There is a feature that stands out when one reads attentively the words addressed by Leo XIV to the cardinals, and it is their absence of emphasis. No muscular tone, no rhetoric of command. The Pope does not seek to impose himself: he accompanies. He does not convene in order to occupy a space, but to open a process. And it is precisely in this meekness that the heart of his address is at stake.
The thread running through the intervention, discreet yet continuous, is that of attraction. Not a communication strategy, nor a sociological category, but a spiritual law that concerns the very way in which the Church stands in the world. Leo XIV does not construct a new idea: he receives it from the Tradition of the Church and follows its development through the centuries, until finding it also expressed in the Second Vatican Council and then taken up by previous pontificates. And yet the way in which he relaunches it says something distinctive: a signature that speaks of his style, his governance, the form of authority he intends to exercise. The Church, the Pope recalls, is not an autonomous source of light. It is a reflected reality. The light comes from elsewhere, and only if the Church accepts remaining exposed to that light can it become a place of orientation for others. This is a decisive passage, because it shifts the centre of gravity: it is not ecclesial efficiency that renders the proclamation credible, but transparency. Not the strength of organisation, but the quality of the relationship with Christ.
When Leo XIV insists that “it is not the Church that attracts but Christ”, he is implicitly establishing a critical distance from every form of ecclesial self-sufficiency. Attraction does not arise from what the Church produces, but from what it allows to pass through. It is an image consistent with that “vital sap” which flows through the fragile channels of the Christian community only if these are not clogged by the claim to be protagonists. Here the Pope explicitly takes up a theological conviction that Benedict XVI had formulated with his splendid style: at the origin of being Christian there is neither an idea nor a moral choice, but an encounter that changes the horizon of life.
It is within this framework that the insistence on love acquires real density. Not as an indistinct feeling, but as a force that urges, that presses, that holds together. Leo XIV cites Paul: Caritas Christi urget nos. Love not as an ornament of ecclesial life, but as a principle of cohesion. From here comes the phrase that sounds almost like a criterion of verification: “Unity attracts, division disperses.” It is not a slogan; rather, it is a diagnosis. Where the Church fragments, it loses gravitational force; where it gathers again around what is essential, it becomes once more significant.
This explains why the Pope links attraction not to the outside, but first and foremost to the internal life of the Church. The commandment of mutual love does not have the tone of a simple ascetical counsel: for Leo XIV it is a true missionary condition. And it is no coincidence that, in his nascent magisterium, he repeatedly returns to Saint Augustine: founding father of the Order to which he belongs and a decisive figure in his theological and spiritual journey. Augustine expresses it with an almost physical concreteness: the members remain united because they are bound by a gentle bond; only thus can they be the body of a Head. When that bond loosens, communion frays and the body, inevitably, disintegrates. In this perspective one must also read the choice not to ask the Consistory for a final text. Leo XIV does not wish to “turn out” documents; he seeks a method. He speaks of “conversation”, of real listening, of essentiality. Non multa sed multum. Few words, but inhabited. Prevost wants to start again from relationships, from real listening. It is a choice that points to a broader vision of ecclesial time: a time not to be conquered, but inhabited. Not dominated, but crossed together. It is significant that, in what emerged from the groups, this category of inhabiting emerged as an alternative both to utopia and to disenchantment: to inhabit time means accepting reality, with its wounds and its contradictions, without ceasing to seek a shared meaning.
In the end, what strikes one about the words spoken by Leo XIV during the Consistory is that he does not promise quick solutions nor institutional shortcuts. He proposes a posture: to remain under the action of a force that precedes and surpasses. A Church that renounces holding the light for itself, and precisely for this reason becomes capable of orienting. It is a meekness that does not retreat, but digs. And perhaps it is precisely here that something new is at stake, not only for the present, but for the future of the Church.
Marco Felipe Perfetti
Editor-in-Chief, Silere non possum