CNA Staff, May 9, 2025 / 16:58 pm (CNA).
Nine months ago, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost sat down for an interview at a parish in the Chicago area before celebrating Mass. Now that he is Pope Leo XIV, his words on the National Eucharistic Congress, Pope Francis, synodality, and more have taken on extra significance.
Here are some highlights from the videotaped interview at St. Jude Church in New Lenox, Illinois.
On the National Eucharistic Congress:
“I was not there, I watched it on the internet, but it was a magnificent experience.”
“There are dynamic, life-giving experiences that do fill us with hope, and we have to learn to share that message with others — it depends on all of us.”
“There’s a lot of good things going on, a lot of hope-filled things that each and every one of us can take part in.”
On Pope Francis:
Prevost recalled the homily at Pope Francis’ first public Mass about the passage where Jesus showed mercy to the woman caught in adultery.
“That’s a big part of who Francis is: Justice in terms of seeking true justice for all people, especially for the downtrodden — reaching out to help the poor and the suffering and the immigrants and those who most need the mercy of God, who most need the Church, perhaps — that’s who Francis is.”
“And all the other stuff has to be interpreted and placed in that context because he really believes deeply, and he really struggles to find the best way to express that message of the Gospel.”
On Francis being elected pope:
“I wasn’t there, but I truly believe that Pope Francis was elected by that College of Cardinals in 2013 because the Church at this time needs Francis. At a different time, we needed Pope Benedict, and at a different time, we needed St. John Paul II, et cetera, et cetera.”
“But the Holy Spirit will never abandon the Church. And if we can live placing our trust in that, then we might be shaken up a bit. We might need to ask questions, and there’s a lot of people we can ask questions to. But we continue to walk placing our trust and our confidence in the Lord, whose Spirit is indeed with us.”
“Let’s relax a little bit and trust in the Lord.”
On mercy:
Prevost recalled Pope Francis showing him an image of a Gothic cathedral in France with a carving of Jesus holding the body of Judas in his arms after Judas had taken his own life.
“Is it possible to think that God’s mercy can indeed reach out to the worst of sinners?”
“And that message in Francis’ life … Some people get terribly upset. They say, ‘Well, he should speak stronger on this, and he should condemn that. Pope Francis says, ‘Everybody, there’s a lot of people who are condemning things already. We don’t need that. We need people, and especially ministers, who can live and express and offer to others the mercy and forgiveness and healing of God.’”
On the Synod on Synodality:
“Francis has a very keen mind and a very keen sense of the vision of where he wants to move the Church. And he recognizes that any large institution can become just as any person; we become very set in our ways. ‘We always did it that way. We don’t want to change. We’ve been doing it like this forever.’
“And one of the risks of that attitude, which is comfortable for us, it’s like we create a safety zone or security zone for ourselves, and that’s wonderful — but one of the risks of that is we miss the presence of the Holy Spirit.
“The synod is, you hopefully have heard, ‘synodos,’ Greek, means to walk together, following on an initiative that goes all the way back to the Second Vatican Council and Pope St. Paul VI.”
“But it really goes back to the early centuries of the Church. Pope Francis has, along with others, been looking for a way to help people understand that the Church is not Father up here on Sunday with a lot of spectators, but that rather all of us in different ways, and each one according to his or her vocation and ministry and calling — we’re all called to be a part of this Church.”
“It does not take away at all the authority or the ministry of those who are called to specific services in the Church, such as a bishop or a priest — but it does call the best gifts out of each and every one to bring them together.”
“There’s the real synod, and then there’s the stuff you read on the internet and in different places. There’s a lot of key issues that are saying, ‘Well, what do they do about this? Or what do they do that? And who’s on this side? Who’s on that side?’ That’s not what the synod is about.”
“There’s magnificent hope in this experience of bringing people together from around the world, literally, and saying, ‘We want to be a part of what the Church is and what the mission of the Church is in the world today.”
On the media:
“Media sites, nowadays, we’re all familiar with a lot of them. Some of them are very good and some of them are not. One of the difficulties that’s out there is the ordinary person who comes along and starts reading doesn’t know which one you can trust. That’s a big problem.”
“You’ve got to learn to read with a very critical eye or mind, because it’s very easy to distort the truth or to mix the truth with absolute falsehood and to look for ways to do harm.”
On the Jubilee of Hope:
“But we can live jubilee right here, and we can live hope when in our hearts we recognize that everything does not have to be doom and gloom and the pessimism which sometimes comes over us; it can truly color our vision.”
“Let’s go back to listening to the word of God. Let’s go back to understanding what it means to be [an] authentic community, communion, parish community, where we care about one another, where we recognize as the Lord promised, ‘Where two or three gathered in my name, there I am in, their midst,’ and we say, ‘We as believing Catholics have a magnificent message.’”
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