(s.m.) “To move aside so that Christ may remain, to make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified.” Right from his debut as successor of Peter, Pope Leo has made no secret of placing Christ – and Him alone – at the center of his mission, his service, his life.
And he wants the unity of the Church to also be recomposed around Christ, just as in his episcopal motto taken from St. Augustine: “in Illo Uno Unum,” or “in the One Christ we are one.”
The following is the assessment of the first 100 days of Leo XIV’s pontificate that Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the archdiocese of New York and a renowned theologian, published in English on July 17 on “Public Discourse — The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute.”
Imbelli carried out his studies in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University and in the United States at Yale University. He taught theology at Boston College, and a selection of his writings was recently published under the title “Christ Brings All Newness: Essays, Reviews, and Reflections.” He contributed to “L’Osservatore Romano” during the years it was edited by Giovanni Maria Vian.
His turn, with the thanks of Settimo Cielo, which will resume publication after a short summer break.
(In the photo of July 3, Pope Leo with the children of the Vatican Summer Center, including 300 Ukrainians).
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Centered in Christ: Reflections on Pope Leo’s First 100 Days
by Robert P. Imbelli
In these first months of Leo XIV’s pontificate, initial impressions have often been based on matters of style, manifest in garments and gestures. Thus, his first appearance on the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica, wearing mozzetta and papal stole, was rightly taken as a decided contrast to his predecessor, Pope Francis, who shunned both. So too, his decisions to dwell in the Apostolic Palace and to spend some vacation time in the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo mark a distancing in style from his predecessor who not only avoided these dwellings, but studiously neglected vacations.
Such “stylistic” departures, while not decisive, are still significant. They suggest that unlike Francis’s penchant to bend the office to his person, Leo appears bent on accommodating his person to the office he has assumed. In many ways this “kenotic” disposition reflects his pledge, at the opening Mass with the cardinals after his election, “to move aside so that Christ may remain, to make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified.”
Even the choice of name manifests, in my view, this desire to let his person be subordinated to the office. No doubt the choice of “Leo” bespeaks a commitment to both the social and intellectual sensibilities of Leo XIII. But it also implicitly counters his predecessor’s idiosyncratic impulse in selecting the never previously employed “Francis.”
Perhaps even more importantly, his “style” consistently expresses genuine appreciation and gratitude for the contributions of others. To a frankly dispirited Roman clergy he spoke words of encouragement: “I would like to help you, to walk with you, so that each person may regain serenity in his own ministry.” He commended the members of the papal diplomatic corps, saying: “The network of Pontifical Representations is always active and operative. This is for me a cause for great appreciation and gratitude. I say this thinking certainly of the dedication and organization, but, even more so, of the motivations that guide you, the pastoral style that should characterize you, the spirit of faith that inspires us.” And the spontaneous admission made to the diplomats seems a feature of all his presentations: “what I said, I said not at the suggestion of anyone, but because I deeply believe it: your role, your ministry, is irreplaceable.”
But questions of “style” also set a distinctive tone to Leo’s homilies. A friend has remarked that a noteworthy feature is their “uncluttered” style. There is a directness to his words, unalloyed by rhetorical flourishes and “obiter dicta.” This very directness makes the crucial content of his presentations appear with remarkable clarity. So, the style happily subserves the content.
And that content is admirably Christocentric. The appeal to Christ never appears “pro forma,” a rote feature of Church-speak. It serves, rather, as the “cantus firmus” upon which the whole musical composition is based. Pondering Leo’s sermons and talks is to hear variations on Paul’s ecstatic confession: “for me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). And, like Paul, he rejoices in proclaiming and sharing the pearl of great price with others.
Already in his inaugural homily, preached in a packed Saint Peter’s Square, Leo said: “We want to say to the world, with humility and joy: Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome his word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to his offer of love and become his one family: In the one Christ, we are one.”
A month later, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, he quoted and made his own Vatican II’s teaching: that “in the sacrament of the Eucharistic bread, the unity of believers, who form one body in Christ, is both expressed and achieved. All are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we come, through whom we live, and towards whom we direct our lives.”
At the many more intimate encounters of this Jubilee Year, the melody remains the same. So to the seminarians of Northern Italy, Leo urged: “Keep your gaze always fixed on Jesus (Heb 12:2) always nourishing your relationship of friendship with him.” And he reminded a conference on families: “What drives the Church in her pastoral and missionary outreach is precisely the desire to go out as a ‘fisher’ of humanity, in order to save it from the waters of evil and death through an encounter with Christ.” And to a group of students and teachers from various European countries Leo said that, in a culture too often inundated with sounds, they should strive to listen with their hearts, “allowing God’s grace to strengthen your faith in Jesus (cf. Col 2:7), so that you might more readily share that gift with others.”
The striking impression conveyed in these and Pope Leo’s other exhortations is that of a renewed Christological concentration that is well summed up in his episcopal motto: “in Illo Uno Unum,” or “in the One Christ we are one.” Like so much of his theological and spiritual sensibility, the motto’s source is the great Augustine of Hippo, patron of his own Augustinian Order. And the promise going forward is a recentering of the Church upon its Lord in a manner that is not perfunctory and merely notional, but consistent, comprehensive, and passionate: “in Illo Uno.”
It may appear strange to suggest that the promise is to recenter the Church upon its Lord. Has that not been the case? Sadly, many indications point to what I have called a “Christological amnesia” in too many quarters of contemporary Catholicism.
The former preacher of the papal household, Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, has, over the years, lamented that in North Atlantic Catholicism one often receives the impression “that Christ is not a reality:” “etsi Christus non daretur.” And just a few months ago the well-known Brazilian priest and theologian Clodovis Boff issued a heartfelt appeal to the Bishops of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM). He wrote, in a trenchant criticism of their recent message, “One can’t help but conclude that the Church’s primary concern on our continent is not the cause of Christ and the salvation he has won for us, but rather social issues like justice, peace, and ecology—which you repeat in your message like a worn-out refrain.”
He then issued a striking call to renewal: “It is, therefore, time—long past time—to bring Christ out of the shadows and into the light. It’s time to restore his absolute primacy, both in the Church ‘ad intra’ —in personal consciences, spirituality, and theology — and ‘ad extra’—in evangelization, ethics, and politics. Our Church in Latin America urgently needs to return to her true center, to her ‘first love’ (Rev. 2:4).” Boff is by no means advocating a withdrawal of the Church from “the world,” but that the Church assume its true mission to be a transformative force founded on its defining Christological nature and identity. Boff calls for “a broad and transformative Christocentrism that leavens and renews everything: every person, the whole Church, and society at large.”
Does Pope Leo sense the crisis outlined here? Does he have the personal and theological resources not only to critique this Christological deficit in the Church, but to guide and inspire a true Christological renewal? On this 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, no questions are more pressing for the Christian witness in the world.
There are, indeed, promising signs. In a Mass, celebrated at Castel Gandolfo, for “the Care of Creation,” Leo purposely chose to preach on the Gospel account of the disciples, awe-struck at Jesus’s calming of the sea. And he lifts up the Christological question they pose: “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt. 8:27). He pointedly insists: “We too should be asking ourselves” this Christological question of him whose “power does not break down, but builds up. It does not destroy, but calls into being and bestows new life.”
Leo finds in the Christological hymn of the Letter to the Colossians the tradition’s full-throated response. He says: “So, we can ask ourselves once more: “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt. 8:27). The hymn from the Letter to the Colossians that we have heard seems to answer this very question: ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created’ (Col. 1:15–16).”
Moreover, in his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation to be held on September 1, Leo again stresses the distinctive Christological basis of the Christian commitment to environmental justice. “For believers it is also a duty born of faith, since the universe reflects the face of Jesus Christ, in whom all things were created and redeemed.” Invoking two of the more controversial encyclicals of Pope Francis, Laudato si’ and Fratelli Tutti, he both confirms them and provides their common Christological foundation.
One awaits, of course, Leo’s first major document, whether an apostolic exhortation or even an encyclical to gauge more fully his theological and pastoral vision, and to indicate the direction in which he hopes to guide the Church. However, it is only realistic to acknowledge a possible constraint placed on him in these first months of his papacy. It is the “global synodal process” launched by his predecessor and now taking on further impetus due to a document signed by Pope Francis during his last hospitalization. That document provides for an elongated three-year process, beginning this past June and slated to culminate in a little defined “ecclesial assembly” to be held at the Vatican in October 2028.
There are two potential pitfalls here: one regards governance, the other theology. As to the first, the danger is that a semi-autonomous bureaucracy, the General Secretariat of the Synod already in place and functioning, risks acting, in effect, as an alternative magisterium. As to the second, both the process and the documents thus far produced by the synods manifestly lack that robust Christocentrism so evident in Leo’s homilies and presentations. Absent from the synodal vision is the urgency of the exhortation of Saint Cyprian, dear to Pope Leo: “Prefer nothing whatever to Christ!”
Let me frame the theological issue in a way that I hope is both succinct and suggestive. The crucial question confronting the Church in these confused and polarized times of a post-postmodernity is whether the Spirit is to be understood in function of Christ or Christ understood in function of the Spirit.
The latter is the option of a theological liberalism that implicitly or explicitly seeks to “go beyond” Christ to meet the supposed exigencies of the present and future. The former, with Nicaea, sees in Christ the “novissimus,” his unsurpassable newness: God’s incarnation and full revelation to humanity. For the orthodox tradition we do not go beyond Jesus Christ, but strive to “catch up” to him, to become more fully incorporated into him so that “Christ may be all in all” (Col. 3:11).
All we have seen and heard indicates that the crucified and risen Christ who sends the Spirit is the very heart of Leo’s spirituality and theology. Saint Augustine’s spirituality and theology have clearly formed and continue to nurture him. Yet, in a mid-June catechesis in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Leo invoked another notable figure, thereby reinforcing his Christocentric view. He spoke appreciatively of the second-century father of the Church, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus famously opposed the feverish gnostic heresies of his age, with their reductive Christology and disdain for the flesh, the “caro.” Irenaeus famously articulated the “regula fidei,” the rule of faith that serves as authentic interpretation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the incarnate Son of the Father.
Leo has called Irenaeus “one of the greatest of Christian theologians,” who in his person bore witness to the common faith of the undivided Church both East and West. And Leo underscored Irenaeus’s relevance to us. He said: “in a fragmented world Irenaeus learned how to think better, bringing his attention ever more deeply to Jesus. Irenaeus became a cantor of his person, indeed of his flesh [un cantore della sua persona, anzi della sua carne]. Indeed, he recognized that in Jesus Christ, what seems to conflict is reconciled in unity. Jesus is not a wall that separates, but a door that unites us. We must remain in him and distinguish reality from ideologies.” And Leo concluded: “Irenaeus, teacher of unity, teaches us not to oppose, but to connect. There is intelligence not where there is separation, but where there is connection. To distinguish is useful, but to divide, never. Jesus is the eternal life in our midst: he brings opposites together and makes communion possible.”
And the Spirit of communion, of “koinonia,” is no anonymous spirit, but the Spirit of the “one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.” So, the Fathers of Nicaea. So, Leo.
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.