Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent is just around the corner, on Feb. 18. Pope Leo XIV offered an answer to Christians’ annual question: what will I give up this Lent?
The pope released his message for Lent Feb. 13 with a plea to abstain “from words that offend and hurt our neighbor.”
This Lent, he urges “disarming our language, avoiding harsh words and rash judgment,” and instead strive “to measure our words and cultivate kindness and respect,” letting words of hatred “give way to words of hope and peace.”
Read God’s Word, Have Dialogue ‘Between Friends’
Pope Leo continued his weekly catechesis on the Word of God this week, saying “the ultimate purpose of reading and meditating” on the Word of God is “to get to know Christ and, through Him, to enter into a relationship with God, a relationship that can be understood as a conversation, a dialogue.”
Such a dialogue “between friends” takes place when reading Scripture “with an inner attitude of prayer,” he said, echoing the Second Vatican Council’s document Dei Verbum.
Police: Perform Duties with “Upright Conscience’
Greeting Italian national police officers in Rome Feb. 13, the pope encouraged them to perform their duties with “upright conscience,” faithful to their professional principles and as Christians, “faithful to the Gospel.”
Build Unity in Europe, Pray for the Sick
The pope invoked during his weekly General Audience the patron saints of Europe, SS. Cyril and Methodius whose feast is Feb. 14. He invited the people of the continent to build a new unity in Europe, capable of overcoming religious and political tensions, divisions and antagonisms.
Pope Leo also marked the World Day of the Sick Feb. 11, and noted that his representative this week visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace in the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, which he had once led as bishop, for the occasion.
World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly
The pope announced that the words of the prophet Isaiah, “I will never forget you” (Is 49:15), is the theme for the Sixth World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly to be celebrated in the Church June 26. That is the feast of SS. Joachim and Anne, traditionally held to be the grandparents of Jesus.
Church Leaders Address World’s Crises
Various Church leaders in the world recognized events this week including:
- 53 migrants who lost their lives in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya, among them babies;
- attacks in Nigeria in predominantly Christian areas left at least 160 people dead;
- the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Service of Charity sent generators and other aid to Ukrainians freezing in cold winter conditions due to continued Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power grid, depriving people of electricity and heat;
- Australia’s Catholic bishops encouraged people to work toward the common good amid the high cost-of-living crisis in that country;
- despite a ceasefire in Gaza, two United Nations aid workers were killed in an Israeli air strike in response to an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas;
- in Chicago, Cardinal Blaise Cupich condemned a “viciously racist” image posted on social media by President Donald Trump.
Archbishop Calls for Renewal of Politics in US
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori released a pastoral letter this week on the political crisis in the United States, one that is not merely institutional but moral and spiritual.
The archbishop wrote that authentic political life depends on recovering a clear vision of the human person—created in the image of God, endowed with inviolable dignity, and called into responsibility for others.
He called for a renewal of politics animated by virtue, sustained by moral imagination, and grounded in the conviction that charity and truth belong together.
Read the pastoral letter here: In Charity & Truth: Toward a Renewed Political Culture.
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