Letter of the Holy Father to the Presbytery of the Archdiocese of Madrid on the occasion of the Presbyteral Assembly “Convivium”
Dear sons,
I am happy to address this letter to you on the occasion of your Presbyteral Assembly and to do so with a sincere desire for fraternity and unity. I thank your Archbishop and, from my heart, each one of you for your willingness to gather as a presbyterate, not only to discuss common issues, but also to support one another in the mission you share.
I appreciate the commitment with which you live and exercise your priesthood in parishes, ministries, and very diverse situations. I know that this ministry often takes place amid fatigue, complex situations, and a silent dedication that only God witnesses. Precisely for this reason, I hope that these words will reach you as a gesture of closeness and encouragement, and that this meeting will foster a climate of sincere listening, true communion, and confident openness to the action of the Holy Spirit, who never ceases to work in your lives and in your mission.
The times in which the Church finds herself invite us to pause together in serene and honest reflection. Not so much to dwell on immediate diagnoses or the management of emergencies, but to learn to read deeply the moment in which we live, recognizing, in the light of faith, the challenges and also the possibilities that the Lord opens before us. On this journey, it becomes increasingly necessary to educate our gaze and exercise discernment, so that we can perceive more clearly what God is already doing, often in ways that are not immediately apparent.
This reading of the present cannot ignore the cultural and social context in which faith is lived and expressed today. In many settings, we see advanced processes of secularization, growing polarization in public discourse, and a tendency to reduce the complexity of the human person, interpreting it from partial and insufficient ideologies or categories. In this context, faith runs the risk of being instrumentalized, trivialized, or relegated to the realm of the irrelevant, while forms of coexistence that dispense with any transcendent reference become entrenched.
Added to this is a profound cultural change that cannot be ignored: the progressive disappearance of common references. For a long time, the Christian seed found fertile ground, because moral language, the great questions about the meaning of life, and certain fundamental notions were, at least in part, shared. Today, that common ground has been significantly weakened. Many of the conceptual assumptions that for centuries facilitated the transmission of the Christian message are no longer evident and, in many cases, are no longer even comprehensible. The Gospel is met not only with indifference, but with a different cultural horizon, in which words no longer mean the same thing and where the first proclamation cannot be taken for granted.
However, this description does not fully capture what is really happening. I am convinced—and I know that many of you perceive this in the daily exercise of your ministry—that in the hearts of many people, especially young people, a new restlessness is emerging today. The absolutization of well-being has not brought the expected happiness; freedom detached from truth has not generated the promised fulfillment; and material progress, by itself, has not managed to satisfy the deep desire of the human heart.
Indeed, the dominant proposals, together with certain hermeneutical and philosophical readings that have sought to interpret the destiny of man, far from offering a sufficient response, have often left a greater sense of weariness and emptiness. Precisely for this reason, we see that many people are beginning to open themselves to a more honest and authentic search, a search that, accompanied by patience and respect, is leading them back to an encounter with Christ. This reminds us that for the priest, this is not a time for withdrawal or resignation, but for faithful presence and generous availability. All of this stems from the recognition that the initiative always comes from the Lord, who is already at work and precedes us with his grace.
This outlines the type of priests that Madrid—and the entire Church—needs at this time. Certainly not men defined by the multiplication of tasks or the pressure of results, but men configured to Christ, capable of sustaining their ministry from a living relationship with Him, nourished by the Eucharist and expressed in a pastoral charity marked by the sincere gift of self. It is not a question of inventing new models or redefining the identity we have received, but of re-proposing, with renewed intensity, the priesthood in its most authentic core—being alter Christus—letting Him shape our lives, unify our hearts, and give form to a ministry lived in intimacy with God, faithful dedication to the Church, and concrete service to the people entrusted to us.
Dear children, allow me today to speak to you about the priesthood using an image that you know well: your Cathedral. Not to describe a building, but to learn from it. Because cathedrals—like any sacred place—exist, like the priesthood, to lead us to an encounter with God and reconciliation with our brothers and sisters, and their elements contain a lesson for our life and ministry.
When we contemplate its façade, we learn something essential. It is the first thing we see, and yet it does not say everything: it indicates, suggests, invites. Likewise, the priest does not live to show off, but neither does he live to hide. His life is called to be visible, coherent, and recognizable, even if it is not always understood. The façade does not exist for itself: it leads to the interior. In the same way, the priest is never an end in himself. His whole life is called to refer to God and to accompany the passage towards the Mystery, without usurping its place.
When we reach the threshold, we understand that not everything should enter the interior, for it is a sacred space. The threshold marks a passage, a necessary separation. Before entering, something remains outside. The priesthood is also lived in this way: being in the world, but not of the world (cf. Jn 17:14). At this crossroads lie celibacy, poverty, and obedience; not as a denial of life, but as the concrete form that allows the priest to belong entirely to God without ceasing to walk among men.
The cathedral is also a common home, where everyone has a place. This is what the Church is called to be, especially for her priests: a home that welcomes, protects, and does not abandon. And this is how priestly fraternity should be lived: as the concrete experience of knowing that we are at home, responsible for one another, attentive to the life of our brother, and ready to support one another. My children, no one should feel exposed or alone in the exercise of ministry: resist together the individualism that impoverishes the heart and weakens the mission!
Walking through the temple, we notice that everything rests on the columns that support the whole. The Church has seen in them the image of the Apostles (cf. Eph 2:20). Nor does the priestly life sustain itself, but rather it is sustained by the apostolic witness received and transmitted in the living Tradition of the Church and safeguarded by the Magisterium (cf. 1 Cor 11:2; 2 Tim 1:13-14). When the priest remains anchored to this foundation, he avoids building on the sand of partial interpretations or circumstantial emphases, and relies on the firm rock that precedes and surpasses him (cf. Mt 7:24-27).
Before reaching the presbytery, the cathedral shows us discreet but fundamental places: in the baptismal font, the People of God are born; in the confessional, they are continually regenerated. In the sacraments, grace is revealed as the most real and effective force of the priestly ministry. Therefore, dear children, celebrate the sacraments with dignity and faith, being aware that what takes place in them is the true force that builds up the Church and that they are the ultimate goal to which our entire ministry is ordered. But do not forget that you are not the source, but the channel, and that you also need to drink from that water. Therefore, do not fail to go to confession, to always return to the mercy that you proclaim.
Next to the central space are several chapels. Each one has its own history and dedication. Although they are different in art and composition, they all share the same orientation; none is turned in on itself, none breaks the harmony of the whole. This is also true in the Church with the different charisms and spiritualities through which the Lord enriches and sustains your vocation. Each one receives a particular way of expressing faith and nourishing interiority, but all remain oriented toward the same center.
Let us look at the center of everything, my children: here is revealed what gives meaning to what you do every day and where your ministry springs from. On the altar, through your hands, Christ's sacrifice is made present in the highest action entrusted to human hands; in the tabernacle, He whom you have offered remains, entrusted once again to your care. Be worshipers, men of deep prayer, and teach your people to do the same.
At the end of this journey, to be the priests that the Church needs today, I leave you with the same advice from your holy compatriot, St. John of Avila: “Be wholly his” (Sermon 57). Be saints! I entrust you to Saint Mary of Almudena and, with a heart full of gratitude, I impart my Apostolic Blessing to you, which I extend to all those entrusted to your pastoral care.
Vatican, January 28, 2026.
Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, priest and doctor of the Church. [Source, in Spanish]
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Andrea Grillo, the Pontifical University professor behind the anti-Traditional Mass document "Traditionis custodes", could not believe his eyes.
Here is his reaction (main excerpts, excluding also his quotations of the document above):
There is no doubt that many of Pope Leo's speeches were frequently inspired by Augustine's thinking. From the outset, the motto so typical of Augustine's understanding of the minister's task appeared in all its authority: “With you Christian, for you bishop.”
It is no coincidence that Augustine comes from the African Church in which Tertullian and Cyprian largely identified the Christian as an “alter Christus,” even if the expression does not seem to occur literally in their works. However, the “title of salvation” is not ordination, but baptism. It is baptism that makes every man (and every woman) an “alter Christus.”
Only much later, in modern or even contemporary times, did we see the emergence of a limited and partial use of the expression “alter Christus,” whose earliest source seems to be a definition referring to St. Francis of Assisi. The association not with a friar, but with a priest, spread in the 1800s, became a “commonplace” in the 1900s (in Pius X, Pius XI, Benedict XV, and Pius XII), and then reappeared at the end of the 1900s, with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, in the priestly year 2009-2010. But the expression has no ancient tradition; it appears to be a late-modern invention, in which terminology for Christians and saints is applied exclusively to “priests.”
This is the context in which Pope Leo sent his letter to the priests of Madrid. It is surprising that the content is split in two and that reasonable premises lead to conclusions that have no connection with those premises. I would like to highlight the tension that runs through the text. ...
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That the core of the priesthood is “being alter Christus” is a rather bold hypothesis, without a long tradition, with a strong apologetic component, typical of a theological style of the early 1900s, superseded by the Second Vatican Council and the new vision of ministry, which finds its foundations in ancient theology. When Augustine heard that the bishop was being called “spouse,” he was opposed. If anything, he said, he is the friend of the Bridegroom. That the “priest” is “alter Christus” is the result of a sacred theory of ministry, which Augustine would have rejected. The pastor is not primarily sacralized in a difference from the Christian, but is unified in his Body.
This unilateral discourse in the Letter is followed by a description of the “priest” along the lines of the “cathedral”: it is a strange text, which appears forced and reductive both for the figure of the priest and for the function of the cathedral. A “self-referential” interpretation of the cathedral is a way of not doing justice to either the cathedral or the ordained minister (who is ordained not to himself but to the people of God). However, the fact that the cathedral is a place “open to all” is interpreted as referring only to ‘priests’: here too, the meaning of the cathedral church is seriously misunderstood, as it is not “for priests” or for the bishop, but for Christians.
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A church in which “alter Christus” refers not to the baptized or the saints, but to ordained ministers, is a church conceived as “societas inaequalis” and “societas perfecta,” according to the temptation of Catholicism between 1870 and 1950. Even for Madrid priests, it would not be a great achievement to return to the tones and styles of those times. [Source, in Italian]
