the pilgrims from different countries, the Holy Father intoned the Our Father in Latin and imparted his blessing to the faithful present, who listened attentively despite the high temperatures and intense Roman spring sun.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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I wonder if those words “Before being believers, we are called to be human” are of Pope Leo’s or of an editor because it is a false counter positioning.
Indeed, a formal faith i.e. a faith without empathy (most often coupled with pride) can be cruel to others; often is – a typical case is a neophyte who is being completely inconsiderate of his family in his zeal to fulfill all the forms. Or someone who cruelly presses what he thinks are “the norms” of his faith onto others, without compassion and without giving them freedom.
However, a true compassion/empathy has its source only in God, in a living connection with Christ. Because of this, to say “Before being believers, we are called to be human” is wrong. A human being cannot become fully human = Christ-like without first believing in Christ and allowing Him to make him truly human. Faith and being human go together. Our Lord says “love your God with all your strength” and only then “love your neighbor as yourself”. I read it as only our total love for God Who is our Life can give us strength to love our neighbor as ourselves.
I would say that a parable of Samaritan represents not a dichotomy between faith and humanity but between a frozen deathly self-seeking “faith” without empathy and an alive (in God) faith which is a source of empathy.
PS I will add here that people who endured much atrocities early in life often find themselves becoming believers first and only then slowly recovering their true humanity which was abused. Christ teaches them how to be fully human, via granting them an intimate relationship with them, giving to them what their parents failed to give. Those are extreme cases but from my experience we are all impaired as humans and it is our relationship with Our Lord that makes us fully human.
Maybe the expression is simply a variation on the truth that grace builds on nature, or that one must first be a man before he can be a holy man, or that Christian virtue perfects natural virtues….it wouldn’t hurt if some men in high places really were men.
@ Anna
Am in complete agreement. Humanism absent of God is antithetical to true humanism.
“Before being believers, we are called to be human” – Well said. Human beings cannot afford to behave like robots. To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer – Mahatma Gandhi
Actually Dr Coelho, we’re not called to be human. We’re created human. We’re called to be Christians.
Here is Gandhi, on a Catholic web site, talking about pleasure, which he does not define.
I know a few people who would adamantly agree, having spent large portions of their lives giving pleasure. Jesus would not classify all acts (which give pleasure) as Christian.
While we may presume, with some degree of legitimacy as does Leo XIV, that our humanness should precede our faith in Christ Jesus [here Leo likely alludes to clericalism] – that proposition is acceptable insofar it is a man, Leo XIV, who is already a follower of Christ and is knowledgeable of Christ’s commandments.
Otherwise, the proposition is a fallacy.
That’s because not all out yonder are believers, and who have their own fallible positions. Insofar as Leo is Roman pontiff he speaks to the world at large. Consequently, his proposal will be interpreted as identical with secular humanism. Which is why I fully agree with Anna’s take on the issue.
I think one thing you can’t do is to co-operate with evil act because you are first meant to show compassion.
I am not referring to double effect situations.
Also by evil act I mean both the singular moment type as well as the practice or way of life en vivant.
What I am seeing is that this would apply immediately to both converted and unconverted according to each in his given setting; and it can apply at times to both converted and unconverted in the same setting at the same time over the same issue.
In addition, I believe, a wrong reading of and meaning to compassion are already in the root of Pelagianism. It has suggested to me (a long time) that even when you are not converted, the teaching of the faith speaks you in and with authentic and motivating sense.
Pelagianism speaks about the many errors people have been claiming as faith through the 20th Century and then using VATICAN II to say it is what the Church teaches. People who are caught in heresy like Pelagianism -any heresy- are easy prey to Modernism.
Converted and non-converted co-operating in evil occurs as well in the deployment of the deceptions of Modernism. In Modernism, the fact that you are not converted does not make you immune or clean of deception; and the fact you are converted makes you a poison at the level of faith.