The brand new head of the Catholic Church might be formally put in as pope at a mass on Might 18, the Vatican says.
Pope Leo XIV has promised to make the Catholic Church a balm for the world’s “darkish nights”, as he celebrated his first mass as pontiff lower than 24 hours after being elected.
Sixty-nine-year-old Leo, the previous Cardinal Robert Prevost and the primary American pope, delivered the Mass on Friday, flanked by cardinals within the Vatican Metropolis’s Sistine Chapel.
The brand new head of the Catholic Church was elected by fellow cardinals on Thursday, following Pope Francis’s dying, and has develop into the primary US pontiff within the church’s 2,000-year historical past.
Leo, who now leads the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, acknowledged that the Christian religion is usually “thought of absurd” and the protect of “the weak and unintelligent”.
“A scarcity of religion is usually tragically accompanied by the lack of which means in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the disaster of the household and so many different wounds that afflict our society,” he stated on the mass, adorned in easy white and gold garments.
He additionally warned that Jesus can’t be “diminished to a type of charismatic chief or superman”.
“That is true not solely amongst non-believers, but in addition amongst many baptised Christians, who thus find yourself dwelling, at this degree, in a state of sensible atheism,” he stated.
The brand new pontiff stated he would search to function the “devoted administrator” for the Church as a complete.
Leo might be formally put in as pope at a mass on Might 18 and can preside over his first normal viewers on Might 21, the Vatican stated, with world and spiritual leaders invited to his formal launch of the papacy.
Pope Francis’s inauguration in 2013 attracted a crowd of about 200,000 individuals.
The brand new pope will even go away senior Vatican officers of their roles in the intervening time, giving him time to determine earlier than making appointments, the Vatican stated.
The pope was elected on the finish of a two-day conclave that wrapped up on Thursday night when white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.
Francis, who died final month on the age of 88, leaves Leo to inherit various main challenges, starting from a price range shortfall to divisions about whether or not the Church ought to be extra welcoming in direction of the LGBTQ group and divorcees, and may let ladies play a larger position in its affairs.
Leo was born in Chicago however spent 20 years as a missionary in Peru.
Earlier than his election, US cardinals had been largely written off as papal contenders due to a widespread assumption that the worldwide Church couldn’t be run by a superpower pope.
Nonetheless, since Leo additionally holds Peruvian citizenship, it’s understood that he has information of each the West and the International South.
