At His Second Consistory, Pope Leo XIV Advances What Pope Francis Started

He kept the Latin Mass off the table and put listening, the margins, and the laity at the center.

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Over the weekend, Pope Leo XIV walked into the Paul VI Hall, took his seat among 178 cardinals, and asked them to do something cardinals rarely do: break into small groups and listen to one another.

For two days the College of Cardinals worked through four themes he had set for them — the wounds of a fractured world, the culture of power, the common good, and the implementation of the Synod.

Leo sat with them through the plenary sessions and when the gathering closed on Saturday evening, he gave the cardinals his own reading of what they had just done.

Many conservatives have written off synodality as a strange innovation of Francis’s making. Leo told the cardinals they were instead recovering something ancient, a part of the Church’s venerable past. A consistory, he said, is meant to be a place of communion.

Not a parliament, not a congress where opinions or interests prevail, but an experience of communion in the service of the mission.

Anyone who watched the last pontificate heard the echo. Here’s what I mean.