Leo to the Bishops and Clergy of Argentina: “Lío” Means Making the “Gospel of Jesus Christ Resound Everywhere.”

The picture at the top is telling! TC was based on a tissue of lies. Will His Holiness rescind it or continue Francis's hatred of Tradition? Time will tell.

From Rorate Cæli

(In Buenos Aires: "We the Youth Want the Traditional Mass.")

Address to the Bishops, Clergy, Religious, and Seminarians of Argentina

Leo XIV

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption

Córdoba, Argentina 

November 10, 2026

Dear brothers and sisters, all of you in Christ Jesus:

I would like to begin by thanking Cardinal Rossi for his words, as well as those who have shared their testimonies, and all of you for the affection with which you have received me. I am very glad to be with you today: you of the consecrated life, seminarians, priests, all the baptized who have given their lives to the service of the Lord and of his people.

During this last song, many of you had your hands in the air; perhaps to greet me, perhaps to accompany the singing. These are the hands that Jesus is looking for, and he wants your hands in order to continue his mission.

As I was preparing these words, the Spiritual Exercises came to my mind, so present in the history of this land. It was a happy coincidence to hear Sister María Elisabeth evoke one of their contemplations. When the practice of the Exercises was at risk of being lost, Mama Antula traveled enormous distances to keep them within everyone's reach. Decades later, the holy Cura Brochero made them a central piece of his ministry, crossing the mountains with his countrymen to this city, so that they could encounter God personally. And recently, an Argentine Jesuit, Pope Francis, carried with him the richness of Ignatian spirituality and shared it with the universal Church.

Today, too, priests, seminarians, religious families, and laypeople withdraw in order to keep silence and to ask themselves once again before God what he wants from their lives. I would like, therefore, to let some of the questions of the Exercises accompany us this afternoon. Saint Ignatius begins with the Principle and Foundation (cf. no. 23). So the first question is this: why are we here? Before any responsibility, ministry, or task, there was a call. Christ passed one day through our life, called us, and we understood that it was worth following him. Everything that would come afterward should keep being born from that first yes.

With the years, something paradoxical can happen: working a great deal for God while spending less and less time with God. We keep serving, celebrating, and attending to so many necessary tasks, but we can end up relying more on what we do than on the One for whom we do it. The Principle and Foundation then puts everything back in its place: our life belongs to God and finds its order only when everything else has him as its center. Let us return, then, with simplicity, to the Eucharist, to the hearing of the Word, to that intimacy with the Lord that sustains everything else. Let us tend that fire that one day kindled our vocation, and let us not allow urgent demands, weariness, or routine to extinguish it.

Then, during the Exercises, we encounter questions that we cannot evade: what has become disordered in us? In what ways have we failed God? (cf. nos. 32–43). After few or many years of having said yes to the Master, we could grow accustomed to things that once would have troubled us: harshness toward others, resistance to being corrected, rivalries, attachments, sins, or dependencies that gradually take away our freedom. Something even graver can happen: we can learn to justify everything, finding "pastoral reasons," communal or personal, for what we know is not right.

We also fail when we do not do the good that was ours to do: when we no longer listen with patience, when we choose comfort, or when we remain silent before something we ought to confront. There is no age at which conversion can be dispensed with. We need to examine our conscience, to go to confession, and to preserve the humility of letting ourselves be corrected. Dear brothers and sisters, let us have the courage to recognize clearly where we have not been faithful to God and to place it before his mercy.

And it is precisely only after having looked our own sin in the face that Saint Ignatius sets us before Christ, the Eternal King (cf. nos. 91–98), who continues to call and continues to send. The Lord knew what clay we were made of, and even so he chose to count on us (cf. 2 Cor 4:7). The question, therefore, is not how much we have failed him, but whether we remain available to him. At the dawn of a vocation we tend to offer everything. Then the years go by, and preferences arrive, places where one feels comfortable, and a certain idea of how one's own story should continue. Can the Lord still send us where we had not thought of going? Can he ask us to leave something to which we have given years, or to accept a task we would never have chosen?

That freedom is what is purified in the meditations on the Two Standards, the Three Classes of Persons, and the election (cf. nos. 136–189): learning to recognize what binds us, what conditions our decisions, and how far we are willing to let God work in our lives. Indeed, we have been sent to a people, and we must ask ourselves what we are called to offer them. Dear seminarians, learn to look with the eyes of God and to let yourselves be evangelized by his people. The one who has least can also teach us a great deal, as [seminarian] Julián [Pereyra] discovered in the mass.

The Church that makes her pilgrim way in Argentina possesses the richness of a very lively sensitivity to the social needs of her children. From it have been born so many generous presences alongside those who suffer. But that closeness must lead us even further, because every person we serve is called to encounter Christ and to be transformed by him. Pope Francis expressed this in words that deserve to be remembered: "the worst discrimination which the poor suffer is the lack of spiritual care" (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 200).

Hunger and injustices press upon us and demand a response. So do sickness, loneliness, the lack of work, or of decent housing. Christian charity commits itself seriously to all of this. Without forgetting that the one who suffers needs to receive from us the greatest gift the Church possesses: Jesus Christ. My beloved Predecessor put this with particular clarity: "the Church is not a business, she is not a humanitarian agency, the Church is not an NGO; the Church is sent to bring everyone to Christ and his Gospel. […] If, hypothetically, it were ever to happen that the Church does not bring Jesus, that would be a dead Church" (Catechesis, October 23, 2013). How great, then, is our vocation! To be bearers of the presence of Christ, to make possible the encounter with him through the Word, the sacraments, and a closeness that helps us recognize his presence in our own lives. The people entrusted to you long to receive from you what the Church has guarded for centuries on their behalf.

After the election, the Exercises lead the retreatant to remain beside Christ in his Passion (cf. nos. 190–217). The one who has chosen to follow the Lord then learns to be with him when that following passes through the cross (cf. Lk 9:23). Our vocation, too, knows such hours: when the fruit is not seen, when serving is costly, and when fidelity no longer receives the support of the enthusiasm of the early years. Many of you know well that wearisome form of fidelity: to keep praying when prayer becomes dry, and to keep serving when, however much one works, it seems that nothing changes. There are stages in priestly and consecrated life in which remaining is already a very concrete form of self-giving. Even with questions and weariness, one keeps saying with one's life: "here I am."

Saint Héctor Valdivielso, the first Argentine saint, is a model of that fidelity. He was only twenty-four years old and had just completed his annual Spiritual Exercises when what he had only just placed before God had to sustain him in the trial. Prayer then became witness, and witness went as far as the shedding of his blood.

There are also other ways of bearing witness, by persevering in the midst of suffering. Laura and Father Martín made me think of my recent hospitalization and also recall Cura Brochero, who, blind and sick with leprosy, kept serving his people. In our own day, the idea of using technology in order to continue bearing witness is wonderful; be creative and find new ways to keep preaching. Dear friends, remember: what evangelizes is the way we live our vocation. Neither age nor the limitations of the body can extinguish zeal: our strength may be exhausted, but never the power of God.

And that power is revealed in the Resurrection of the Lord. Saint Ignatius leads the retreatant toward the Risen One and asks him to contemplate how Christ exercises "the office of consoler" (no. 224). There he teaches us to discover where the Master is at work and to receive from him strength to return to mission. The Church that makes her pilgrim way in Argentina also needs to look at herself, recognizing with gratitude what God is already raising up in her and asking where he wishes to open new paths. The Risen One is already there, and he goes before us (cf. Mt 28:7).

At the end of the Exercises, the Contemplation to Attain Love invites us to reflect on how much we have received from God (cf. nos. 230–237). And in the face of so much gift, Saint Ignatius proposes as a response: "Take, Lord, and receive…" (no. 234). The itinerary of the retreat ends where everything began: in a life placed once again at God's disposal, with its possibilities and also its limits. Perhaps the question we should try to answer today is: can the Lord still dispose of me? And if the answer is still "yes," then there is much ahead. Let us not lower our arms! Jesus continues to walk with his Church and to make fruitful the lives of those who place themselves in his hands.

Argentina knows well what God can do with an available life. Mama Antula arrived in Buenos Aires barefoot and with only a crucifix: she carried little, but it was what was needed to begin. Brochero kept preaching, even though often only God and his mule were witnesses to his weariness. Blessed Ceferino died before turning nineteen; he had no time to grow old, but he did have time to make very clear for whom he wanted to live. God continues to pour out his grace and wants to count on you to make it reach from La Quiaca to Ushuaia, and to the last corner of the earth (cf. Mk 16:15).

Dare to look at Argentina with the eyes of God! Dream of young people asking themselves whether Christ is calling them; of parishes that are living communities of faith; of religious families that have the audacity of their founders; of seminaries and novitiates where saints are formed… Dream of a Church that keeps "making a mess," as your countryman Francis asked of you! (cf. Meeting with Argentine Young People, Rio de Janeiro, July 25, 2013). A mess that carries her to every corner and makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ resound everywhere.

Dear brothers and sisters, if the Exercises teach us anything, it is that after looking at our own life before God, we must return to it different. Let us return to our communities with hope, with freedom, and with the desire to keep serving. Perhaps we will not see all that God will do with what we sow today; neither did those who came before us see it, but without their self-giving we would not be here today.

May God find in us men and women willing to follow him and to be shaped by his love. People who do not "slacken" until they reach holiness. The Lord has done great things in this land, and I am convinced that he will yet do many more. May Our Lady of Luján accompany this journey and help us to say to the Lord, with our lives, that he can keep counting on us. Thank you very much.

[Our translation.]