Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, said that he sees three “defining traits that are currently shaping” Pope Leo’s “style of governance.”
Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament on the occasion of the presentation of a new book on the Pope, Cardinal Parolin listed the traits as “disarmed and disarming peace,” “unity in the Church,” and the Pope’s synodal style of listening.
Commenting on the Church’s unity, Cardinal Parolin said:
In Augustine’s time, it was the Donatists who caused division within the Church, for they considered themselves superior to others—the only ones who had remained faithful to the Gospel.
Today, different reasons drive many to divide the ecclesial body. On one side are those who, in the name of indiscriminate openness, risk compromising Tradition and reducing the Church to the ways of the world; on the other are those who, in the name of Tradition, reject all progress, reviving the image of a besieged fortress that pits the Church against the world.