Pope Leo XIV: Christ’s Resurrection is the final answer to death. It turns mortality from a contradiction into a sisterly passage to eternal life.
Newsroom (10/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) In St Peter’s Square on the second Wednesday of Advent, Pope Leo XIV told thousands of pilgrims that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the definitive response to humanity’s deepest fear: the apparent finality of death.
Addressing the fourth cycle of his Jubilee 2025 catecheses on “Jesus Christ our Hope,” the Holy Father described death as both the “most natural and at the same time most unnatural” event in human experience. While every living creature dies, only human beings know in advance that they will die, turning mortality into an existential burden unknown to animals.
“Death seems to be a sort of taboo,” the Pope observed, noting contemporary society’s tendency to speak of it in whispers, avoid cemeteries, and treat it as an unwelcome intrusion on personal tranquillity.
Contrasting this modern repression with ancient cultures that developed elaborate rites for the dead, Leo XIV warned against the illusion of “immanent immortality” offered by certain transhumanist visions that promise indefinite life-extension through technology. “Could death really be defeated by science?” he asked. “And could science itself guarantee us that a life without death is also a happy life?”
Drawing on St Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori’s classic Preparation for Death, the Pope presented mortality as a severe but irreplaceable teacher. Conscious reflection on death, he said, teaches us to distinguish what is essential for eternity from what is merely ephemeral, prompting authentic choices in prayer and detachment.
The heart of the catechesis turned to the Paschal mystery. Quoting Luke 23:54 – “It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning” – Leo XIV highlighted how the first Sabbath lamps after Christ’s crucifixion mysteriously announced the light of Easter morning. In the Resurrection, death is revealed not as life’s opposite but as its necessary passage to fullness.
“Because the Risen One has gone before us in the great trial of death,” the Pope declared, “we can, with St Francis of Assisi, call death our ‘sister’.” Christ’s victory transforms the tomb from a place of annihilation into the doorway to “a happy eternity” where “there are no longer any shadows and contradictions.”
Concluding his address, the Holy Father issued an urgent appeal for peace along the Thailand–Cambodia border, expressing deep sadness over renewed fighting that has killed civilians and displaced thousands. He called for an immediate ceasefire and the resumption of dialogue.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from vatican.va
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