Pope Leo at the Wednesday General Audience 05.13.2026

 

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Pope: Virgin Mary is perfect model of what the Church is called to be

During his weekly General Audience, and on the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima, Pope Leo XIV emphasizes how the Blessed Virgin Mary is the perfect model, member and mother of the Church.

By Isabella H. de Carvalho

On the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima, May 13, Pope Leo XIV highlighted how the Blessed Virgin Mary is a model, member and mother of the ecclesial community and she teaches all the faithful to love and serve the Church.

“The mystery of the Church is also reflected in the Virgin Mary: in Her, the people of God find the representation of their origin, their model and their homeland,” he said in his catechesis during the Wednesday General Audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“In the Mother of the Lord, the Church contemplates her own mystery, not only because she finds in Her the model of virginal faith, maternal charity and the spousal covenant to which she is called, but also and above all because in Her she recognizes her own archetype, the ideal figure of what she is called to be.”

Pope Leo XIV continued his catechesis series on the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, reflecting again on the 1964 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, whose last chapter focuses on the Virgin Mary.

Do I ask Mary for help?

In emphasizing how Our Lady can be a model for the Church, the Pope called the faithful to “ask Her to help us, through Her intercession, to respond to what is asked of us through Her example.”

In this regard he asked a series of questions to help us reflect:

“Do I live my participation of the Church with humble and active faith? Do I recognize in her the community of the covenant that God has given me to respond to His infinite love? Do I feel that I am a living part of the Church, in obedience to the pastors given by God? Do I look to Mary as a model, an outstanding member and Mother of the Church, and ask Her to help me be a faithful disciple of her Son?”

Pope Leo during the General Audience (@Vatican Media)

Model, member and mother of the Church

Citing Lumen gentium, the Pope pointed out how it invites us to recognize in Mary “the model and the pre-eminent member and mother of the entire ecclesial community.”

Shaped by God’s grace and by welcoming Jesus through her faith and “virginal love,” Mary is the “perfect model of what the Church is called to be: a creature of the Word of the Lord and mother of the children of God, begotten in docility to the action of the Holy Spirit,” the Pope explained.

He also emphasized how she is “an excellent member of the ecclesial community” as she is the “believer par excellence” and was unconditionally open to the divine mystery.

Then the Pope highlighted that she is “the mother of the whole Church” as she “ brings forth children” in Christ and all the faithful can “turn to her with filial confidence, in the certainty of being heard, protected and loved.”

A woman icon of the Mystery

The Pope then explained how these three characteristics can be summarized by defining the Virgin Mary as “a woman who is the icon of the Mystery.”  

He underlined how the word “woman highlights the historical reality of this young daughter of Israel,” to whom it was granted to become the mother of Jesus.

Then the word icon shows how “in Her, both God’s gratuitous election and Her free consent of faith in Him shine forth.”

“Mary is therefore the woman who is the icon of the Mystery, that is, of the divine plan of salvation, once hidden and now revealed in its fullness in Jesus Christ,” he said.

May the love for the Church grow in all of us

The Pope also noted that the “Council has left us clear teaching on the unique place reserved to the Virgin Mary in the work of Redemption.”

The “sole mediator of salvation is Jesus Christ” and his mother “fosters the immediate union of the faithful” with Him, Pope Leo explained, citing Lumen gentium.

Lastly the Pope invoked the Holy Spirit so that it may grant to all the grace to live fully in the Church.

“Having reflected deeply on the Constitution Lumen gentium, let us ask the Virgin to obtain this gift for us: that love for the Holy Mother Church may grow in all of us,” he concluded. 

Wednesday General Audience with Pope Leo XIV 03.25.2026

 

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• Pope Leo XIV
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• Second Vatican Council

Pope at Audience: Church’s hierarchy born from Christ to proclaim Gospel

At the weekly General Audience, Pope Leo XIV continues his catechesis on the Second Vatican Council document ‘Lumen gentium,’ and reflects on the essential nature of the Church’s hierarchical structure in her mission to preach the Gospel.

By Devin Watkins

Pope Leo XIV reflected on the third chapter of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium at the Wednesday General Audience.

In his catechesis, the Pope recalled that the Second Vatican Council document first considered the essence of the Church as the People of God, before turning to her hierarchical form.

The Church’s hierarchy is not a “subsequent element with respect to the People of God,” he said, but rather a fundamental aspect that accompanied the birth of the Church.

Jesus’ first disciples—the Apostles—formed the community of those redeemed by Christ’s Paschal Mystery, and were therefore established by Him “as a means of salvation for the world.”

“The Council teaches that the hierarchical structure is not a human construct, functional to the internal organization of the Church as a social body,” said the Pope, “but a divine institution whose purpose is to perpetuate the mission given by Christ to the Apostles until the end of time.”

Pope Leo recalled that the Catholic Church possesses a “hierarchical structure that works in the service of unity, mission, and sanctification of all her members.”

“Since the Apostles are called to faithfully preserve the Master’s salvific teaching,” he said, “they hand on their ministry to men who, until Christ’s return, continue to sanctify, guide and instruct the Church through their successors in pastoral office.”

The Second Vatican Council sought to explain the fundamental structure of the Church, not merely present her external form, he said.

Lumen gentium focuses on the “ministerial or hierarchical priesthood,” which is different “in essence and in degree” from the common priesthood of the faithful.

Though all of baptized Christians participate in the one priesthood of Christ, said the Pope, those men entrusted with ministerial priesthood have been endowed with sacra potestas, or “sacred power” for the service of the Church.

Bishops, priests, and deacons each bear a task—munera in Latin—in order to serve the People of God in a unique way so that all may arrive at salvation.

Pope Leo XIV said the Church’s hierarchy is both an internal reality and an external expression of the apostolic mission to service.

“We can therefore understand,” he said, “why Saint Paul VI presented the hierarchy as a reality ‘born of the charity of Christ, to fulfil, spread and ensure the intact and fruitful transmission of the wealth of faith, examples, precepts and charisms bequeathed by Christ to His Church’.”

In conclusion, Pope Leo prayed that the Lord may send ministers for His Church who are filled with evangelical charity and willing to become courageous missionaries in every part of the world.

Wednesday Papal General Audience 03.18.2026

 

Pope Leo XIV at General Audience 

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Pope at Audience: 'Every baptized person is to bear consistent witness to Christ'

During his weekly General Audience, Pope Leo XIV continues reflecting on the Second Vatican Council's 'Lumen gentium' and insists that "every baptized person is an active agent of evangelization, called to bear consistent witness to Christ."

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

"Every baptized person is an active agent of evangelization, called to bear consistent witness to Christ in accordance with the prophetic gift which the Lord bestows upon His whole Church."

Pope Leo XIV expressed this during his weekly General Audience on Wednesday morning.

READ THE POPE'S FULL ADDRESS

Continuing his catechesis series on the Second Vatican Council and a reading of its documents, the Pope this week revisited the second chapter of the Conciliar Constitution Lumen gentium, dedicated to the Church as the People of God, recalling that the messianic people receive from Christ the participation "in the priestly, prophetic and kingly work office through which His salvific mission is carried out."

Common mission that unites the ordained ministries and lay faithful.

The Pope remembered that the Council Fathers teach that the Lord Jesus, through the new and eternal Covenant, have established a kingdom of priests, constituting his disciples as a ‘royal priesthood.' He highlighted that this common priesthood of the faithful is given with Baptism, which enables us to worship God in spirit and truth, and to “confess before men the faith which they have received from God through the Church.”

Furthermore, through the sacrament of Confirmation, he notes all the baptized “are more perfectly bound to the Church … and the Holy Spirit endows them with special strength so that they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ.”

This consecration, the Pope said is at the root of the common mission that unites the ordained ministries and the lay faithful.

In this regard, Pope Leo remembered when Pope Francis had observed that, “looking at the People of God is remembering that we all enter the Church as lay people. The first sacrament, which seals our identity forever, and of which we should always be proud, is Baptism." Pope Leo reiterated that through Baptism and by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the faithful "‘are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood’ so that everyone forms the faithful Holy People of God.”

Aimed at our sanctification

The Pope recalled that the exercise of the royal priesthood takes place in many ways, all aimed at our sanctification, first and foremost through participation in the offering of the Eucharist.

"Through prayer, asceticism and active charity, we thus bear witness to a life renewed by God’s grace," the Pope said. As the Council summarizes, “it is through the sacraments and the exercise of the virtues that the sacred nature and organic structure of the priestly community is brought into operation."

The Pope also recalled that the Council Fathers teach that the holy People of God also participate in the prophetic mission of Christ.

"Sense of the faith" and the "consensus of the faithful"

The Holy Father reminded that in this context the important theme of the sense of the faith and the consensus of the faithful is introduced. He recalled that the Doctrinal Commission of the Council specified that this sensus fidei “is like a faculty of the whole Church, by which she, in her faith, recognizes the revelation handed down, distinguishing between true and false in matters of faith, and at the same time penetrates it more deeply and applies it more fully in life.”

The sense of faith, Pope Leo emphasized, therefore belongs to individual believers not in their own right, but as members of the People of God as a whole.

Lumen gentium, the Pope explained, focuses on this latter aspect, and places it in relation to the infallibility of the Church, to which that of the Roman Pontiff is inherent and by which it is served.

The Holy Father quoted the passage in Lumen gentium that states: “The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.” 

With this in mind, Pope Leo XIV observed, "the Church, therefore, as the communion of the faithful – which naturally includes the pastors, cannot err in matters of faith: the organ through which this truth is preserved, founded on the anointing of the Holy Spirit, is the supernatural sense of faith of the entire People of God, which is manifested in the consensus of the faithful."

Our responsibility as the People of God

From this unity, which the Magisterium of the Church safeguards, the Pope continued, "it follows that every baptized person is an active agent of evangelization, called to bear consistent witness to Christ in accordance with the prophetic gift which the Lord bestows upon His whole Church."

Reminding that the Holy Spirit, “distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank," Pope Leo said that it is through these gifts that the Holy Spirit "makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks and offices which contribute toward the renewal and building up of the Church.”

The Pope noted that a particular demonstration of this charismatic vitality is offered by consecrated life, which continually germinates and flourishes through the work of grace. "Ecclesial associations, too," he said, "are a shining example of the variety and fruitfulness of spiritual fruits for the edification of the People of God."

With this sentiment, Pope Leo XIV concluded with an invitation: "Let us rekindle in ourselves the awareness of and gratitude for having received the gift of being part of God’s People, and also the responsibility that this entails."