Bear Witness to Christ's "tenderness, mercy": Pope Leo XIV to Seminarian Pilgrims at Vatican

He even spoke a few words spontaneously in Spanish during the encounter with the future priests, who traveled to Rome this week to participate in the 2025 Jubilee Year.

“I’ll also say a few words in Spanish. Thank you for having courageously accepted the Lord’s invitation to continue being a disciple, to be courageous, to enter the seminary. And do not be afraid,” he said.

The Holy Father exhorted the seminarians to embrace “the sentiments of Christ, to grow in human maturity, especially affective and relational,” and to reject “all masks and hypocrisy.”

Don’t hide your limitations

“With our gaze fixed on Jesus, we must also learn to give a name and a voice to sadness, fear, anguish, and indignation, bringing it all into our relationship with God. Crises, limitations, and weaknesses must not be hidden but rather are occasions of grace and paschal experience,” he counseled.

The pope told the seminarians that the center of every journey of discernment must be the heart, although at times “it can be frightening, because there are also wounds there.”

“Don’t be afraid to care for them, allow yourselves to be helped, because precisely from these wounds will be born the capacity to be close to those who suffer. Without an interior life, a spiritual life is not possible, because God speaks to us precisely there, in the heart,” he emphasized.

The pontiff said that just as Christ loved with a human heart, priests “are called to love with the heart of Christ,” noting that the path toward this configuration with Jesus involves cultivating interiority, prayer, and discernment.

In this regard, he emphasized that they must “learn to recognize the movements of the heart.”

“Not only the quick and immediate emotions characteristic of young people, but above all your sentiments, which help you discover the direction of your life. If you learn to know your heart, you will become increasingly authentic and will no longer need to wear masks,” he added.

He also made it clear that the privileged path to interiority is “prayer.” 

The pontiff warned of the risk of a superficial spiritual life “in an age of hyperconnectivity” in which it becomes increasingly “difficult to experience silence and solitude,” emphasizing that without an encounter with God, “we cannot even truly know ourselves.”

The cry of the poor and oppressed

The Holy Father also asked the seminarians to listen, as Jesus did, to “the often silent cry of the little ones, the poor and the oppressed, and of so many — especially young people — who are searching for meaning in their lives.”

“Nothing of you must be discarded, but everything must be embraced and transformed into the logic of the grain of wheat, so that you may become happy persons and priests, bridges, not obstacles, to the encounter with Christ of those who approach you.”

(Story continues below)

He also acknowledged that today, engaging in “the fascinating adventure of the priestly vocation” is “not at all easy” and praised their decision to “become gentle and strong heralds of the Word that saves, servants of a Church that is open and has a missionary outreach.”

Witnesses of hope

“The wisdom of Mother Church always seeks the most appropriate forms for the formation of ordained ministers,” the pope noted, but he emphasized that this mission cannot be fulfilled without the active involvement of the seminarians themselves.

“Today you are not just pilgrims but witnesses of hope,” he told them, encouraging them to allow themselves to be molded by the Holy Spirit and to practice a lifestyle marked by “gratitude, tenderness, and mercy.”

On several occasions, Leo XIV took up the image of the heart of Jesus as a symbol of the priesthood according to God and quoted in this regard Pope Francis’ last encyclical, Dilexit Nos: “The heart of Christ is animated by immense compassion: He is the Good Samaritan of humanity.”

Pope Leo concluded by pointing out that seminarians must learn to “feed” the people of God, not only with words but also with the dedication of their own lives.

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