Pope Leo XIV received this Saturday, February 28, 2026, a group of Spanish seminarians from the seminaries of Alcalá de Henares, Toledo, Cartagena, and the Interdiocesan Seminary of Catalonia. In his address, the Pontiff centered his message on a direct warning: when the relationship with God weakens, life—and particularly the priestly ministry—becomes disordered from within.
Leo XIV referred the attendees to a letter of his addressed to the Major Seminary of Trujillo, in Peru, as a framework for understanding the axes of priestly formation. However, he wanted to dwell on a point prior to everything else and which, precisely because it is basic, can be taken for granted and neglected: maintaining a supernatural vision of reality. To illustrate it, he quoted G. K. Chesterton: “If the supernatural is removed, what is found is not the natural, but the unnatural.” With that reference, the Pope emphasized that the problem is not limited to visible scandals, but to lifestyles and ordinary decisions in which God is relegated to the margins.
The Pontiff then posed an incisive question: what could be more unnatural than a priest who speaks of God but lives without awareness of His presence. The risk, he warned, would not be merely a moral incoherence, but becoming accustomed to the things of God without living from God, leaving out the Lord from concrete life.
In that framework, Leo XIV warned against the confusion between fruitfulness and activism. He evoked the image of trees that “die standing,” firm on the outside but dry on the inside, to explain that a seminarian or priest can also maintain an intense pastoral agenda while his interior life weakens. Formation, he insisted, does not exhaust itself in technical tools—including psychology, which he recognized as useful—because the true protagonist is the Holy Spirit, who shapes the heart to serve Christ in His people.
The core of the message was clear: everything begins and always returns to the living relationship with Christ. Without that foundation, the formative structure loses consistency; with it, even ordinary life becomes a space for transformation. In conclusion, the Pope thanked the seminarians for their generosity and reminded them that they do not walk alone, but are sustained by the prayer of the Church and accompanied by the Virgin Mary.