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Pope Leo XIV opened the judicial year of Vatican City on Sunday, praising the work of the city state’s tribunal as an essential service to truth and justice, but also to unity — institutional and personal — at the heart of the Church.

Papal addresses to open the judicial years for Vatican City and the Roman curia often give interesting indications of different popes’ priorities, and the philosophies of law and justice they wish to see the courts’ judges reason with.

With several high profile cases being heard at appeal this year, though, Leo’s first address to the city state judicial apparatus comes at an especially interesting time. What might his words mean for the major cases currently before a court in the Vatican?

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Citing the writings of Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Leo noted that the judicial process is vital “to the credibility of the legal order that underpins it.”

“Authentic justice, however, cannot be understood solely in the technical terms of positive law,” noted the pope. “In the light of the mission that guides the action of the Church, it also appears as the exercise of an ordered form of

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