VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo XIV on Friday (May 9) celebrated his first Mass in the Sistine Chapel where he was elected less than 24 hours earlier and prayed that his historic papacy can help the Catholic Church be a beacon illuminating “the dark nights of this world”.
Leo, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost and the first US pope, looked serene as he said the Mass in the famous, frescoed chapel with the same cardinals who chose him to be the 267th pontiff and the successor to Pope Francis.
Dressed in relatively simple white and gold vestments, Leo, who was born in Chicago but spent two decades as a missionary in Peru, said a few words in English before continuing his homily in fluent Italian. He painted the spiritual picture of the Church he would like to see under his papacy.
“God has …. entrusted this treasure to me so that, with his help, I may be its faithful administrator for the sake of the entire mystical Body of the Church,” he said.
“He has done so in order that she may be ever more fully a city set on a hill, an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world,” he added, according to the official translation.
The 1.4 billion-member Church, was great not because of “the magnificence of her structures or the grandeur of her buildings … but rather through the holiness of her members”.
Source: CNA
