Forgiveness Fundamental to Justice: Pope Leo XIV to Legal Professionals at Jubilee

An estimated 20,000 people from 100 countries took part in the Jubilee of Workers of Justice, part of the yearlong Jubilee of Hope, including a large number of pilgrims from the United States and Canada. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was also in attendance.

Joshua McCaig, a lawyer and founding president of the Catholic Bar Association, traveled to Rome for the jubilee with a delegation of over 50 legal professionals from the U.S.

He told EWTN News he hopes the event “will be an opportunity for us all to reflect on what more we can do for the common good.”

“The Catholic Church brings resources, brings hope, brings community, brings values that are instilled in the teachings of Jesus Christ to help all individuals — but also those in the legal profession — further develop an understanding of how this world should be and the role we should play in it,” he said.

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Before the audience with the pope, Archbishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, gave a lecture on the theme of “Iustitia Imago Dei: the operator of justice, instrument of hope.”

“Those who administer justice in the Church must also be pastors. … They must respect justice, but they are pastors who must also watch over the good of souls,” Arrieta told EWTN News this week.

In his message, Pope Leo emphasized that the function of justice “is indispensable both for the orderly development of society and as a cardinal virtue that inspires and guides the conscience of every man and woman.”

“Striving for justice, therefore, requires being able to love it as a reality that can only be achieved through constant attention, radical disinterest, and assiduous discernment,” he said.

He noted that the Jubilee of Workers of Justice is a chance to also reflect on an overlooked aspect of justice, the reality that many countries and people “hunger and thirst for justice” because their living conditions are gravely unjust and inhuman.

The pontiff cited St. Augustine, calling the saint’s words “timeless truths” to apply to the current international situation.

“'Without justice,'” the pope quoted, “'the state cannot be administered; it is impossible to have law in a state where there is no true justice. An act performed according to law is certainly performed according to justice, and it is impossible to perform an act according to law that is performed against justice [...] A state where there is no justice is not a state. Justice is, in fact, the virtue that distributes to each his due. Therefore, it is not human justice that takes man away from the true God.'”

“May the challenging words of St. Augustine inspire each of us to always express the exercise of justice in the service of the people to the best of our ability, with our gaze turned to God, so as to fully respect justice, law, and the dignity of persons,” Leo said.

Matteo Ciofi, EWTN News Nightly Vatican producer, and Victoria Cardiel, Vatican Correspondent for ACI Prensa/EWTN News, contributed to this report.

Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.