disciples – United Yam

Leo XIV laments that after receiving confirmation, many young people ‘disappear from the parish’ #Catholic Pope Leo XIV lamented that after being confirmed, many young people no longer attend church. He asked those awaiting confirmation to “pay special attention” to one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, perseverance.The pope met on Saturday, May 16, with those awaiting confirmation from the Archdiocese of Genoa, Italy. In an impromptu message, the Holy Father said that “one of the greatest joys of a bishop is celebrating confirmations, because it is truly a gift of the Holy Spirit.”“It is truly beautiful to receive this sacrament, for the fullness of the Holy Spirit gives us this enthusiasm, this strength, this ability to follow Jesus Christ, to always say ‘yes’ to the Lord, to have no fear of following him with courage, and to live out our faith in a world that so often seeks to draw us away from Jesus,” he told them.After recalling the significance of the solemnity of Pentecost — to be celebrated on Sunday, May 24 — the pope lamented a sad reality: “At times, when the bishop administers confirmation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the children are never seen again! They disappear from the parish.”“Don’t forget what you have experienced during this time, including the joy of coming to Rome to celebrate together, to pray together. And may this joy live on in your hearts as you continue to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ,” Pope Leo urged.He also invited young people to “persevere in the faith, to return to the parish — there are so many activities, so many opportunities — but above all in the life of faith, because Jesus Christ wants to walk with you, with each one of you, and with all of you in community, which is so important.”“We do not live out our faith alone; we live it together. And forming these relationships of friendship and community is a way of living with perseverance as disciples of Jesus,” he added.Finally, he called upon those to be confirmed to make a promise to the Lord: “that you truly desire to continue being his friends, his disciples, and his missionaries, and that you desire to persevere in the faith. So, I leave you with these words,” he concluded.This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Pope Leo XIV prays for Sahel victims #Catholic VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV on Sunday prayed for victims of growing violence in the Sahel, thanked the people of the Canary Islands for welcoming a cruise ship carrying people sick with hantavirus, and offered a special blessing for mothers during his Regina Caeli address in St. Peter’s Square.Speaking after the Marian prayer May 10, the pope said he had learned “with deep concern of the reports regarding the growing violence in the Sahel region, particularly in Chad and Mali,” which have recently suffered terrorist attacks.“I offer the assurance of my heartfelt prayers for the victims and my spiritual closeness to all those who are suffering as a result of the tragic events,” he said. “I fervently hope that every form of violence may cease, and I encourage all efforts aimed at fostering peace and development in that beloved land.”The pope also marked the annual “Day of Coptic-Catholic Friendship,” extending “fraternal greetings” to Pope Tawadros II and assuring “the entire beloved Coptic Church” of his “remembrance in prayer.”“It is my hope that our journey of friendship will lead us to perfect unity in Christ, who has called us ‘friends,’” he said.In Spanish, Pope Leo XIV thanked the people of the Canary Islands who, “with the hospitality characteristic of them,” welcomed the Hondius cruise ship and the passengers infected with hantavirus.“I look forward to seeing all of you next month during my visit to the Islands,” he said.The pope also offered a Mother’s Day greeting, asking Mary, “the Mother of Jesus and our own Mother,” to intercede for all mothers.“Let us pray with love and gratitude for every mother, particularly those living in very difficult circumstances,” he said. “Thank you! May God bless you!”Before the Regina Caeli, Pope Leo reflected on the Gospel for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, in which Jesus tells his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”The pope said the words of Jesus free Christians from the misconception “that we are loved because we keep the commandments, as if our righteousness were a prerequisite for God’s love.”“On the contrary, God’s love is the basis for our righteousness,” he said.Jesus’ words, he said, are “an invitation to enter into a relationship, not a blackmail or a suspicious ultimatum.”The Lord commands his followers to love one another as he has loved them, Pope Leo said, because “it is Jesus’ love that begets love within us.”Christ, he said, is “the standard, the measure of true love: the love that is faithful forever, pure and unconditional,” the love that knows no “buts” or “maybes.”“Because God loved us first, we too can love, and when we truly love God, we truly love one another,” he said.The pope said the Lord’s commandments are “a way of life that heal us from false loves” and “a spiritual lifestyle that is a path towards salvation.”Because God loves his people, the pope continued, he “does not leave us alone in life’s trials” but promises the Paraclete, the Advocate, the “Spirit of truth.”The Holy Spirit, he said, is a gift that “the world cannot receive” as long as it persists in evil, “oppressing the poor, excluding the weak and killing the innocent.” But those who respond to Jesus’ love for all “will find in the Holy Spirit an ally who will never fail.”Pope Leo said Christians can always bear witness to “God, who is love,” adding that love is “not an idea of the human mind, but the reality of divine life, through which all things were created out of nothing and redeemed from death.”Jesus, he said, shares with believers his identity as the beloved Son: “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”This “all-encompassing communion of life,” the pope said, refutes the Accuser, the adversary of the Paraclete, who seeks to set humanity against God and people against one another. Jesus does the opposite, he said, “saving us from evil and uniting us as a people of brothers and sisters in the Church.”This story was first published by ACI Stampa, the Italian-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Christ is not ‘a guru or a good luck charm,’ pope says at Mass in Angola #Catholic SAURIMO, Angola — Pope Leo XIV warned at Mass in Saurimo, Angola, on Monday of making God into an idol that is sought only when advantageous — “when genuine faith is replaced with superstitious practices.”“There are erroneous motives for seeking Christ, particularly when he is considered to be a guru or a good luck charm,” the pope said on April 20, referring to how the crowds in the Gospel reading reacted after Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and the fishes.“They were not seeking a teacher whom they love but a leader to applaud for their own advantage,” he said.Joyful faith in Saurimo

Pope Leo XIV celebrates Mass in Saurimo, Angola, on April 20, 2026. | Credit: Vatican Media

From the start of his arrival in Sub-Saharan Africa — first in Cameroon and then in Angola — Pope Leo has been welcomed by the warmth of the faithful. In Saurimo, a city in northeastern Angola, the atmosphere greeting the pope on Monday was marked by joyful faith. Everyone welcomed the successor of Peter with songs, dances, and applause.Despite the intense heat, upon reaching the esplanade before Mass, Leo XIV greeted the roughly 60,000 faithful of all ages — who had come from across the region and neighboring dioceses — by making a circuit in the popemobile.“This is the first time a pope has gone beyond Angola’s coastal belt and come — using Pope Francis’ language — to the peripheries,“ the director of the communications office of the Archdiocese of Saurimo said. ”This is a region rich in diamonds, but there is also great poverty, and he comes here to show our reality. For us, having the Holy Father in our region is a great joy.”“This is a unique and unforgettable moment in my life and in the lives of the many pilgrims here today,” Filomena Vunda, who works in the pastoral secretariat of the Archdiocese of Malanje, told ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, at the Mass.Vunda encouraged non-Catholics in Angola to “keep in mind our African word ‘Ubuntu’: The happiness of others depends on me; my happiness depends solely on the happiness of others.”Ubuntu is an African philosophy about human interconnectedness. It can be translated as “I am because we are.”‘Disciples of Christ’In his homily at Mass, concelebrated by Angolan bishops, Pope Leo said: “In every part of the world, the Church lives as a people who walk as disciples of Christ, our brother and redeemer.”"He, the Risen One, illumines for us the path to the Father and with the strength of the Spirit he sanctifies us so that we may transform our way of life in conformity with his love," the pope said. "This is the good news, the Gospel that courses through our veins like blood, sustaining us on the journey. A journey that has brought me here with you today!”

Pope Leo XIV celebrates Mass in Saurimo, Angola, on April 20, 2026. | Credit: Vatican Media

Commenting on the Gospel of the day, Leo reflected: “Indeed, when the Son of God became man, he performed striking miracles in order to manifest the will of the Father: He made light shine in the darkness by giving sight to the blind, he gave a voice to the oppressed by loosening the tongues of the mute, he slaked our thirst for justice by multiplying bread for the poor and weak. Anyone who heard about these works set out in search of Jesus. At the same time, the Lord looks into our heart and asks us whether we seek him out of gratitude or for our own self-interest, with calculation or with love.”“The Lord himself says,” the pope continued, “‘you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves’ (Jn 6:26). His words reveal the designs of those who do not want to encounter a person but want to consume things. The crowd sees Jesus as means to an end, a provider of services. If he had not given them something to eat, his actions and teachings would not have interested them.”“This happens,” Leo XIV explained, “when genuine faith is replaced with superstitious practices, in which God becomes an idol that is sought only when it is advantageous to us and only for as long as it is. Even the most beautiful gifts of the Lord, which are always for the care of his people, become a pretext, a prize or a bargaining chip, and are misinterpreted by those who receive them.”“How different is Jesus’ attitude toward us,” the pontiff continued. “Yet, he does not reject this insincere search, but encourages its conversion ... Christ calls us to freedom: He does not want servants or clients, rather he seeks brothers and sisters to whom he can totally dedicate himself.”“Therefore,” Leo XIV said, “the admonition that the Lord directs to the crowd is transformed into an invitation: ‘Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life’ (Jn 6:27)."“His gift sheds light on our current situation,” the pope went on. “We can see today how the hope of many people is frustrated by violence, exploited by the powerful, and defrauded by the rich. Consequently, when injustice corrupts hearts, the bread of all becomes the possession of a few."“In the face of these evils, Christ hears the cry of the people and renews our history by lifting us up from every fall, comforting us in every suffering, and encouraging us in our mission," he said.

Crowds of people brave the heat and sun to attend Mass with Pope Leo XIV in Saurimo, Angola, on April 20, 2026. | Credit: Raúl Kangombe Sapiti/ACI Africa

“All this,” the pope exhorted, “means that, in light of our discipleship, the ecclesial journey is a ‘synod of resurrection and hope,’ as St. John Paul II affirmed in his apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Africa. Let us proceed in this wise direction! Christ himself guides and strengthens our journey, a journey that we want to learn to live more and more as it should be, that is, in a synodal manner.”The pope concluded by recalling the importance of the martyrs and saints, whose witness “encourages us and pushes us onto a path of hope, reconciliation, and peace, along which the gift of God becomes the responsibility of the head of the household, in the Christian community, in civil society.”"The vitality of the vocations that you experience [in Angola]," he said, "is a sign that you are responding to the Lord’s gift, which is always abundant for those who welcome it with pure hearts.”ACI Africa reporter Raúl Kangombe Sapiti contributed to this report.This story was first published by ACI Stampa, the Italian-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

unitedyam April 20, 2026

After praying at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Saurimo, Pope Leo XIV proceeded to the site of the Mass, attended by an estimated 60,000 people.

Pope Leo XIV: Eucharist is ‘indispensable for Christian life’ #Catholic “The Sunday Eucharist is indispensable for Christian life,” said Pope Leo XIV before reciting the Marian prayer of the Regina Caeli on April 12 in St. Peterʼs Square. Speaking to crowds gathered in the square, the pope noted his upcoming departure for Africa, where “some martyrs of the early African Church, the Martyrs of Abitene, have left us a beautiful testimony in this regard." "Faced with the offer to save their lives on the condition that they renounce celebrating the Eucharist, they replied that they could not live without celebrating the Lord’s Day. It is there that our faith is nourished and grows,” the Holy Father said. “Because it is through the Eucharist that even our hands become ‘hands of the Risen One,’ witnesses of his presence, of his mercy, and of his peace, in the signs of work, of sacrifices, of illness, and of the passing of the years, which are often engraved upon them — just as in the tenderness of a caress, a handshake, or a gesture of charity," he said. In his commentary on the April 12 Gospel for the second Sunday of Easter — dedicated by Pope John Paul II to Divine Mercy — the pope spoke about the faithfulʼs encounter with Jesus: “Where can we find him? How can we recognize him? How can we believe?”“Certainly, it is not always easy to believe. It was not easy for Thomas, and it is not easy for us either. Faith needs to be nourished and supported. For this reason, on the ‘eighth day,’ that is, every Sunday, the Church invites us to do as the first disciples did: to gather together and celebrate the Eucharist as one," he said.The pope concluded: “In a world that is in such great need of peace, this commits us more than ever to be assiduous and faithful in our Eucharistic encounter with the Risen Lord, so that we may depart from it as witnesses of charity and bearers of reconciliation." “May the Virgin Mary help us to do this — she who is blessed because she was the first to believe without seeing,” he said. After the prayer, Pope Leo XIV returned to the theme of peace. Recalling the Easter celebration of the Orthodox Churches, he said: “I accompany those communities with even more intense prayer for all those who suffer because of the war, in particular for the dear people of Ukraine.”“May the light of Christ bring comfort to afflicted hearts and strengthen the hope of peace. May the attention of the international community toward the drama of this war not diminish. I am also more than ever close to the beloved people of Lebanon in these days of sorrow, fear, and invincible hope in God.”“The principle of humanity, inscribed in the conscience of every person and recognized in international law, entails the moral obligation to protect the civilian population from the atrocious effects of war. I appeal to the conflicting parties to cease fire and to urgently seek a peaceful solution," he said. Next Wednesday marks three years since the beginning of the bloody conflict in Sudan. “How much the Sudanese people are suffering — innocent victims of this inhuman tragedy!“ the pope said. ”I renew my heartfelt appeal to the warring parties to silence the weapons and to begin, without preconditions, a sincere dialogue aimed at ending as soon as possible this fratricidal war.”The pope then greeted everyone: “I extend a warm welcome to all of you, Romans and pilgrims, especially to the faithful who have celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday at the Shrine of Santo Spirito in Sassia.”This story was first published by ACI Stampa, the Italian-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.