Pope Leo XIV issued an impassioned appeal for evangelization on Friday during Mass in Chiclayo, the northern Peruvian city where he himself served for almost eight years first as Apostolic Administrator and then as bishop before being called to Rome by Pope Francis. One million people crowded the streets of the city to get a glimpse of the Pope, while around 500,000 participated in the Mass. 

“Here in Chiclayo, and throughout Peru, I invite you… to commit yourselves to sharing the living hope that is Jesus Christ and to let the Gospel ‘overflow’" from your villages, towns, and cities, proclaiming to all the "glory of the Lord,” he said during his homily.

The Church's essential mission

The Pope reminded the faithful that all Christians are missionary disciples, who cannot be indifferent “to the task of evangelization,” which is the Church’s “essential mission, her deepest vocation, and her very reason for being.”

In answer to the question of how we can proclaim Christ in the twenty-first century, Pope Leo said, “The answer is through the witness of an authentically Christian and coherent life.”

Christ at the center

Christians, he said, must first put Jesus at the center “of our proclamation and of our life.” At the same time, we must recognize that a coherent life is not simply a matter of choice on our part, but is a grace we must ask of the Lord, and with which we must cooperate.

He went on to explain that the personal encounter with Jesus Christ is centered on the Last Supper, where Jesus awaits us at “the table of the Word and the table of the Eucharist,” but also through “ecclesial communion” and “fraternal welcome of our neighbor.”

“Evangelization, therefore, does not mean imposing doctrines or trusting efficient strategies, but bearing witness to that real encounter with Christ,” he said. This duty demands attitudes of “humility and solicitude,” he continued, as well as “profound respect for each person’s conscience and freedom.”

He went on to recommend common prayer, especially in our homes, saying “domestic churches” can lead to active participation in every aspect of our communities.

Evangelization demands charity and truth

Pope Leo emphasized that evangelization requires both charity and truth. “Without truth, love degenerates into mere sentimentality”; while truth without love “becomes rigid and cold.”

Finally, Pope Leo insisted that evangelization today “must face the changing conditions and dynamics involved in the transmission of faith,” especially where that transmission has been abandoned.”

Spreading the joy of the encounter with Jesus

“Dear friends,” Pope Leo said, “mission cannot be improvised. Indeed, we proclaim what we have encountered, the salvation we have experienced, the forgiveness of sins granted to us and the discovery of the true meaning of life, because ‘every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus’.”

“I pray that this love may set fire to the life of each one of us, so that, as baptized persons and as a Christian community, we may go out into the world and spread to others the joy born of our encounter with the risen Lord.”