On the morning of this Saturday, December 20, Pope Leo XIV presided over the Jubilee Audience in St. Peter’s Square, framed within the celebrations of the 2025 Jubilee, before numerous pilgrims and faithful who had arrived in Rome. The Pontiff centered his last Jubilee catechesis on the theme «Sperare è generare. Maria, speranza nostra», emphasizing Christian hope as a fecund force that is born from God and is embodied in a singular way in the Virgin Mary.
We leave below the complete message from Leo XIV:
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!
When Christmas is at the door, we can say: the Lord is near! Without Jesus, this statement—the Lord is near—might sound almost like a threat. In Jesus, on the other hand, we discover that, as the prophets had intuited, God is a womb of mercy. The Child Jesus reveals to us that God has bowels of mercy, through which He always generates. In Him there is no threat, but forgiveness.
Dear brothers, today’s is the last of the Saturday Jubilee audiences, begun last January by Pope Francis. The Jubilee comes to an end, but the hope that this Year has given us does not end: we will continue to be pilgrims of hope! We have heard St. Paul: «For in hope we were saved» (Rm 8:24). Without hope, we are dead; with hope, we come to light. Hope is generative. In fact, it is a theological virtue, that is, a force from God, and as such it generates, it does not kill, but makes born and reborn. This is the true strength. That which threatens and kills is not strength: it is arrogance, it is aggressive fear, it is the evil that generates nothing. The strength of God makes born. That is why I would like to say to you finally: to hope is to generate.
St. Paul writes to the Christians of Rome something that makes us think: «We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains until now» (Rm 8:22). It is a very strong image. It helps us to listen and to bring to prayer the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. «All together» creation is a cry. But many powerful people do not hear this cry: the wealth of the earth is in the hands of a few, very few, increasingly concentrated—unjustly—in the hands of those who often do not want to hear the groan of the earth and of the poor. God has destined the goods of creation for all, so that all may share in them. Our task is to generate, not to steal. And yet, in faith the pain of the earth and of the poor is that of a birth. God always generates, God continues to create, and we can generate with Him, in hope. History is in the hands of God and of those who hope in Him. There is not only one who steals, there is above all one who generates.
Sisters and brothers, if Christian prayer is so deeply Marian, it is because in Mary of Nazareth we see one of us who generates. God made her fruitful and she came to meet us with her features, as every child resembles his mother. She is Mother of God and our mother. «Our hope», we say in the Salve Regina. She resembles the Son and the Son resembles her. And we resemble this Mother who gave face, body, and voice to the Word of God. We resemble her, because we can generate the Word of God here below, transform the cry that we hear into a birth. Jesus wants to be born again: we can give Him body and voice. This is the birth that creation awaits.
To hope is to generate. To hope is to see that this world becomes the world of God: the world in which God, human beings, and all creatures walk together again, in the city-garden, the new Jerusalem. Mary, our hope, always accompanies our pilgrimage of faith and hope.