The pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) recently announced the 20th edition of its One Million Children Praying the Rosary campaign, set to take place Oct. 7, 2025. / Credit: Courtesy of Aid to the Church in Need
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Pope Leo XIV waves to those gathered in St. Peter’s Square to pray the Angelus and listen to his Sunday message on Sept. 21, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Sep 21, 2025 / 10:34 am (CNA).
Those who really love the people living on the Gaza Strip will work to achieve peace in the Holy Land, Pope Leo XIV said on Sunday in his Angelus message.
The pontiff expressed his closeness to all those “suffering in that tormented land,” after leading the Marian prayer from a window of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St. Peter’s Square Sept. 21.
Leo also thanked the Catholic associations who are helping the people of the Gaza Strip: “Together with you and with the pastors of the Churches in the Holy Land, I repeat: there is no future based on violence, forced exile, or revenge. The people need peace; those who truly love them work for peace,” he said.
In his message before the Angelus, which he leads weekly on Sundays, Pope Leo reflected on the use of material goods, and “how we administer the most previous good of all, our very life.”
In a parable in the Gospel of Luke, a steward who has only sought his own profit must give a report to his master of how he has managed his master’s property.
The Holy Father explained that, like the steward in the parable, “we are not the masters of our lives or of the goods we enjoy; everything has been given to us as a gift by the Lord, who has entrusted this to our care, our freedom, and our responsibility.”
“One day,” he continued, “we will be called to give an account of how we have managed ourselves, our possessions and the earth’s resources — before both God and humankind, before society, and especially before those who will come after us.”
In the parable, the steward realizes his mistake, so before he loses his job, he renounces the part of people’s debts that would go to him — giving up the profit, but gaining friendships instead.
“The parable invites us to ask ourselves: how are we managing the material goods, the resources of the earth and our very lives that God has entrusted to us?” Leo said.
We can choose selfishness, putting wealth and ourselves before all else, becoming isolated and spreading “the poison of competition,” he said, or “we can recognize everything we have as a gift from God, to be managed and used as an instrument for sharing — to create networks of friendship and solidarity, to work for the common good, and to build a world that is more just, equitable and fraternal.”
In the morning, Pope Leo celebrated a Mass at the Parish Church of St. Anne in the Vatican, which, he pointed out in his homily, is in a special location “on the border” of the Vatican.
“Almost all those entering and leaving Vatican City pass by St. Anne’s,” he said. “Some pass for work, some as guests or pilgrims, some in a hurry, some with trepidation or serenity. May everyone experience that here are doors and hearts open to prayer, to listening, and to charity.”
He pointed out that the Gospel of the Day challenges us to examine our relationship with the Lord and with others.
“Jesus presents a stark alternative between God and wealth, asking us to take a clear and consistent position,” he said, because, “’No servant can serve two masters,’ therefore ‘you cannot serve both God and wealth.’”
“This is not a contingent choice,” Leo underlined. “We need to decide on a true lifestyle. It’s about choosing where to place our heart, clarifying whom we sincerely love, whom we serve with dedication, and what is truly our good.”
The pope also spoke about nations and wealth, and said, “the Church prays that leaders of nations may be freed from the temptation to use wealth against humanity, transforming it into weapons that destroy peoples and monopolies that humiliate workers.”
“Those who serve God become free from wealth, but those who serve wealth remain its slaves,” the Holy Father emphasized. “Those who seek justice transform wealth into the common good; those who seek domination transform the common good into the prey of their own greed.
Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., shares his perspective on how a legal system can provide for mercy during a conversation with Msgr. Laurence Spiteri (left) at the Vatican’s judicial headquarters on Sept. 20, 2025. / Credit: Hannah Brockhaus/CNA.
Vatican City, Sep 21, 2025 / 14:24 pm (CNA).
United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., spoke about the role that mercy can play in the legal system during an event at the Vatican on Saturday.
The Sept. 20 discussion at the Vatican’s judicial headquarters was organized by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, the U.S. bishops’ conference, and the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization. The event was part of the Jubilee of Justice, part of the Church’s yearlong Jubilee of Hope.
Earlier in the day, Alito, a Catholic, greeted Pope Leo XIV following an audience for the Jubilee of Workers of Justice in St. Peter’s Square.
During a one-hour afternoon conversation with Msgr. Laurence Spiteri, an American priest and retired judge on the Vatican’s appeals court for marriage cases, Alito shared his perspective on how a legal system can provide for mercy.
“Justice is what everyone has a right to, it is what they are due … Mercy is something that we don’t necessarily merit,” Alito said. “The complete reconciliation of those two things, I think, is a mystery that we can only dimly, perhaps, perceive in this world.”
The 75-year-old Alito, who has served on the Supreme Court since 2006, said, “Mercy should be built into the laws … the authority to make the laws rests with Congress and Congress should build in mercy when it enacts laws.”
“The responsibility of the executive [branch], headed by the president, is to enforce the law,” he continued. “But the enforcement of the law often involves a measure of discretion and someone who has discretion to enforce the law should enforce the law with mercy. Judges have to follow the law. Sometimes the law is framed in a way that allows the judge to exercise mercy,” for example, in criminal sentencing.
“A legal system, of course, is supposed to promote justice, and in human terms, completely reconciling mercy with justice is probably impossible. I think probably only God can do that,” he said.
The audience at Alito’s talk included Vatican officials, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, former prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura and Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts.
Catholic lawyers on pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee of Justice were also in attendance for the discussion, held in a chamber of the Cancelleria, a 16th-century building in the center of Rome that is home to the Holy See’s three tribunals: The Apostolic Penitentiary, the Apostolic Signatura, and the Roman Rota.
The “Angels Unawares” sculpture depicting immigrants to America on The Catholic University of America’s campus in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Peter Pinedo/CNA
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Vatican City, Sep 21, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
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Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Sept. 14, 2025. / Vatican Media
CNA Staff, Sep 20, 2025 / 15:20 pm (CNA).
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Pope Leo XIV addresses thousands of Church and civil lawyers, judges, and others who work in the legal environment during the Jubilee of Workers of Justice, part of the yearlong Jubilee of Hope, in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 20, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Sep 20, 2025 / 10:30 am (CNA).
Forgiveness is fundamental to the virtue of justice, Pope Leo XIV said to thousands of legal professionals gathered in Rome for the Jubilee of Workers of Justice on Saturday.
“It is the power of forgiveness, which is proper to the commandment of love, that emerges as a constitutive element of a justice capable of combining the supernatural with the human,” the pope said in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 20.
Leo, who has a doctorate in Church law, explained that the evangelical virtue of justice is not a distraction from human justice, but “questions and redesigns it: It provokes it to go even further, because it pushes it towards the search for reconciliation.”
“Evil, in fact, must not only be punished, but also repaired, and to this end, a profound gaze toward the good of individuals and the common good is necessary,” he urged Church and civil lawyers, judges, and others who work in the legal environment.
“This is an arduous task, but not impossible for those who, aware that they are performing a more demanding service than others, are committed to leading an irreproachable life,” the pope added.
An estimated 20,000 people from 100 countries took part in the Jubilee of Workers of Justice, part of the yearlong Jubilee of Hope, including a large number of pilgrims from the United States and Canada. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was also in attendance.
Joshua McCaig, a lawyer and founding president of the Catholic Bar Association, traveled to Rome for the jubilee with a delegation of over 50 legal professionals from the U.S.
He told EWTN News he hopes the event “will be an opportunity for us all to reflect on what more we can do for the common good.”
“The Catholic Church brings resources, brings hope, brings community, brings values that are instilled in the teachings of Jesus Christ to help all individuals — but also those in the legal profession — further develop an understanding of how this world should be and the role we should play in it,” he said.
Before the audience with the pope, Archbishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, gave a lecture on the theme of “Iustitia Imago Dei: the operator of justice, instrument of hope.”
“Those who administer justice in the Church must also be pastors. … They must respect justice, but they are pastors who must also watch over the good of souls,” Arrieta told EWTN News this week.
In his message, Pope Leo emphasized that the function of justice “is indispensable both for the orderly development of society and as a cardinal virtue that inspires and guides the conscience of every man and woman.”
“Striving for justice, therefore, requires being able to love it as a reality that can only be achieved through constant attention, radical disinterest, and assiduous discernment,” he said.
He noted that the Jubilee of Workers of Justice is a chance to also reflect on an overlooked aspect of justice, the reality that many countries and people “hunger and thirst for justice” because their living conditions are gravely unjust and inhuman.
The pontiff cited St. Augustine, calling the saint’s words “timeless truths” to apply to the current international situation.
“’Without justice,’” the pope quoted, “’the state cannot be administered; it is impossible to have law in a state where there is no true justice. An act performed according to law is certainly performed according to justice, and it is impossible to perform an act according to law that is performed against justice […] A state where there is no justice is not a state. Justice is, in fact, the virtue that distributes to each his due. Therefore, it is not human justice that takes man away from the true God.’”
“May the challenging words of St. Augustine inspire each of us to always express the exercise of justice in the service of the people to the best of our ability, with our gaze turned to God, so as to fully respect justice, law, and the dignity of persons,” Leo said.
Matteo Ciofi, EWTN News Nightly Vatican producer, and Victoria Cardiel, Vatican Correspondent for ACI Prensa/EWTN News, contributed to this report.
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