Vatican, 27 December, 2025 / 5:51 am (ACI Africa).
Pope Leo XIV on Friday urged Christians to resist the temptation to treat others as enemies, saying the mystery of Christmas calls believers to recognize the God-given dignity of every person, even in their adversaries.
“Christians, however, have no enemies, but brothers and sisters, who remain so even when they do not understand each other,” the pope said Dec. 26 during his Angelus address from the Apostolic Palace on the feast of St. Stephen, the Church’s first martyr.
Leo acknowledged that “those who believe in peace and have chosen the unarmed path of Jesus and the martyrs are often ridiculed, excluded from public discourse,” and sometimes even “accused of favoring adversaries and enemies.” Yet, he said Christian joy is sustained by “the tenacity of those who already live in fraternity.”
Reflecting on St. Stephen’s martyrdom, the pope noted that early Christians spoke of the saint’s “birthday,” convinced “that we are not born just once” and that “martyrdom is a birth into heaven.”
Citing the Acts of the Apostles, Leo recalled that those who witnessed Stephen’s trial and death “saw that his face was like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15), calling it “the face of one who does not leave history indifferently but responds to it with love.”
