By Kolawole Ojebisi
The newly elected Pope Leo XIV has urged the Catholic Church to keep the fire of its faith burning in a world that’s consumed by the pursuit of pleasures, wealth and other trappings of modern civilization.
Leo XIV maintained that a lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life among other negative consequences.
The Pointiff, a fomer missionary in Peru, also admonished the Catholic Church to rekindle its missionary zeal in readiness to take the Gospel to the places where people are averse to the teachings of Christ .
Leo XIV gave this charge in his first homily as Pope on Friday.
“There are places or situations where “it is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied.
“Yet, precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed,” the new Pope told assembled cardinals in his homily, standing at the Sistine Chapel altar with Michelangelo’s famed fresco of “The Last Judgment” behind him
The former missionary deplored “settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent” and, in an echo of his predecessor Francis, said people were turning to “technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.”
“A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society,” said Leo in Italian, wearing a white papal robe trimmed in gold as he addressed the seated white-robed cardinals.
In an apparent message to evangelical Christians, Pope Leo also warned that Jesus cannot be “reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman”.
“This is true not only among non-believers but also among many baptised Christians, who thus end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism,” he said.
In an unscripted introduction to his homily in English, he also evoked a need to overcome divisions within the Church, telling his fellow cardinals: “I know I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me”.
Leo XIV admitted that his choice as new Catholic Church leader must have shocked the world considering his nationality and missionary commitment.
“Many around the world are still digesting the choice of the man sometimes referred to in Rome as the “Latin Yankee” for his decades-long missions in Peru.
“A pope from the United States is almost more surprising than an Argentine and Jesuit pope,” such as Francis, wrote the Corriere della Sera daily. Francis was the first pope ever named from the Americas” he said.
The new pope, 69, was born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, USA
Prevost, who adopted the name Leo XIV, on Thursday, became the 267th pope, spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics and successor to Argentina’s Pope Francis, after a secret conclave by his fellow cardinals in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.
