“I am very happy to be here among you and to spend the next few weeks with a little rest, a little prayer, a little reading and, hopefully, a little sport here in Castel Gandolfo!” Leo said.
Gerard O’Connell
Gerard O’Connell is America’s senior Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History. He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.
Posted inFrom Our Archives
What Pope Leo heard about the death penalty in the U.S. from a leading abolition activist
An interview with Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, the executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Vatican declares excommunicated SSPX bishops, warns priests and lay faithful of schism
Today, the Vatican has taken a stricter, more inflexible position than those taken under Popes Benedict XVI and Francis.
Posted inVatican Dispatch
SSPX ordains four new bishops in defiance of Pope Leo and the Vatican
The SSPX ordained four new bishops without a papal mandate in Switzerland, triggering automatic excommunication for all six bishops involved.
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Pope Leo appoints Italian sister to top Vatican post
Pope Leo XIV has appointed Sister Alessandra Smerilli as prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, making her the first woman to head this major Vatican office.
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Pope Leo makes final appeal to SSPX before schismatic ordination of bishops: ‘Please turn back!’
Pope Leo made a last-minute appeal to the SSPX to “turn back” from illicitly ordaining bishops, saying, “to tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity.”
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Pope Leo urges 35 new metropolitan archbishops to be ‘apostles and builders of unity’
Pope Leo XVI placed the pallium on the shoulders of 35 new metropolitan archbishops appointed over the last year during Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Pope Leo closes consistory with appeal for peace, continued emphasis on synodality
“We must not resign ourselves to violence. God continues to open paths of reconciliation and peace throughout history. We have a responsibility to walk these paths with courage and to help the world recognize them.”
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Pope Leo issues challenge to cardinals gathered in Rome: ‘Learn synodality by practicing it’
Leo also surprised the cardinals by telling them, “I wish to ask you for your help.”
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Pope Leo: War is ‘fed more easily’ than the hungry
“The world today could live without hunger,” but “conflicts are ‘fed’ more easily than people are nourished,” Pope Leo XIV said when he visited the United Nations World Food Program.