Te Deum laudamus for Leo XIV and his gentle call back to Christ

“Peace be with you!” On 8 May 2025, Leo XIV delivered to the Church and to the world his first public words: not a slogan, but the words of Christ, taken up in their simplest and most demanding form, that of the blessing that flows from the Risen One. At the close of this year, we wish to give thanks to the Lord: we shall do so this evening before the Blessed Sacrament, with the particular grace of closing 2025 within a small particular Church in numerical terms - just over 145,000 faithful - yet called, precisely for this reason, to guard communion with greater responsibility, the peace of words and the truth of relationships.
We shall sing the Te Deum, and we shall do so because, in a time in which words have often become weapons, you have given us a Successor of Peter whom the Church needed infinitely. Te Deum laudamus because the Pope chose to inaugurate his pontificate with a word that disarms. He named a peace that does not coincide with a balance of …