Source: Vatican News
Pope encourages Leo XIV Study Center to help build a civilization of love
Pope Leo XIV welcomed members of an international study center that bears his name
to the Vatican on Friday, encouraging them to take inspiration from authentic humanism and
the Church’s social doctrine to contribute to building a civilization of love.
By Christopher Wells
At the Vatican on Friday, Pope Leo XIV held an audience for members of the Leo XIV
International Study Center, an initiative of his own Augustinian Order in response to the Holy
Father’s call to rediscover the value of the Church’s Social Doctrine as an essential tool in
facing the challenges of the modern world.
“From the beginning,” the Pope said, “I have appreciated the Center’s commitment to
broad-ranging dialogue with universities, academic institutions, public bodies, civil society
organizations, ecclesial groups, and networks, fostering collaborative relationships and
exchanges at both national and international levels.” He said “the secret” to this approach
“lies in walking together—always—without closing the door to encounters with those who
are different”.
Humanism and Catholic Social Doctrine
He encouraged members of the Study Center to draw inspiration from the “values” of
authentic Humanism, which, by being open to a Creator, can help build fraternal
relationships. “It is not war, but the weaving of peace and just balances that creates
civilization,” he said.
Pope Leo also recalled the contributions of the Church’s Social Teaching, emphasizing
its “popular” root: “Its reinterpretation of Christian Revelation within modern social, labor,
economic, and cultural contexts would be unimaginable without Christian laypeople
grappling with the challenges of their times.”
Study Center to foster.
A mission of hope
The Holy Father went on to succinctly define their “mission of hope”: to promote “a
formation for public and political life understood as service to the common good,
responsibility toward the community, and the building of relationships founded on solidarity,
justice, and peace”. In this regard, he continued, the Center’s Augustinian connections have
“much to offer the current international landscape, fostering an understanding of love as a
principle for the renewal of personal, economic, and political life”.
Reflecting the thought of St Augustine, Pope Leo XIV said, “We view history in light of the
crucified and risen Lord… we do not interpret the present as a closed destiny, but as a field
open to personal and collective conversion”. He concluded his address with an invitation to
those present to “be experts in God’s new things: dazzle with speed and efficiency, but those
He quietly brings about, freeing the old world from its dead ends and opening paths along
which we may advance together towards His city”.