In these six months of Pope Leo’s Pontificate, from his very first address to the Cardinals, we have grasped some key pillars:

• the centrality of the proclamation of the Gospel; the unity of the Church;
• the exercise of collegiality in synodality;
• the promotion of a “disarmed and disarming” peace in a world which, on the contrary, trains itself in the use of force, fills its arsenals and consequently empties its schools, hospitals and granaries;
• attention to the dignity of the human person from its beginning to its end, wholly to be loved, cared for and safeguarded, always and for everyone.

Around these themes also revolve the pastoral concerns he entrusted to us on 17 June: we feel spurred on by his invitation to look to the future with serenity, making courageous choices.

I feel, and we all feel, both the responsibility and the opportunity of this.

“No one will be able to prevent you from staying close to the people, from sharing life, from walking with the least, from serving the poor. No one will be able to prevent you from proclaiming the Gospel, and it is the Gospel that we are sent to bring, because this is what everyone, we first of all, needs in order to live well and be happy” (Leo XIV, Address, 17 June 2025).

In his address to the Diplomatic Corps, through the triad peace–justice–truth, he offered a global reading of contemporary crises: protection of religious freedom, revitalisation of multilateral diplomacy, criticism of the arms race, the centrality of the family as a “small but true society” (Leo XIII, Rerum novarum, 9), and attention to the vulnerable as a criterion for public policy.

Sent into the harvest of today’s world

As Churches in Italy, we feel today more strongly the passionate call to go into the great harvest of this world, to respond to the many who desire to know the name of the unknown God, to share the Bread that satisfies, to proclaim the Gospel of eternal life to those who, groping in the dark, seek hope, to tend the sufferings of a crowd weary and worn out because they are without a shepherd.

Not to judge and therefore inevitably condemn, but to look with the eyes of Jesus, the eyes of compassion, in order to be leaven of fraternity.

Our society has changed: the “near” are fewer than in the past, the “far” have grown in number.

Distance, however, is no longer hostility as before, but more and more indifference, or living naturally in a world that is different from ours, from that of our words or our circles, which have narrowed.

We are consoled by the faith of so many believers, but we feel the wound of so many who are far away.

We would like our conversation – of priests, of the faithful, of all of us – to become broader.

There is a spirit of searching, often stifled in lives that are not simple, weighed down more and more by loneliness, the absence of family support, and economic and life difficulties.

At times, almost without reason, the habit of living far from the Church takes root, focused on oneself and one’s own problems. We are the Church of all and we would like to be so even more, certainly with respect, also for these people.

This is the moment
when the proclamation
of the Gospel
must be more luminous,
like a lamp
burning in the night.

How beautiful is that programme that Saint Paul VI outlined during the Council:

“The Church makes herself word; the Church makes herself message; the Church makes herself conversation” (Ecclesiam suam, 67).

And he went on to say that there is a frame of mind to be created among us: I would say a friendly, missionary frame of mind, capable of listening, of fidelity over time, of patient waiting and welcome. Not a resigned frame of mind, because history is full of surprises and many signs of interest seem to me to be surfacing.

Saint Paul VI said:

“The state of mind of one who feels within himself the weight of the apostolic mandate, of one who realises that he can no longer separate his own salvation from the search for that of others, of one who is constantly studying how to place the message of which he is the bearer into the circulation of human discourse” (Ecclesiam suam, 82).

Let us not forget that for everyone this is a painful, chaotic, distressing “change of era”, repeatedly evoked by Pope Francis.

Beyond Christendom

By saying that “Christendom is over” we mean that our society is no longer naturally Christian.

But this must not frighten us!

As Charles Taylor observes,

“the change I want to define and describe is the one that takes us from a society in which it was practically impossible not to believe in God to one in which faith, even for the most convinced believer, is one human possibility among others.”

The end of Christendom does not at all mark the disappearance of faith, but the passage to a time in which faith is no longer taken for granted by the social context, but is a personal and conscious adherence to the Gospel.

If Christendom is over,
Christianity certainly is not:
what is fading is
an order of power and culture,
not the living power
of the Gospel.

Let us think of the society of Antioch at the time of the nascent Church: believers personally committed themselves to bringing and communicating their experience of faith.

If, therefore, Christendom is over, Christianity certainly is not: what is fading is an order of power and culture, not the living power of the Gospel.

For this reason, we must not be afraid but renew our commitment to be joyful witnesses of the Risen One.

We must not become mediocre, frightened, fearful in our spiritual parenting and in assuming responsibility, but rather more evangelical and more Christian!

Reading the signs of this time

I gladly recall again Saint Paul VI in the allocution he delivered during the last public session of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, whose sixtieth anniversary will soon be commemorated (7 December 1965):

“A time which everyone recognises is directed more toward the conquest of the kingdom of earth than of the kingdom of heaven; a time in which forgetfulness of God becomes habitual and seems, wrongly, to be suggested by scientific progress; […] a time, moreover, in which the expressions of the spirit reach peaks of irrationality and desolation; a time, finally, which records, even in the great ethnic religions of the world, disturbances and declines never before experienced.”

Today’s believer
is no longer the guardian
of a Christian world,
but the pilgrim of a hope
that continues
to make its way
into hearts.

Let us not fear, then, this time which seems to take space away from faith: perhaps the opposite is true. This is the moment when the proclamation of the Gospel must be more luminous, like a lamp burning in the night.

Today’s believer is no longer the guardian of a Christian world, but the pilgrim of a hope that continues to make its way into hearts.

In this horizon, the end of Christendom is not a defeat but a kairos: the opportunity to return to what is essential, to the freedom of the beginnings, to that “yes” spoken out of love, without fear and without guarantees.

The Gospel does not need a world that protects it, but hearts that embody it.

It is in this situation of “vulnerability” that the Church rediscovers her strength: not that of power, often presumed, as in certain reconstructions of the Church’s influence, but that of love which gives itself without fear.

“A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church the world needs today” (Leo XIV, Dilexi te, 120).

A Church that sets
no limits to love,
that knows
no enemies to fight
but only men and women
to love,
is the Church
the world needs today.

Serving the Gospel in freedom

The priority is certainly to hand on the faith, to make it alive, attractive, to help it be discovered, hidden in the expectations and desires of the heart, and to help people recover its words and practice. This is our horizon and our passion.

As we look at so many “spiritually homeless” people, we feel that their condition, often full of suffering, is a question addressed to us: to build houses of prayer, of fraternity with God and neighbour, where one can experience the Church’s motherhood and live listening to the word that becomes life.

We have no political ambitions or desire to gain positions of power!

We must not ingratiate ourselves with anyone, nor with any political force, nor do we have any consent to win.

We can only ask for much political love, especially from those who draw inspiration from the beautiful and deeply human social doctrine of the Church.

What animates us, with all our personal limitations, is love for the good of the Italian people and for the good of the whole world.

Our only ambition – and may God help us to realise it – is to serve the Gospel of Jesus among these people.

This is our freedom: dedication to the service of the Church and of the people.

• A translated extract from the General Assembly address by Cardinal Mateo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna and President of the CEI, to (Assisi, 17-20 November 2025).
• The full address: il dono di una strada per costruire comunità (The gift of a road to building community).
• Pope Leo was present at the meeting.