Walking Without Fear Through the Challenges of History

Andrea Monda

Leo is undoubtedly a striking name. My thoughts immediately turned to Leo XIII, who chose the name on 20 February 1878. Thirteen years later, he wrote the Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, the hallmark of his pontificate. The Pope “of new things”. The Church, stripped of her earthly kingdom, no longer presented herself to the world as one State among many; instead, freed from that burden, she could become ever more leaven, salt of the earth. Deprived of “armour”, disarmed, the Church had to and could walk in the world as a travel companion of ordinary people, and encourage the heart and spirit of men and women who were often lost, wounded, discouraged.

Among these “new things”, Leo XIII experimented in the world of communications, allowing himself to be filmed in 1898 in a cinematographic sequence, at the time a new form of art. But above all, his Church wanted to see the world with the heart of a mother and to immediately address society’s most serious problems and crucial issues, like the economy and workers’ conditions. The text of his encyclical immediately became a cornerstone of the social doctrine of the Church and contributed to making the conditions of millions of men and women more humane.

Today, history is somewhat repeating itself. Even now, the world seems to be full of “new things”. We are living in a “change of epoch”, as Pope Francis said and always repeated. The old interpretative categories are no longer satisfactory. Some problems have remained the same. The conditions of which Leo XIII spoke were not entirely resolved, and the economy still has an inhuman face and produces “throwaways”. And here, the Church calls a man from the New World to face these old and new challenges with courage, “without fear”. Pope Leo XIV said this twice in his first greeting to the faithful: “without fear”. This encouraging expression, or similar ones like, “do not fear”, is the most often repeated message in the Bible. In the early days of his Pontificate, Pope Leo XIV chose to repeat the message that his predecessors in the See of Peter, and Jesus have repeated throughout these 20 centuries — words of encouragement, trust and hope.

On Friday morning, 9 May, in the homily to his 132 brother Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, a few hours after they had elected him, Pope Leo XIV spoke of the urgency of the mission of evangelization, as “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”.

From the Loggia of the Blessings in the evening of Thursday, 8 May, the newly elected Pope also recalled that the task of the Church and of Christians is “to build bridges through dialogue and encounter, joining together as one people, always at peace”. And though he spoke to the whole world, he chose to address a greeting, in Spanish, to his “beloved Diocese of Chiclayo, in Peru, where a faithful people has accompanied its Bishop”. This union of universality and particularity, of eternal and contingent, is part of the very nature of the Church, a human and divine institution. Because this world, which Christians who follow Christ are called not to judge but to love (Jn 3:17), is united to God by the greatest “bridge”, which is Jesus himself. So, he urged, “let us move forward, without fear, together, hand in hand with God and with one another! We are followers of Christ. Christ goes before us. The world needs his light. Humanity needs him as the bridge that can lead us to God and his love”. This joining of hands is the Church, where human hands unite with God’s hand, which sustains all humanity.

We Christians are now tasked with following Leo XIV, who has been called to be the Bishop of Rome and universal shepherd. To follow him until we disappear and make ourselves small “so that Christ may remain”, as he said in the homily for his first Mass. To disappear just like salt, which has to disappear in order to give flavour, like the seed that must die in order to bear fruit. To follow the shepherd as the flock does — without fear. (A. Monda)