During Holy Week, Pope Leo urges Christians to be prophets of unity

ROME – During his first Holy Week after his election last year, Pope Leo XIV offered a lengthy reflection on Christian mission and the need to be missionaries of unity and hope in a world in crisis.

Himself a longtime missionary, the pope in his April 2 Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday said the commemoration of Jesus’s death and resurrection has the ability “to transform what human pride generally tends to harden: our identity and our place in the world.”

Jesus’s freedom in the face of suffering and death “changes hearts, heals wounds, refreshes and brightens our faces, reconciles and gathers us together, and forgives and raises us up,” he said.

Reflecting on what he said was the “Christian mission,” the pope said it is the same mission Jesus had, and it is carried out by each person according to their own vocation and state in life.

However, this mission “never without others, never neglecting or breaking communion!” he said, saying bishops and priests in particular “are at the service of a missionary people.”

“Together with all the baptized, we are the Body of Christ, anointed by his Spirit of freedom and consolation, the Spirit of prophecy and unity,”