Day: October 26, 2025

Vatican City, Oct 26, 2025 / 18:24 pm (CNA).

Bishops should be humble servants and men of prayer — not possession, Pope Leo XIV said at a Mass to consecrate a new bishop on Sunday.

“This is the first lesson for every bishop: humility. Not humility in words, but that which dwells in the heart of those who know they are servants, not masters; shepherds, not owners of the flock,” the pontiff said Oct. 26.

The pontiff personally consecrated Mons. Mirosław Stanisław Wachowski a bishop during a Mass at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Wachowski was appointed apostolic nuncio — the pope’s diplomatic representative — to Iraq in September. Nuncios are usually also archbishops.

The 55-year-old Wachowski, originally from Poland, has been in the diplomatic service of the Holy See since 2004. He has also served in the Secretariat of State in the section for relations with states, and was appointed undersecretary for relations with states — similar to a deputy foreign minister — in October 2019.

Reflecting on Wachowski’s background growing up in a farming family in the Polish countryside, the pope said, “From your contact with the earth, you have learned that fruitfulness comes from waiting and fidelity: two words that also define the episcopal ministry.”

“The bishop is called to sow with patience, to cultivate with respect, to wait with hope,” Leo continued. “He is a guardian, not an owner; a man of prayer, not of possession. The Lord entrusts you with a mission so that you may care for it with the same dedication with which the farmer cares for his field: every day, with constancy, with faith.”

The pontiff also reflected on the role of a nuncio, who, as the papal representative is “a sign of the concern of the Successor of Peter for all the Churches.”

“He is sent to strengthen the bonds of communion, to promote dialogue with civil authorities, to safeguard the freedom of the Church, and to foster the good of the people,” he underlined.

“The Apostolic Nuncio is not just any diplomat: he is the face of a Church that accompanies, consoles, and builds bridges,” he added. “His task is not to defend partisan interests, but to serve communion.”

The pope said, Wachowski is being asked to be a father, a shepherd, and a witness of hope in Iraq, “a land marked by pain and the desire for rebirth.”

“You are called to fight the good fight of faith, not against others, but against the temptation to tire, to close yourself off, to measure results, relying on the fidelity that is your hallmark: the fidelity of one who does not seek himself, but serves with professionalism, with respect, with a competence that enlightens and does not flaunt itself.”

He remarked on the longstanding presence of Christianity in Mesopotamia, which, according to tradition, can trace its roots to St. Thomas the Apostle, and his disciples Addai and Mari.

“In that region, people pray in the language that Jesus spoke: Aramaic. This apostolic root is a sign of continuity that the violence, which has manifested itself with ferocity in recent decades, has not been able to extinguish,” the pope said.

“Indeed, the voice of those who have been brutally deprived of their lives in those lands does not fail,” he added. “Today they pray for you, for Iraq, for peace in the world.”

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Vatican City, Oct 26, 2025 / 08:10 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV said at a Mass on Sunday that no one in the Church “should impose his or her own ideas” and asked that tensions between tradition and novelty not become “ideological contrapositions and harmful polarizations.”

“The supreme rule in the Church is love. No one is called to dominate; all are called to serve,” Leo said in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 26.

“No one should impose his or her own ideas; we must all listen to one another,” he continued. “No one is excluded; we are all called to participate. No one possesses the whole truth; we must all humbly seek it and seek it together.”

The pontiff celebrated Mass on the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time for the closing of the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies, part of the Church’s wider Jubilee of Hope in 2025. 

In a call for communion, Pope Leo addressed all the participants in the synodality meeting and asked for their help to expand “the ecclesial space” and make it “collegial and welcoming.”

Leo also spoke about synodality with the jubilee pilgrims during an Oct. 24 event at the Vatican.

The Holy Spirit transforms ‘harmful polarizations’

“Being a synodal Church means recognizing that truth is not possessed but sought together, allowing ourselves to be guided by a restless heart in love with Love,” he emphasized.

The pontiff called on Christians to live “with confidence and a new spirit amid the tensions that run through the life of the Church: between unity and diversity, tradition and novelty, authority and participation. We must allow the Spirit to transform them, so that they do not become ideological contrapositions and harmful polarizations.” 

It is not a question of resolving these tensions “by reducing one to the other, but of allowing them to be purified by the Spirit, so that they may be harmonized and oriented toward a common discernment,” he said.

He also made it clear that, “prior to any difference, we are called in the Church to walk together in the pursuit of God, clothing ourselves with the sentiments of Christ.”

Resolving tensions in the Church

In his homily on the day’s Gospel passage, the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector, the pope warned of the danger of spiritual pride displayed by the pharisee: “The pharisee is obsessed with his own ego, and in this way, ends up focused on himself without having a relationship with either God or others.”

Leo pointed out that this can also occur in the Christian community.

For example, “when the ego prevails over the collective, causing an individualism that prevents authentic and fraternal relationships,” he said.

He also criticized “the claim to be better than others, as the pharisee does with the tax collector, [because it] creates division and turns the community into a judgmental and exclusionary place; and when one leverages one’s role to exert power rather than to serve.”

The pope highlighted the tax collector’s humility as an example for the entire Christian community: “We too must recognize within the Church that we are all in need of God and of one another, which leads us to practice reciprocal love, listen to each other, and enjoy walking together.”

Leo urged Catholics to dream of and build a more humble Church, capable of reflecting the Gospel in its way of living and relating.

“A Church that does not stand upright like the pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge like the pharisee does the tax collector but becomes a welcoming place for all,” he said.

He also invited the entire ecclesial community to commit itself to building a Church that is “entirely synodal, ministerial, and attracted to Christ,” dedicated to serving the world and open to listening to God and to all the men and women of our time.

Angelus

After the Mass on Oct. 26, Pope Leo led the Angelus prayer in Latin from a window of the Apostolic Palace, which overlooks St. Peter’s Square.

In his message following the Marian prayer, he expressed his closeness to the people of eastern Mexico, who were hit earlier this month by devastating floods and landslides, leaving 72 dead and dozens still missing.

“I pray for the families and for all those who are suffering as a result of this calamity, and I entrust the souls of the deceased to the Lord, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin,” the pope said.

Leo also renewed his call to “unceasingly” pray for peace, especially through the communal recitation of the rosary. 

“Contemplating the mysteries of Christ together with the Virgin Mary, we make our own the suffering and hope of children, mothers, fathers, and elderly people who are victims of war,” he said. 

“And from this intercession of the heart arise many gestures of evangelical charity, of concrete closeness, of solidarity. To all those who, every day, with confident perseverance carry on this commitment, I repeat: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers!’”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 26, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Jonatan Medina Espinal is a young Catholic influencer who, as the son of evangelical pastors, was considered unlikely to embrace the Catholic faith, but he did so five years ago after a long and intense spiritual journey.

Now, with clearer ideas about the faith, the young Peruvian has become a defender of Catholic doctrine, promoting it on his social media as well as in his Spanish-language book “Toward the Barque of Peter: My Journey from Protestantism to the Catholic Church.”

For Dante Urbina, a Catholic author, teacher, and lecturer who also influenced Medina’s conversion, the book is “a testimony of profound conversion and intellectual depth that invites us to enter and persevere in the Catholic Church.”

Medina is a professional audiovisual communicator and describes himself as “a truth seeker.” In an interview with “EWTN Noticias,” the Spanish-language broadcast edition of EWTN News, he shared that he had already felt Catholic “at heart” since 2017, when he “began this journey that took [him] about two or three years.”

On Dec. 8, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Medina received the sacrament of baptism, officially becoming part of the Catholic Church.

Medina pointed out that it was necessary for him to receive the sacrament in the Church, considering that the one he had received in his Christian group might not have been entirely valid.

The entire process that led to his conversion, continued Medina — who is part of the Catholic Advancement Movement — began “paradoxically, with a period of agnosticism … I was agnostic for a good few years of my life, then tried to embrace a more reasonable faith, one based on evidence.”

Guided by various Christian figures such as Protestant C.S. Lewis and Catholic G.K. Chesterton, Medina questioned his affiliation with an evangelical church. “I began to embrace a more historical faith, with greater cogency.”

After “discovering all the fragmentations … of Protestantism, I said: How can the Gospel be so divided? And I saw that the Church appears with its unity, although obviously that doesn’t imply that there aren’t tensions or certain divisions, but there is a teaching that helps us to be bound together and gives us that guarantee of unity.”

Professor Scott Hahn’s influence

“I earned a master’s degree in theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. I was with Professor Scott Hahn. I remember hearing his conversion testimony… He was converted by starting to pray the rosary, because he was practically convinced by all the arguments, but he didn’t know what he was missing until someone gave him a rosary,” Medina recounted in the interview with “EWTN Noticias.”

“He prayed it, an impossible situation was resolved for him, and then he forgot about the issue. Then he realized he had been ungrateful and began praying it regularly, and that cemented his conversion,” he explained.

“Without a doubt, the subject of Mary is always important, because as a Protestant by birth, I’ve never had any affection for her,” Medina emphasized.

Hahn grew up in the Presbyterian Church, eventually becoming a theologian and minister in that Christian denomination. His journey of conversion began after he and his wife, Kimberly, became convinced that contraception is contrary to God’s law, a concept abandoned by many Protestants during the 20th century but always upheld by the Catholic Church.

Hahn converted to Catholicism at Easter 1986. His wife followed him four years later, in 1990. They have six children, one of whom, Jeremiah, has been a Catholic priest since 2021.

Medina also explained that another milestone in his conversion was overcoming the Protestant concept of “sola Scriptura” (“Scripture alone”), which postulates that the Bible is the sole source of Christian faith and practice, ignoring tradition, a source of revelation that is accepted by the Catholic Church.

“I had discovered the error of sola Scriptura: I remember when I discovered it and realized that obviousness, that lack of logic, was so clear,” he recounted, and he understood “that Scripture itself was already tradition, only written down. That’s when I said, ‘Hey, this makes sense to me.’ Sola Scriptura began to fall apart for me.”

Medina, also the author of the short Spanish-language film “Neighbors” about guardian angels, is grateful for having come to love the Virgin Mary through the example of another convert, Urbina, a Catholic professor and lecturer and author of several Spanish-language books such as “Does God Exist?” and “What Is the True Religion?”

“He also worked at the university where I work, and it was providential that we met one day, and I started asking him questions about Mary specifically, and he helped me a lot. I definitely believe that Mary has been key in my conversion,” Medina emphasized.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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