Leo XIV asks the Church to be open to change

Pope Leo XIV warned this Sunday of the importance of “escape from the danger of a tired and static faith” and called on the Church to open itself “to change” and seek new paths of evangelization.

On the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, patron saints of Rome, the Pope presided over Mass in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, where he made a new appeal for the unity of the Church.

“Let us commit ourselves to making our diversities a laboratory of unity and communion, of fraternity and reconciliation, so that each person in the Church, with their personal history, learns to walk together with others,” he appealed.

Leo XIV warned that “there is always the risk of falling into routine, into ritualism, into pastoral schemes that are repeated without being renewed and without capturing the challenges of the present”.

For this reason, he urged the Church to allow itself to be “questioned by events, by encounters and by the concrete situations of communities, to seek new paths for evangelization based on the problems and questions raised by brothers and sisters in faith”.

He also stressed that, if Christians do not want to be reduced “to a legacy of the past, as Pope Francis has so often warned, “it is important to escape the danger of a tired and static faith.”

To members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who also attended the Mass, the Pope asked “that the Lord grant peace to his people.”

In today's ceremony, as tradition dictates, the pontiff blessed the archbishops and bishops appointed last year who on this day received the pallium, a white wool stole with six black silk crosses that are placed on the chest and shoulders and are a sign of the pastoral mission entrusted to each one and of communion with the successor of Peter.