It is Sunday, the Gospel of the Keys, and today’s news is very much focused on the Pope’s tight schedule yesterday in San Marino and Rimini. Other interesting topics are never lacking.
Visit to San Marino.
Yesterday, Leo XIV had a very busy day between San Marino and Rimini. In the morning, a meeting with the Captains Regent at the Palazzo Pubblico, a walk through the historic center, and an encounter at the Basilica of the Saint. He was received by the Bishop of San Marino-Montefeltro, Mons. Domenico Beneventi, with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and veneration of the relics of Saint Marinus. The visit was an exclusive initiative of the Regency and not of the problematic diocesan bishop. After addressing the civil authorities, Leo XIV found himself before the local Church that bears both the name of the Republic and that of Montefeltro.
“I would like us to live this moment together as a pause on our shared journey following in the footsteps of Christ.” He referred to Saints Marinus and Leo, to the Christian birth of this land, and to that form of coexistence which, in the words of Benedict XVI in 2011 and repeated today by Leo, placed “the human person, image of God,” at the center. The Pope recalled that Marinus and Leo were laymen and stonemasons before being called, at different times, to ordained ministry. This detail takes us back to the concrete origins of San Marino: work, faith, community life. From that experience, Leo XIV recalled, was born a model characterized “by the Christian principles of freedom, mutual respect, and communion.”
A significant part of the address was dedicated to young people, with continuous references to the words spoken by Benedict XVI fifteen years earlier and to the image of the heart as “a window open to the infinite.” “Keep this window open,” inviting them not to settle for immediate and comfortable answers, but to follow those longings “for beauty, goodness, and life” that can lead to an encounter with God. The Pope mentioned without hesitation marriage, consecration, ordained ministry, professional life, and social and political commitment: “Do not be afraid to make demanding decisions.”
The Pope also focused on Christian initiation and the liturgy. “In our communities, we bear witness to unity: among parishes and, within them, between pastors and faithful, among the various charisms and ministries.”
Leo XIV listened attentively to the greeting of Mons. Domenico Beneventi. The bishop delivered a speech in a language still in need of refinement, focusing on the problems highlighted by the Secretariat of State, the same ones that had already arisen shortly before at the Palazzo Pubblico during the meeting with the Captains Regent. Much less space was devoted to the problem that continues to weigh most heavily on the internal life of the diocese: himself and his inability to govern it. San Marino-Montefeltro has welcomed priests with no real connection to this local Church. Some arrived because they found a diocese where ordination was easier. Alongside the priests who work daily in the parishes and know the families, the elderly, the young people, and the local community, over the years people have joined who had virtually no relationship with San Marino and Montefeltro. A diocese is not built simply by incardinating priests who have not found acceptance in their churches of origin. The bishop cannot be an adolescent who sows discord among priests, telling Gaius what he heard Titus say and even insulting his predecessor. The Pope did not address these issues directly, despite knowing them thoroughly. He spoke of unity and communion, words that inevitably reach even those priests who have fostered divisions and discord. The visit to the Basilica lasted only a few dozen minutes.
The Pope in Rimini.
“It gives me great pleasure to preside at this Eucharist with you and for you, the Church of Rimini. I do so at the end of an intense day, during which I visited the Republic of San Marino and the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples.”In the Church, the mission of “binding” and “loosing,” while on the one hand concerning the role of those who, in the name of the Lord, are called to exercise authority, on the other describes a style and a task that involves every baptized person: that of welcoming, gathering, receiving, liberating, forgiving, and emancipating all who are prisoners of sin and its consequences, making us just and wise stewards of the goods that God entrusts to us, so that everything may cooperate, in charity, for the good of all.”
During his tour of the fair pavilions, the Pope focused on the word “encounter.”“Let us therefore free coexistence from suspicion, the culture of arrogance, education from ideology, work from the idolatry of profit, technology and finance from the business of death. Starting from the organizations we have created and in which we operate, let us denounce the unjust power relations that lie at the root of poverty and inequality, war and environmental disasters. Let us disarm technological development when it becomes omnipresent and destructive. We need courageous pioneers who, starting from their own change of course, make the conversion that we all need convincing and credible.”
An invitation to the synodal path cannot be missing: “It is a path that also requires the renewal of every associative reality and ecclesial movement. I invite you, both within the Movement of Communion and Liberation and in the particular Churches to which each one belongs, to live this path together: may each one listen, allow themselves to be transformed by the faith of others, and together, under the guidance of the pastors, mature new consciences, new steps, and a courageous obedience to the Holy Spirit. Synodality is not the name of a process, but the nature of a people who, in friendship and encounter with others, feel that they belong only to God. Authority then becomes service, which honors diversity and fosters harmony. This approach is a true sign of the times in this turbulent age.”
The Most Serene Republic of San Marino.
In April 1926, the Holy See and the Most Serene Republic of San Marino formalized diplomatic relations for the first time. This morning, on the day marking the centenary, Leo XIV made a visit. This is the third papal visit in the history of Europe’s oldest republic, after John Paul II in 1982 and Benedict XVI in 2011. Everything will be small, but all formalities have been observed, and before leaving Italy, the Pope sent a telegram to President Sergio Mattarella, who in his reply drew attention to the “dangerous tendencies toward the law of the strongest” in the current international order: a phrase that anticipates, almost by echo, some passages of the speech that Leo XIV would deliver a few hours later. After the military honors in Piazza della Libertà and a private meeting with the Captains Regent in the Hall of the Council of the Twelve, he delivered a speech that transcended the institutional context in which it was given.
“The starting point is the motto of the Most Serene Republic, Libertas, and the phrase attributed to its founder, ‘Let us relinquo vos liberos ab utroque homine.’ Civil freedom depends on personal freedom, on respect for individual conscience: a principle that the Pope anchored not to an abstract category but to a specific name, Thomas More, patron saint of rulers and politicians, and to ‘those who, at this moment, are personally paying for not having betrayed their own conscience.’ The second passage deals with freedom as communion, not as self-sufficiency. The third passage is the most openly political: Leo XIV defined San Marino as a potential ‘laboratory’ of good policies, explicitly comparing it for the first time to his visit to the Principality of Monaco: two microstates used by the Pope as a model of proximity between institutions and citizens. Praising San Marino’s ability to ‘apply the principles of Catholic social doctrine’ without ‘undermining the secular character of the State.’ The speech concludes by invoking the protection of life ‘in all its phases, from conception to natural death.’ For the first time in history, a Pope appeared on the balcony of the Palazzo Pubblico.
Communion and Liberation in Rimini.
The last pope to visit the Rimini Meeting of Communion and Liberation was John Paul II in 1982. This also makes Leo XIV’s visit to the Fair a historic event. Approximately 55,000 people in the pavilions gave the pontiff a standing ovation, and several giant screens installed outside the auditoriums allowed the live broadcast to be followed. The visit continued at the port of Rimini with the celebration of Holy Mass.Love moves, impels, awakens from lethargy, inspires new vocations, and calls us to take risks. Get involved! Open your hearts to true catholicity, expanding your ties beyond any affiliation that is too narrow.” “May the Movement, the groups, and the communities be a springboard from which you can dive into the totality of reality. Resist everything that distances you from brothers and sisters of different cultures, sensibilities, and origins, especially from the poorest. Go out and meet everyone!”
They had been waiting 44 years for a Pope, and the arrival of Leo XIV at the Rimini Meeting became a celebration.The president of Communion and Liberation, Davide Prosperi, second successor of the founder, Father Luigi Giussani, does not hide his emotion when he states: “His presence here is an enormous gift for our journey. A gift we will never forget.” The president of the Meeting, Bernhard Scholz, also declares: “The message the Holy Father has conveyed to us will mark our course.”
Free under Grace.
Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial will publish on September 29 “Free under Grace.” It is presented as the first published collection of writings by Pope Leo XIV (Robert Francis Prevost), a work that brings together unpublished texts personally selected by the Holy Father after his election to the pontificate. Before becoming Pope Leo XIV, Robert Francis Prevost had never published a book. Shortly after assuming the pontificate, he chose these writings to share with readers around the world an intimate look at the spirituality, thought, and pastoral mission that marked his path to the See of Peter. “Man is not defined by what he possesses or by what he knows, but by what he loves,” a reflection of Pope Leo XIV that summarizes one of the central ideas of this book.
Forced resignations of bishops increase under Leo XIV.
Unfortunately, without the usual explanations and indicating that the selection process fails much more than desired, it is not acceptable that we have to accept what comes “by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See,” and shortly afterward, without further explanation, it is withdrawn through the back door “for health reasons.” The pontificate of Pope Francis is abundant in this type of resignations; today’s news is that Leo XIV surpasses him. According to a report, Pope Francis had forced 36 bishops to resign in his last two years and 87 in just over 12 years of pontificate. Leo XIV has forced 21 bishops to resign in the 15 months he has been pontiff and with that figure “surpassed the rate of early resignations of bishops of his predecessor, an indicator to measure the magnitude of sexual abuse and other problems in Catholicism.” Leo is “shattering” Francis’s average, which is about 8 bishops “defenestrated” per year, half that of the previous pontificate.
Two speeds are perceived in this series of forced resignations (never recognized as such, of course); one would say that they came in dribs and drabs at the beginning of Francis’s pontificate, who arrived at a “vineyard devastated by wild boars,” as Benedict XVI defined it, and which finally gained greater momentum as Francis himself became more aware of the serious problem he had before him. In that “second speed,” it seems that today’s Pope Leo XIV played his own role, whom Francis brought from Peru (where he also had to deal with the problem of abuse within the Church) to the Dicastery for Bishops at the beginning of 2023.
Cardinal Prevost outlines the profile of pastor that the Church seeks, and analyzes when, with good will, one realizes that the wrong candidate has been chosen. There is an acceleration in measures against bishops: during 2023, 2024, and the first weeks of 2025, before Francis’s admission to Gemelli, a total of 30 resignations, termed “early” or “forced,” are documented. “It is almost impossible to conceive of any of those thirty ‘premature’ or ‘forced’ resignations of bishops in the last years of Francis’s pontificate without the participation and opinion of then-Bishop Prevost and the current Pope Leo XIV.”
The bishops “purged” by Pope Francis “were concentrated mainly in the Western hemisphere (the United States, Argentina, and Chile represent more than 40% of the total); those of Leo XIV have been mostly European (42.9%) and have increasingly spread through Francophone Africa and East Asia (33.3%).” The forced resignations during Francis’s pontificate “were directed against bishops in office after years of irregular management or cover-up scandals. Under the pontificate of Leo XIV, failures in the selection of candidates have moved to earlier stages: aspirants such as Krzysztof Dukielski (Radom, Poland), Matthew Choi Kwang-hee (Seoul, Korea), and Gerardo Fortich Saco, Jr. (Tagbilaran, Philippines) resigned before their episcopal consecration.”
Pope Francis’s cassock.
He never liked others to wear it; he himself never did without it—we are talking about the cassock. The Basilica of Luján incorporated into its spiritual heritage a cassock that belonged to Pope Francis and that was sent to the shrine by the current pontiff, Leo XIV: “It was he who kindly sent us this cassock that Pope Francis used.” The garment was incorporated into the elements of spiritual value exhibited at the shrine, in the anteroom of Leo XIV’s visit to Argentina. During the Pope’s upcoming visit, the figure of Francis will have a special presence due to the bond he maintained with Our Lady of Luján and with the Basilica. The cassock will thus remain as a symbol of continuity between both pontiffs and of the relationship the Argentine Pope built with the Marian shrine. History is cruel, and in Luján the memory of Pope Francis will be visualized in the rigid cassock that he so disliked for others and which, except for the sad scene of the poncho, he never removed. It is well known: “I see the mote in my brother’s eye, but do not notice the beam in my own.”
The ordained priesthood and synodality.
The recent request of the German Episcopal Conference to the Holy See regarding the possibility of entrusting the homily during the Eucharistic celebration to lay faithful is not a mere disciplinary question, nor can it be reduced to the usual confrontation between “progressives” and “conservatives.” It addresses, at a much deeper level, the Catholic understanding of the liturgy, ordained ministry, and the very nature of the Church. On March 30, 2026, the German episcopate requested an indult from the Holy See that would allow, in exceptional cases that would later become habitual, a duly designated layperson to preach in place of the homily during the Eucharistic celebration. The Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in a letter dated June 17, rejected the request, stating that reserving the homily to the priest or deacon “is not a mere disciplinary norm,” but derives “from the very nature of the liturgy.” The homily, in fact, is an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word and is linked to the munus docendi sacramentally received by the ordained minister.
The issue does not lie simply in who possesses the necessary skills to speak in public or adequately explain the Sacred Scriptures. It is about what the homily is within the celebration and what the ecclesiological foundation of the ministry that delivers it is.
In the Roman response, the homily is not defined simply as a form of catechesis that is habitually entrusted to the priest, but as part of the liturgy itself. The response of the Dicastery does nothing more than reiterate a theological and disciplinary line already consolidated. Not everything that liturgical discipline reserves to the ordained minister is a simple positive disposition susceptible to derogation, since some dispositions express the very sacramental structure of the liturgical action. If the homily were simply an explanation of the biblical readings, it would be difficult to understand why it could not be entrusted to the most competent member of the community: a theologian, a biblical scholar, a catechist, or a properly trained layperson.
A layperson may have more knowledge than a priest about a given biblical discipline. He may possess superior exegetical formation. He may be an excellent communicator. However, none of this transforms his baptismal ministry into ordained ministry. The Catholic Church does not conceive of ordained ministry as a simple administrative or pastoral function that the community can distribute according to criteria of convenience. Ordained ministry has a sacramental root. The priest does not preside at the Eucharist because the community has democratically designated him as its representative; he presides by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders and the sacramental configuration he has received.
The distinction between the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood cannot be eliminated in the name of a generic participation of all that does not imply ministerial indistinction. A practice may be widespread, ancient, pastorally appreciated, and even rooted in the sensibility of a community without thereby possessing the capacity to modify the nature of a liturgical act. The Church does not receive its sacramental form from the sum of local customs.
The perverse process we are experiencing follows this order: some practice is introduced for pastoral reasons; the practice is consolidated, its diffusion generates a new sensibility, that sensibility is perceived as an authentic expression of the community, and the universal authority is asked to legally recognize what local practice has already culturally normalized. The fact that something is done by many does not prove that that thing is theologically in agreement with the nature of the Church.
It is here that the discussion about the homily becomes a question about the nature of synodality. Synodality, in its Catholic sense, cannot mean that every element of the Church’s constitution is permanently subject to negotiable conditions. The Church listens, discerns, dialogues, explores, and walks together; but it is not sacramentally produced through the consent of the participants. We run the risk of transforming synodal discernment into a deliberative process in which the community, through participatory procedures, ends up assuming the role of the ultimate source of revelation. It is the difference between a Church that discerns what it has received and a Church that believes it can progressively decide what it must become.
To affirm that a layperson cannot deliver the homily at Mass does not mean affirming that a layperson is a second-class Christian. The Church recognizes the real responsibility of the lay faithful in evangelization, catechesis, Christian witness, and mission in the world. The layperson is not less Christian for not being a priest. The priest does not cease to be Christian simply for being a priest. But priest and layperson are not interchangeable, because Baptism and Orders do not confer the same ministry. The fundamental question is not whether a layperson is capable of explaining the Gospel. Of course he is. Nor is it whether a layperson can evangelize. Without a doubt they can and must. The question is what it means to proclaim and interpret the Word within the sacramental action of the Eucharist. Does the liturgy receive its form from the sacramental nature of the Church, or can its form be progressively modified by the practice of the community?
“And you, who do you say that I am?”
Good reading.