Pope Leo celebrates Christmas Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, urging welcome of fragile humanity for true peace.
Newsroom (26/12/2025 Gaudium Press) Pope Leo presided over the Christmas morning Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. During his homily, the pontiff drew on biblical passages to present Christmas not merely as a celebration of peace already present in the world, but as a call to recognize and welcome that peace in its most vulnerable form—the fragile flesh of the newborn Christ and, by extension, of suffering humanity today.
“Peace is real, and it is already among us,” Pope Leo declared, echoing the prophet Isaiah’s cry to “break forth together into songs of joy” amid ruins. Quoting Jesus’ words to his disciples—“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you”—he emphasized that divine peace arrives not through power, but through a surprising vulnerability.
The Pope highlighted the paradox at the heart of the Incarnation: the Word of God, eternally effective and creative, becomes flesh as a speechless infant who can only cry. “The Word became flesh,” he said, noting that this flesh—radically naked and wordless—mirrors the silenced suffering of countless people today who have been stripped of dignity.
He pointed to the rejection described in John’s Gospel—“He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him”—yet stressed the transformative gift offered to those who receive him: “power to become children of God.” This power, he explained, remains dormant when believers distance themselves from the cries of children, the frailty of the elderly, the silence of victims, or the despair of those trapped in evil.
Quoting his predecessor Pope Francis from Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Leo reminded the faithful that Jesus desires Christians to “touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others” rather than retreat into personal or communal shelters from misfortune.
Turning to contemporary crises, the pontiff evoked vivid images of fragility: tents in Gaza battered by rain, wind, and cold; shelters of refugees and displaced persons across continents; makeshift homes of the homeless in major cities. He spoke of defenseless populations scarred by wars, young soldiers confronting the senselessness of conflict, and the lingering rubble of both recent and forgotten battles.
“When the fragility of others penetrates our hearts, when their pain shatters our rigid certainties, then peace has already begun,” he said. True peace, he insisted, emerges from welcoming a newborn’s cry, hearing weeping, building solidarity amid ruins, and allowing prophetic dreams to redirect history.
Pope Leo described Christ as the Logos—the Meaning—through whom all things were made, a mystery reflected in nativity scenes worldwide and in God’s ongoing communication with humanity. Yet he acknowledged the Gospel’s frank portrayal of darkness resisting light, and the rugged path faced by authentic messengers of peace.
Christmas, he concluded, renews the missionary impulse of the Church, urging it to follow the Word’s humble path rather than domineering voices. Authentic mission, inspired by the Second Vatican Council, involves walking with all humanity in conversation, rejecting self-centered worldliness.
In the Virgin Mary—Mother of the Church, Star of Evangelization, and Queen of Peace—believers find the model: nothing is born from force, but everything is reborn from the silent power of life welcomed.
The Christmas morning Mass, attended by thousands in the basilica and watched by millions worldwide, underscored Pope Leo’s emphasis on tenderness, listening, and encounter as the divine “how” that sets God’s peace apart from the world’s.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican.ca
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