Vatican City - “Certainly not men defined by an ever growing list of tasks or by the pressure of results, but men configured to Christ.” With these words, Pope Leo XIV has chosen to accompany the Presbyterate of the Archdiocese of Madrid on the eve of the presbyteral assembly “Convivium” (9-10 February 2026), opting for the most direct, fatherly, least bureaucratic form: a letter to the priests. It comes at a moment in the Church marked by fatigue, by urgencies that devour any long view, and by a culture that often makes it harder even to understand one another on the essential words. Leo XIV does not paint an idyllic picture of the priesthood, nor does he pretend not to see its critical points. The letter sets out clearly his vision of the presbyter, and even more, the way that ministry has shaped him and continues to guide his gaze: not theory, but lived experience. That is why those words, those prompts, those attentions matter today, also as a key for reading with greater clarity the events that, in these very days, risk choking social media and the pages of newspapers.
The Pope calls for an educated gaze
The Pope asks for depth, because a Church that lives on the surface ends up consuming its own ministers. His starting point is pastoral and human at once: he recognises the concrete condition of priests, the weight of “complex situations”, and a silent dedication that never makes the news. His aim, however, is not generic comfort; it is direction. He asks that the assembly not become an exercise in management, but a place where one learns again to look into reality with discernment: “Not to stop at immediate diagnoses or at the management of urgencies, but to learn to read in depth the time we are given to live.” Here is the first methodological choice: to educate the gaze, to avoid shortcuts, to recognise what God brings about “often in a silent and discreet way”. Leo XIV speaks of secularisation, of the polarisation of public discourse, and of the reduction of the person to ideological categories. Above all, he touches a fact of daily priestly life: the fracture of shared language. “Many of the conceptual assumptions that for centuries facilitated the transmission of the Christian message have ceased to be evident and, not infrequently, even comprehensible… words no longer mean the same thing and… the first proclamation can no longer be taken for granted.” It is a photograph that drops from abstraction to the parish desk: it is not enough to keep doing what has always been done, because the common ground on which the communication of faith once rested is often missing.
The Pope, however, does not hand his priests a depressed narrative. Within the crisis, he identifies an opening: a new restlessness, especially among the young. He describes it in three lines that sound like a spiritual diagnosis of modernity: “The absolutising of wellbeing has not brought the happiness that was expected; a freedom unmoored from truth has not generated the fullness that was promised; and material progress, on its own, has not managed to fill the deep desire of the human heart.”
Leo XIV does not set the Church and the world up as two opposing blocs. He reads the world, acknowledges the satiety and the emptiness produced by many failed promises, and from there draws a responsibility: “For the priest, this is not a time for retreat or resignation, but for faithful presence and generous availability.” Within this framework comes the heart of the message: what kind of priests are needed in Madrid and in the universal Church at this time. The answer is theological, with immediate practical consequences: “men configured to Christ”, able to sustain ministry “from a living relationship with Him, nourished by the Eucharist and expressed in a pastoral charity marked by the sincere gift of self”.
Leo XIV avoids the temptation to redraw priestly identity as though it were a role to be updated. He asks for a return to the centre: to “propose again, with renewed intensity, the priesthood in its most authentic core, being alter Christus, letting Him shape our life, unify our heart”. To make this perspective visible, the Pope chooses an image of striking force: the cathedral. He says it plainly: “Allow me today to speak to you about the priesthood by turning to an image you know well: your Cathedral. Not to describe a building, but to learn from it.” From here, the letter becomes a kind of spiritual itinerary, where each architectural element turns into a criterion for presbyteral life.
A spiritual itinerary for life
The façade, for instance, is the place of visibility: “So too the priest does not live in order to put himself on show, but neither does he live in order to hide.” A priest’s life must be recognisable, not as self promotion, but as a sign that points to Another: “The façade does not exist for itself; it leads within… the priest is never an end in himself… he is called to point to God.” Then there is the threshold, not a moralistic barrier but a necessary separation that safeguards the sacred. Leo XIV links it to the concrete way a priest inhabits the world: “in the world, without being of the world”. Here he places celibacy, poverty and obedience, not as sterile subtractions, but as a form that makes belonging possible: “not as a negation of life, but as a concrete form that allows the priest to belong entirely to God without ceasing to walk among men.” The depth lies in the implicit reversal: these are not identity accessories, but conditions that make a total dedication intelligible.
The cathedral as a common home opens onto one of the most urgent passages of our time: presbyteral fraternity. In a season in which many priests experience solitude and vulnerability, and in which, among not a few presbyters, there is also space for figures who feed division, sometimes men who reached ordination without a serious seminary formation, supported by bishops who lacked prudence, then left free to sow discord, spread calumnies against brother priests and destabilise communities, to the point of being removed from their dioceses because of their disruptive conduct, Leo XIV does not settle for a pious wish. He goes to the point and delivers a clear criterion: “My sons, no one should feel exposed or alone in the exercise of ministry: stand together against the individualism that impoverishes the heart and weakens the mission!” It is a principle of pastoral governance: the Church, “especially towards her priests”, must be “a home that welcomes, that protects, and that does not abandon”.
At this point an honest examination of conscience is unavoidable: how many priests have we left alone precisely when they were unwell? How many, caught in difficult situations or forced to undergo medical treatment, have experienced the Church as an absent mother, at times even judgemental, rather than as a welcoming family, able to support without humiliating and to accompany without suspicion. The letter speaks to Madrid, but also beyond Madrid: without real bonds among priests, mission loses substance, because first the person weakens, and then the service.
The columns then become the symbol of what holds everything up: the apostolic foundation. Here too the Pope is precise, almost as if to defuse the anxiety of constant reinvention: priestly life does not rest on individual intuitions, but “on the apostolic witness… in the living Tradition of the Church, safeguarded by the Magisterium.” This reminder does not close the door to questions; it prevents them from becoming unmoored. He warns that, by remaining anchored to that foundation, one avoids building “on the sand of partial interpretations or contingent emphases”, choosing instead the rock that precedes and surpasses the minister.
The next step restores the true centre of ministry: the sacraments. Before the presbyterium, the Pope notes, the cathedral shows places that are “discreet but essential”: the baptismal font and the confessional. The Pontiff recalls: “In the sacraments, grace manifests itself as the most real and effective strength of priestly ministry.” From this conviction flows a clear mandate: “celebrate the sacraments with dignity and faith”, because there “the true force that builds up the Church” is at work. Yet Leo XIV keeps the spiritual itinerary as an invitation addressed to priests everywhere: “do not forget that you are not the source, but the channel.” Precisely as a channel, the priest always needs to return to the spring: “For this reason, do not neglect to confess, to return always to the mercy that you proclaim.”
On the way towards the centre, the side chapels offer another insight: the plurality of charisms and spiritualities. The cathedral, for all its diversity, preserves a common orientation: “none is turned in on itself, none breaks the harmony of the whole.” In the Church too, Leo XIV suggests, variety is fruitful when it remains oriented to the centre and does not become self referential fragmentation. It is a concrete way of asking for unity without uniformity, communion without erasing differences.
Finally, the centre: altar and tabernacle, what the Pope calls the source of meaning and of ministry. “On the altar, through your hands, the sacrifice of Christ is made present… in the tabernacle remains the One whom you have offered.” From here comes the appeal that draws the whole argument to its deepest point: a priest’s quality is decided in prayer and in adoration, because there pastoral charity is born, and the capacity to endure trials takes shape. “Be adorers, men of deep prayer, and teach your people to do the same.” Prevost proposes a discipline of the heart that unifies life and ministry, preventing the priest from becoming a functionary of the sacred.
The letter closes with a brief and radical charge, taken from Saint John of Avila, patron of the Spanish clergy: “Be all of you His.” It is the most demanding synthesis: total belonging, without shortcuts. Leo XIV accompanies it with an imperative that leaves no room for sentimentality: “Be saints!”
In a time when shared language has weakened and the first proclamation can no longer be presumed, the Pope reminds us that the answer lies in returning to what makes ministry true, credible, fruitful: Christ, the Eucharist, the sacraments, fraternity, the living Tradition, adoration.
Fr. C.B.
Silere non possum