CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy — Pope Leo XIV referred to as Sunday for “merciful compassion” for the sector’s deficient, sufferers of tyranny and wars, as he celebrated Mass in a parish church that has particular non secular ties to Leo’s personal Augustinian spiritual order.
Leo is on holiday and resuming the papal custom of summering on the the papal property of Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, and celebrated Mass within the St. Thomas of Villanova church.
St. Thomas of Villanova was once a Sixteenth-century Spanish instructor who was once a neighborhood and regional awesome of the Augustinian order, a mendicant order impressed by way of the lessons of St. Augustine of Hippo. The saint is the shopper and namesake of Leo’s alma mater outdoor Philadelphia, Villanova College, and is understood for his take care of the deficient and for having given away his wealth to these in want.
In his homily, Leo presented a meditation at the biblical tale of the Just right Samaritan. Leo steered the trustworthy to be guided by way of empathy and be moved to behave “with the similar merciful compassion as God.”
“How we take a look at others is what counts, as it displays what’s in our hearts,” he mentioned. “We will be able to glance and stroll by way of, or we will glance and be moved with compassion.”
This is very true, he mentioned, when taking a look at those that are “stripped, robbed and pillaged, sufferers of tyrannical political methods, of an economic system that forces them into poverty, and of wars that kill their desires and their very lives.”
From his first actual phrases as pope, Leo has again and again emphasised his id as an Augustinian and infused his homilies and speeches with teachings from the fifth century theologian.
The Rev. Tadeusz Rozmus, the priest on the St. Thomass of Villanova parish, has mentioned the go back of a pope to Castel Gandolfo has crammed the city with pleasure. In an interview forward of Leo’s arrival final week, Rozmus additionally famous the non secular connection of historical past’s first Augustinian pope to the city.
“St. Thomas of Villanova was once an Augustinian saint, and so with him (Leo) returns to the start of his historical past, of his spirituality,” Rozmus mentioned.
Leo is taking an preliminary two weeks of holiday in Castel Gandolfo, regardless that he has already interrupted it to obtain Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a gaggle of spiritual superiors and to have fun a unique Mass devoted to taking care of God’s advent.
He’s going to return to the Vatican on the finish of July after which go back for any other spell in August.
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Winfield reported from Rome.
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