VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV on Sunday prayed for victims of growing violence in the Sahel, thanked the people of the Canary Islands for welcoming a cruise ship carrying people sick with hantavirus, and offered a special blessing for mothers during his Regina Caeli address in St. Peter’s Square.
Speaking after the Marian prayer May 10, the pope said he had learned “with concern” of increasing violence in the Sahel region, especially in Chad and Mali, which have been struck by recent terrorist attacks.
He assured his prayers for the victims and his closeness to those who are suffering, expressing hope that “every form of violence may cease” and encouraging efforts toward peace and development in the region.
The pope also marked the annual Coptic-Catholic Friendship Day, sending “fraternal greetings” to Pope Tawadros II and assuring his prayers for the Coptic Church. He said he hoped the path of friendship between Catholics and Copts would lead to “perfect unity in Christ, who called us friends.”
In Spanish, Pope Leo XIV thanked the people of the Canary Islands for allowing the arrival of the Hondius cruise ship with passengers sick with hantavirus. “I am happy to be able to meet you next month during my visit to the islands,” he said.
The pope also offered a Mother’s Day greeting, asking Mary, “the Mother of Jesus and our mother,” to intercede for all mothers, especially those living in difficult circumstances. “Thank you! May God bless you!” he said.
Before the Regina Caeli, Pope Leo reflected on the Gospel for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, in which Jesus tells his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
The pope said the words of Jesus free Christians from a misunderstanding: the idea that people are loved by God only if they keep the commandments.
“Our righteousness would then be the condition for God’s love,” he said. “On the contrary, God’s love is the condition for our righteousness.”
Jesus’ words, he said, are “an invitation to relationship,” not a form of blackmail or uncertainty.
The Lord commands his followers to love one another as he has loved them, Pope Leo said, because it is Christ’s love that gives birth to love in the human heart. Christ, he said, is the measure of true love: faithful, pure, unconditional, and without “buts” or “maybes.”
“Since God loves us first, we too can love,” he said. “And when we truly love God, we truly love one another.”
The pope said the commandments are not burdensome rules but “an order of life” that heals people from false loves and offers a spiritual path to salvation.
Because God loves his people, the pope continued, he does not leave them alone in life’s trials but promises the Paraclete, the Advocate, the “Spirit of truth.”
The Holy Spirit, he said, is a gift the world cannot receive while it remains attached to evil that oppresses the poor, excludes the weak, and kills the innocent. But those who respond to Jesus’ love find in the Holy Spirit an unfailing ally.
Pope Leo said Christians can always bear witness to God, who is love — not as an abstract idea, but as the reality of divine life, through which all things were created from nothing and redeemed from death.
Jesus, he said, shares with believers his identity as the beloved Son: “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
This communion, the pope said, contradicts the work of the Accuser, “the father of lies,” who seeks to set humanity against God and people against one another. Jesus does the opposite, he said, saving his people from evil and uniting them as brothers and sisters in the Church.
This story was first published by ACI Stampa, the Italian-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.