Pope Leo XIV has called for a genuine and just peace in Ukraine and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
He made the call in his first Sunday noon blessing at St. Peter’s Basilica to an estimated 100,000 people
He said, “I, too, address the world’s great powers by repeating the ever-present call ‘never again war.”
It was the first time that Pope Leo XIV had returned to the loggia since he first appeared to the world on Thursday evening following his election as Pope, the first from the United States. There he delivered a message of peace.
Pix: Pope Leo X-&’&
Pope was picking up the papal tradition of offering a Sunday blessing at noon, but with some twists. Whereas his predecessors delivered the greeting from the studio window of the Apostolic Palace, off to the side of the piazza, Pope Leo C went to the very center of the square and the heart of the church.
Part of that was logistics: He didn’t have access to the papal apartments in the palace until later Sunday, when they were unsealed for the first time since Pope aFrancis’ death.
Pope Leo XIV also offered a novelty by singing the Regina Coeli prayer, a Latin prayer said during the Easter season which recent popes would usually just recite and harked back to the old Latin Mass of the past.
Traditionalists and conservatives, many of whom felt alienated by Pope Francis’ reforms and loose liturgical style, have been looking for gestures hinting at Leo’s priorities. Some have expressed cautious optimism at the very least with a return to a traditional style that Leo exhibited on Thursday night, when he emerged for the first time wearing the formal red cape of the papacy that Francis had eschewed.
He followed up on Saturday by wearing the brocaded papal stole during a visit to a Marian sanctuary south of Rome. There, he knelt in reverence and greeted the crowd surrounded by priests in long cassocks usually favored by conservatives.
Author: Maureen Ikpeama