Pope Leo XIV delivered a general audience in St. Peter's Square on November 26, 2025. The Pope discussed the mystery of life and the importance of hope. He emphasized that life is a gift that requires care and nurturing. The Pope reflected on fundamental questions about life's meaning and purpose. Hope is presented as the driving force that sustains individuals through life's challenges.
19 days ago
Pope Leo XIV delivered his general audience on November 26, 2025, in St. Peter’s Square, addressing thousands despite the threat of rain. The catechesis focused on how Christ's Pasch illuminates the mystery of life, instilling hope amid global challenges.1 2
The Pope greeted pilgrims warmly, emphasizing life's profound questions and the need for nurturing this gift from God.1 2
Human life is portrayed as an unchosen gift, experienced in mystery from birth to death, requiring constant care to sustain and protect it.1 2
This reality sparks eternal questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What gives our journey meaning?1 2
The Pope notes that life demands purpose, direction, and hope to avoid despair.1 2
A global "sickness" of lacking confidence in life leads to fatalism and renunciation, turning life into a threat rather than a gift.1 2
Hope counters this by anticipating our divine destination, trusting in a loving Father who desires our happiness.1 2
Without hope, existence feels like a fleeting pause between voids; with it, we entrust ourselves to God's love.1 2
The courage to live and generate life testifies to God as the "lover of life," as stated in the Book of Wisdom (11:26).1 2
Jesus reveals the Father through healing the sick, restoring bodies and spirits, and resurrecting the dead.1 2
He restores dignity to sinners, forgives, and includes the marginalized, extending salvation to all.1 2
Begotten by the Father, Christ gives life fully, even his own, inviting believers to do the same.1 2
Generating life means bringing others into existence, expanding the universe's symphony, culminating in the love between man and woman created in God's image.1 2
Scripture shows human life, with freedom, turning tragic, as in Cain's jealousy and murder of Abel (Gen 4:1-16).1 2
Human relations suffer from rivalry, violence, war, discrimination, racism, and slavery.1 2
God remains faithful to his plan of love and life, supporting humanity despite its failings.1 2
To generate life involves trusting the God of life and promoting humanity: embracing parenthood amid hardships, fostering solidarity-based economies, pursuing the common good, caring for creation, and offering selfless help.1 2
Families often face burdens that hinder dreams, yet this mission persists.1 2
Christ's Resurrection empowers believers against evil's darkness, with the Risen Lord walking alongside until the end of time.1 2
Even when life seems extinguished, Jesus provides hope and renewal.1 2
The Pope welcomed English-speaking pilgrims from countries including the UK, Ireland, Nigeria, Australia, and the US.1
He congratulated bishops and priests from England and Wales on ordination anniversaries and greeted the Eparchy of Keren in Eritrea on its 30th anniversary.1
Invoking hope during the Jubilee Year, he blessed all attendees and their families with Christ's joy and peace.1
Explore Catholic doctrine on life’s mystery and hope
Catholic doctrine presents the mystery of human life as a profound gift from God, woven into the fabric of creation and redemption. From conception to natural death, life is not merely a biological phenomenon but a sacred reality reflecting the image of God, marked by wonder, purpose, and ultimate orientation toward eternal beatitude. This mystery encompasses the origins of life, its vulnerabilities, and its destiny, inviting awe and reverence. As Pope Benedict XVI reflected in addressing scholars on the human embryo, life emerges as an enigma that science illuminates but never fully deciphers: "it is a mystery on whose significance science will be increasingly able to shed light, even if it will be difficult to decipher it completely." Echoing ancient wisdom, he draws on St. Cyril of Jerusalem to evoke the divine craftsmanship: "Who prepared the cavity of the womb for the procreation of children? Who breathed life into the inanimate fetus within it?" This underscores that life's beginnings are not random but an encounter with the Creator's imprint, transcending mere physiology to touch the anthropological and metaphysical depths.
The Church teaches that life is infused by God, precious and under His protection, as articulated in the 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion. Quoting Wisdom 1:13, it affirms: "Death was not God's doing, he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living." Yet, sin introduced death as its "sign and fruit," binding human existence to both gift and fragility. Life, then, is a "talent" to be stewarded responsibly, bearing fruit through tasks offered in this world while pointing to eternal life. Pope John Paul II reinforces this in his 1985 address to scientists, declaring life a "treasure" and death a "natural event," urging medicine to serve life without usurping God's lordship. Euthanasia, in this view, is a grave violation, for "scientists and physicians must not regard themselves as the lords of life, but as its skilled and generous servants. Only God... is the Lord of life." Such teachings highlight life's mystery as one of divine sovereignty amid human limits, where even incurable illness demands dignified care, never abandonment.
In bioethical contexts, this mystery extends to contemporary challenges. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 2008 Instruction emphasizes science's role in enhancing life's integral good, viewing research with "hope" while rejecting any diminishment of human dignity. Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae (1995) further proclaims life's inviolability from conception, calling for its protection against threats like abortion and euthanasia, which compound social injustices. These doctrines frame life's mystery not as despair but as a call to communion, where every person—from the unborn to the dying—embodies God's image and demands respect, love, and service.
Hope stands as one of the three theological virtues—alongside faith and charity—anchoring the Christian response to life's uncertainties. Defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, hope "responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven." It sustains amid discouragement, opens the heart to eternal beatitude, and counters selfishness through charity. Rooted in Scripture, as in Romans 15:13, hope is nourished by prayer and the Holy Spirit: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."
Drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas, as explored in analyses of Pope Benedict XVI's Spe Salvi, hope transcends mere human passion—a natural "stretching forth of the appetite" toward arduous goods—to become a supernatural virtue infused by grace. It attains God Himself through reliance on divine assistance, directing us to eternal happiness: "the proper and principal object of hope is eternal happiness." Faith precedes hope, proposing eternal life as possible via Christ's promises. Pope Francis, in his 2024 General Audience, echoes this: hope is "the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit." Without hope, virtues crumble into futility; it answers life's ultimate questions—"What will become of me? What is the purpose of the journey?"—warding off despair.
In the Ukrainian Catholic Catechism, hope "is born of faith" and transcends earthly limits, awaiting glorification with Christ at His return. Pope Francis's 2024 Message for the World Day of Prayer for Creation portrays hope as "patient expectation, like that of Abraham," realistic amid tribulation yet fixed on salvation's fulfillment. It groans with creation (Romans 8:19-22), expressing longing for redemption without illusion. The 2024 Bull Spes non confundit affirms: "Christian hope finds in [eternal life] an essential foundation," viewing history not as a "dead end" but directed to the Lord of glory.
Catholic doctrine intertwines life's mystery with hope, transforming suffering and death from mere endings into pathways to resurrection. Death, while natural, entered through sin (Wisdom 2:24), yet Christ defeats it definitively. As Pope John Paul II notes, even in prolonging life artificially, care must dignify the dying, for "if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord." Hope anchors here, as in Spe Salvi's vision of eternity not as endless time but a "supreme moment of satisfaction" in God's love, where "no one will take your joy from you" (John 16:22). This "learned ignorance" allows glimpsing blessed life beyond temporality.
Amid mourning, hope embraces lament without denial. As theologian Paul Clarke, O.P., argues via Richard Schenk, Christian realism integrates sorrow and joy: hope and anxiety are "indispensable parts of the Christian life," fostering openness to reality's grandeur and misery. The General Catechetical Directory (1971) urges catechesis to evoke "memory of the past, awareness of the present, and hope of the future life," culminating in eschatological expectation that properly orients earthly goods. Pope John Paul II's Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) links this to social teaching, echoing Gaudium et Spes: the Church shares humanity's "joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties," especially the poor's, proposing horizons of hope amid underdevelopment.
In Evangelium Vitae, signs of hope abound: pro-life movements, charitable acts, opposition to war and capital punishment, and bioethical dialogue all build a "civilization of love and life." Pope Benedict XVI's Caritas in Veritate (2009) extends hope to integral development, where Christ's charity enables progress "from less human conditions to those which are more human." Ultimately, as the 2008 Instruction proclaims, "Life will triumph: this is a sure hope for us... God, who loves life and gives it generously, is on the side of life."
In conclusion, Catholic doctrine unveils life's mystery as a divine drama redeemed by Christ, where hope—infused by grace—sustains the journey from earthly trials to eternal union with God. This vision calls believers to cherish life at every stage, resist its devaluation, and live with confident expectation of resurrection, fostering a world of justice, dignity, and peace.