Rome Newsroom, Jun 29, 2025 / 10:15 am (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV warned new archbishops on Sunday against following “the same old pastoral plans without experiencing interior renewal and a willingness to respond to new challenges.”
Speaking on the Solemnity of Peter and Paul — saints recognized by the Catholic Church as pillars of the faith and venerated as patrons of the city of Rome — the pope also called for maintaining ecclesial unity while respecting diversity.
“Our patron saints followed different paths, had different ideas and at times argued with one another with evangelical frankness. Yet this did not prevent them from … a living communion in the Spirit, a fruitful harmony in diversity,” the pope said.
During Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, where he bestowed the pallium on 54 new metropolitan archbishops, including eight from the U.S., Leo urged them to “find new paths and new approaches to preaching the Gospel” rooted in the “problems and difficulties” arising from their communities of faith.
“The two apostles… inspire us by the example of their openness to change, to new events, encounters, and concrete situations in the life of their communities, and by their readiness to consider new approaches to evangelization in response to the problems and difficulties raised by our brothers and sisters in the faith.”
After the homily, deacons descended to the tomb of the Apostle Peter, located beneath the Altar of the Chair, to retrieve the palliums the pope had blessed.
Avoiding routine and ritualism
In his homily, the Pope praised the example of Sts. Peter and Paul, highlighting their “ecclesial communion and the vitality of faith.” He stressed the importance of learning to live communion as “unity within diversity — so that the various gifts, united in the one confession of faith, may advance the preaching of the Gospel.”
For Pope Leo, the path of ecclesial communion “is awakened by the inspiration of the Spirit, unites difference,s and builds bridges of unity thanks to the rich variety of charisms, gifts, and ministries.”
‘Turn our differences into a workshop of unity’
The pope called for fostering “fraternity” and urged his listeners to “make an effort, then, to turn our differences into a workshop of unity and communion, of fraternity and reconciliation, so that everyone in the Church, each with his or her personal history, may learn to walk side by side.”
“The whole Church needs fraternity, which must be present in all of our relationships, whether between lay people and priests, priests and bishops, bishops and the pope. Fraternity is also needed in pastoral care, ecumenical dialogue, and the friendly relations that the Church desires to maintain with the world,” the pope said.
He also invited reflection on whether the journey of our faith “retains its energy and vitality, and whether the flame of our relationship with the Lord still burns bright.”
“If we want to keep our identity as Christians from being reduced to a relic of the past, as Pope Francis often reminded us, it is important to move beyond a tired and stagnant faith. We need to ask ourselves: Who is Jesus Christ for us today? What place does he occupy in our lives and in the life of the Church?”
New paths and practices for the Gospel
Leo thus encouraged a process of discernment that arises from these questions, allowing faith and the Church “to be constantly renewed and to find new paths and new approaches to preaching the Gospel.”
“This, together with communion, must be our greatest desire.”
At the end of the celebration, the pontiff descended the stairs to the tomb of the Apostle Peter and prayed for a few moments before it, accompanied by Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon, head of the Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
The Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul is especially important for ecumenism because the two saints are honored by all apostolic traditions, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate has sent a delegation to Rome for the feast annually since the 1960s.
Return to an ancient tradition
During the celebration, Pope Leo XIV revived the ancient tradition of personally imposing the pallium on new metropolitan archbishops.
This symbolic rite had been modified by Pope Francis in 2015, when he decided to present the pallium — a white wool band resembling a stole with six black silk crosses — to archbishops at the Vatican, while leaving it to the nuncio in each archbishop’s country to impose the pallium in a local ceremony.
At the time, Pope Francis explained that this change was meant to give greater prominence to local churches, to make the ceremony more pastoral and participatory, and to strengthen the bond between archbishops and their people, without weakening communion with Rome.
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From the perspective of the foot soldier in the trenches, what do we do when generalities, “interior renewal and a willingness to respond to new challenges, concrete situations” are provided rather than live ammo? A fiery, convinced exhortation of the truths that are no longer heard?
The only clarity in return to Apostolic tradition was conferring the Pallium. Why should His Holiness not speak out to the Church as did Peter and Paul? Paul especially, who preached the basics of the faith, what was revealed to him by Christ. Archbishops and any bishops are not called to be paper tigers. People in their “concrete situations” will not respond well to niceties and platitudes about diversity in togetherness.
Nobody in the Church knows what to do other than say pious platitudes. We need to face the fact that modernity and post-modernity have inoculated almost everyone under the age of 50 against Christian faith. When more than two generations of people consider Christian faith to be superfluous, at best, to having a happy, fulfilling, good, productive life, how is the Church supposed to plant the seeds of the Gospel in such soil? Science, technology, medicine, capitalist prosperity, streaming arts and entertainment, rapid communications and travel, sports, and robots have all made life comfortable and pleasant for billions of people. The Church can’t compete with that; it just can’t. Religion has become obsolete, as Christian Smith has observed.
Yes Scott. Although God’s merciful love remains at the ready, and our efforts can save ourselves and others.
Walker,
Thank you for introducing us to Christian Smith. You casually dropped the name as if we ought to know it! Wikipedia informs that Smith is by trade, training, and ideology, a sociologist. Yet who has not heard the name of Jesus?
Social theory is not grace. While the US majority may choose not to practice the Catholic religion, Jesus and His Church ARE and WILL REMAIN. The Church began with One and the Word will abide forever.
Distractions of ideas and idols will fade as has all of history, but The Word and His Church will not. He lives in His Church and its promised message of eternal Life. Go get it.
Excellent comment, Father Peter. We’re a Church that’s grown tired (and grown suspect) of platitudes – words that say nothing at all.
Yeah, while He Himself IS.
I get that ‘the Church’ has grown tired. Yet ‘We are Church,’ and We are, with Him, in charge. Why don’t we rely on Him instead of yawning inanities?
The pope needs prayer. Lots of it. Jesus prayed for Peter, and Peter’s successor, needs us to pray for him. The alternative may be losing this battle and ending on the wrong side of the war.
In time, might it be that Pope Leo XIV is finding his way to lead a Church less “stagnant” because more perennial?
A Church accented more with metropolitan archbishoprics than reduced to synodal roundtables of varied sizes? Instead, clarifying the meaning of “synod”–because retaining intact the personal and institutional role of every bishop as a successor of the apostles? A problem of institutional architecture: how to be the Catholic Church which is both charismatic and institutional—the authentic identity and mission flagged in the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops which was convened by St. Pope John Paul II expressly to reclaim the Second Vatican Council and to preserve it from “divergent interpretations.”
Discounting, here, the unfortunate use of the loaded term “diversity”—why can’t the charge given to the archbishops remind us more of Veritatis Splendor, and of what G.K. Chesterton wrote exactly 100 years ago about all bishops:
“Those runners [‘messengers of the Gospel’] gather impetus as they run. Ages afterwards they still speak as if something had just happened. They have not lost the speed and momentum of messengers; they have hardly lost, as it were, the wild eyes of witnesses. . . .We might sometimes fancy that the Church grows younger as the world grows old” (The Everlasting Man, 1925).
“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
At first, I found these comments about platitudinousness (?) rather harsh but rereading Leo’s words, I have to agree. He has done better.
I’ll hope his action speaks louder than his words in this instance.
Happy feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The two legendary pillars of the church were blessed with awesome faith, hope, and love. Throughout their ministry, Peter and Paul were the voice of the voiceless. Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops, and bishops are privileged front runners to draw inspiration from the Peter and Paul, the epitomes of risk-taking.
Legendary?
BTB. Christian Smith’s philosopher of interest is Roy Bhaskar. I looked him up. He looks like a cross between Mama Cass and John Lennon. Critically Real. His theories are also uniquely strangely passe. Some say the Church is tired and full of platitude. Check out Roy Bhaskar’s ideas as old as Kant mixed with the genes of Hindu-theosophy.