Nothing captured Pope Francis’ vision for ordained ministry better than his invitation to priests to “be shepherds with the odor of the sheep.” First expressed in his homily at the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday in 2013, the vivid image was used by the late pope to challenge clericalism, which he often described as a serious disease. Recently, reading Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic letter “Una Fedelta,” issued in 2025 on the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s decrees “Optatum Totius” and “Presbyterorum Ordinis,” led me to a deeper insight into what it means to smell like the sheep. 

While the original use of the image might have sounded like one of Pope Francis’ off-the-cuff comments, he was in fact referring to an understanding of the life and ministry of priests as old as the church itself. It is an understanding that finds contemporary expression in the “Final Document” of the Synod on Synodality, which calls priests to “live their service in proximity to their people, to be welcoming and prepared to listen to all, opening themselves up to a synodal style” (No. 72).

Pope Leo also made reference in “Una Fedelta” to a homily given by Pope Francis during a Chrism Mass in which he insisted that there is no priestly identity or joy “without an active sense of belonging to the faithful,” adding that “[u]nless you ‘exit’ from yourself, the oil grows rancid and the anointing cannot be fruitful.” For Pope Leo, corroborating the teaching of his predecessor, the priest only finds himself when he resists the temptation to dwell upon a false sense of importance and superiority over the people, because “the identity of priests is built around their being for, which is inseparably linked to their mission” (No. 23).

What both popes highlight is that to truly smell like the sheep, it is essential that each priest—or anyone undergoing initial formation for the Catholic priesthood—constantly remembers that as members of the church, we are all Christ’s sheep. Properly speaking, Christ alone is the eternal and Good Shepherd, the only one who is truly master, priest, Lord and teacher (Mt 23:8-10). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 1545) clarifies that there is only one priesthood: the priesthood of Christ that is made present in the ministerial priesthood. 

Citing St. Thomas Aquinas, the catechism adds: “Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers.” All of us, therefore, including priests and bishops, are brothers and sisters brought to life in the same baptismal font. As the “Final Document” emphasizes, “There is nothing higher than this baptismal dignity, equally bestowed upon each person, through which we are invited to clothe ourselves with Christ and be grafted onto Him like branches of the one vine” (No. 21). St. Augustine’s famous words, quoted by Pope Leo after his election, capture this beautifully: “For you I am a bishop; with you I am a Christian.”

From my work in the formation of seminarians and my interaction with numerous brother priests both in the United States and in Africa, I am increasingly convinced that the major factor responsible for clericalism is not simply the corrupting potential of unchecked power. Clericalism is also sustained, perhaps more decisively, by a pervasive ignorance among both the ordained and the lay members of the church of what the church actually teaches regarding the identity of the ministerial priest in relation to the common priesthood of all Christ’s faithful conferred by the waters of baptism.

Too often, what the Second Vatican Council’s “Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests” (“Presbyterorum Ordinis”) (No. 2) describes as the special character conferred on the priest—configuring him to Christ in such a way that he can act in persona Christi in specific sacramental contexts—is misconstrued as implying that the priest is another Christ in an elevated sense that sets him apart from, or even above, the other members of the church. Such misunderstandings not only create fertile ground for clericalism but also make Christians susceptible to something that William C. Placher in Narratives of a Vulnerable God identifies as present in every culture: “assumptions about power utterly at odds with the power of the cross” (Pg. 17).

In a note published in 2024, “On the Validity of the Sacrament” (“Gestis Verbisque”), the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith explained that in saying that priests preside at the Eucharist in persona Christi capitis, the council did not “intend to endorse an understanding whereby the minister, as ‘head,’ possesses a power to be exercised arbitrarily.” Rather, the dicastery wrote:

The minister’s power (potestas) is a service (diakonia), as Christ himself teaches the disciples during the Last Supper (cf. Lk. 22:25-27; Jn. 13:1-20). Those who are configured to him by virtue of sacramental grace and who, therefore, participate in the authority with which he leads and sanctifies his People, are called—in the liturgy and in their entire pastoral ministry—to conform themselves to this same logic.

The fact that it is Christ who acts in and through the priest explains why, as the church has always taught, the validity of sacramental acts does not depend on the personal sanctity of the celebrant but on the salvific power of Christ on the cross.

An important point to draw from this teaching concerns the identity of the man who is ordained in relation to the priesthood of Christ. If Christ alone is priest, shepherd and teacher in the proper sense, then it is more accurate to understand the priest as an instrument—or, more precisely, a minister of the presence and salvific life of Christ. 

As the recently published study on revising the “Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis” (“On the Formation of Seminarians for the Priesthood”) insists, it is precisely because of his configuration to Christ the head, servant and shepherd that the priest cannot isolate himself within a sacred aura “ahead of” or “above” the people of God, but must take his place at the feet of his brothers and sisters. It is also on this basis that the “Preparatory Document for the Synod on Synodality” reminds us that the role of the priest is to make Christ present, never to replace him (No. 19).

A second point: The priest ministers the presence of Christ not by becoming anything other than the human being he is, but precisely through his humanity—broken, wounded and imperfect as it may be. As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “Program of Priestly Formation” puts it: “As the humanity of the Word made flesh was the instrumentum salutis, so the humanity of the priest is instrumental in mediating the redemptive gifts of Christ to people today” (No. 182).

The smell of the sheep, therefore, is not something external to the priest that he may put on from time to time when engaging in ministry. It is, first and foremost, the reality of the priest’s humanity that renders him particularly suited for his delicate role in the service of humanity. He discharges his duty with care and compassion because he knows and feels in his soul human weakness and in his body human vulnerability. 

As Henri Nouwen writes in The Wounded Healer, “For a compassionate man, nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying” (Pg. 41). While the priest must never cease striving for sanctity—for, in the words of “Pastores Dabo Vobis” (No. 43), “the human perfection which shines forth in the incarnate Son of God”—we can dare to say that nothing makes the priest more effective in tending to the wounds of others more than his own woundedness. 

To smell like the sheep, the priest must never forget, nor ever pretend, that he is anything other than human—like all the people whom he meets and to whom he ministers.

The Rev. William I. Orbih, from Abuja, Nigeria, is a visiting assistant professor of theology and the seminary rector at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary in Collegeville, Minn. He received his Ph.D. in theology from the University of Notre Dame.