Pope Leo XIV urges repentance and honesty about death and sin in a world “ablaze” as Lent begins with Ash Wednesday in Rome.
Newsroom (19/02/2026 Gaudium Press) At the Basilica of Santa Sabina on Rome’s Aventine Hill, Pope Leo XIV opened the penitential season of Lent with a solemn homily that linked ancient ritual to the searing crises of the present day. “Let us call death for what it is,” the Pope said, warning that the ashes imposed on believers carry not only personal meaning but also the “weight of a world that is ablaze.”
The celebration of Ash Wednesday, held on February 18, 2026, marked the beginning of a forty-day journey toward Easter. Drawing from the Prophet Joel, Pope Leo emphasized the communal dimension of repentance: “Gather the people. Sanctify the congregation.” He underscored that Lent remains a time when the Church rediscovers itself as a community of listeners—people willing to admit their sins and begin again together.
“This conversion,” he said, “is not about pointing to supposed enemies but recognizing the evils within our own hearts.” In an age marked by divisions both digital and political, the Pope lamented how difficult it has become to “gather the people” without descending into nationalism or aggression. Lent, he insisted, should form a people who find unity through humility and courage.
A Countercultural Realism
The Pope cited Saint Paul VI, who six decades earlier had called the ceremony of ashes a “severe and striking penitential gesture.” Leo XIV echoed that conviction, describing it as a “realistic pedagogy”—a teaching moment that cuts through modern illusions. Just as Paul VI had diagnosed the “tremendous capacity for delusion” and “fundamental pessimism” of modern life, Leo XIV said the ashes of today bear witness to new forms of ruin: devastated cities, broken ecosystems, and fading respect for justice and wisdom.
“We perceive in the ashes imposed on us,” he continued, “the weight of international law reduced to dust, the ashes of entire ecosystems, the ashes of harmony among peoples.” Even the sense of the sacred, he said, has been scorched away in a world consumed by distraction and conflict.
The Courage to Repent
For the Pope, true repentance means freedom. He described sin as personal yet deeply entangled in social and structural contexts—from economics to politics to digital culture. What is needed, he said, is the daring to reject idolatry and rediscover worship of “the living God.” This, he argued, requires an “exodus,” a movement beyond paralysis and complacency toward change.
“How rare it is to find adults who repent,” he noted, extending the thought beyond individuals to “businesses and institutions that admit they have done wrong.” Yet he found hope among younger generations, who increasingly sense the moral urgency of Ash Wednesday and yearn for accountability “in the Church and in the world.”
“Our response,” he urged, “must start where we are—with those around us.” Quoting Saint Paul, he reminded the faithful: “Now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”
Witnesses in a World of Ashes
The Pope reflected on the haunting question from Joel—“Where is their God?”—as a challenge not only to believers but to the credibility of Christian witness itself. Lent, he said, calls the Church to conversion so that its proclamation might once more be believable to the watching world.
“History, and even our conscience,” he said, “asks us to call death for what it is and to carry its marks while bearing witness to resurrection.” For Leo XIV, this acknowledgment of mortality is not despair but hope: acceptance of the ashes so that new life may rise from them.
He connected the ancient Roman tradition of stationes—pilgrimages to churches built over the tombs of martyrs—with modern discipleship. These “admirable witnesses,” he said, show that faith is most alive when it serves quietly, without seeking display. Lent, he concluded, “frees us from wanting to be seen at all costs and teaches us instead to see what is being born.”
As he prepared to trace ashes on the foreheads of the faithful, Pope Leo XIV invited the Church to rediscover what it means to walk together in humility. “Let us redirect, with sobriety and joy, our entire lives and hearts toward God,” he said—a call both ancient and urgent, breathed anew amid the embers of the 21st century.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican.va
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