Pope thanks Italian President for his support of the Church
Pope Leo XIV sent a telegram to Italian President Sergio Mattarella on his 85th birthday, expressing gratitude for his support of the Church and entrusting him to the protection of Italy's patron saints, Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena. The Pope extended prayers and an apostolic blessing to President Mattarella, his family, collaborators, and to Italy. In a separate visit to the Quirinale Palace on 14 October 2025, Pope Leo XIV addressed multilateralism, family support in Europe, and the impact of wars worldwide. The article highlights the Pope’s emphasis on human centrality, dialogue, and the decline of birth rates in Europe.
2 months ago
Pope Leo XIV sent a telegram to Italian President Sergio Mattarella on his 85th birthday, thanking him for his “constant attention” to Italy’s ecclesial and social life and invoking the protection of the country’s patron saints, Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena. 1
The message, dated 23 July 2026, conveys the Pope’s prayers for Mattarella, his family, collaborators, and for “beloved Italy.” It also includes an Apostolic Blessing. 1
The telegram recalls Leo XIV’s October 2025 audience at the Quirinale Palace, where he highlighted multilateralism, support for European families, and the declining birth rate. He also warned of the horrors of ongoing wars and urged empathy for victims. 1
Mattarella praised the Pope’s focus on the “centrality of the human person” and dialogue, echoing previous messages to Leo XIV on the anniversary of his papacy and on Easter. 1
By entrusting the President to the patron saints, the Pope blends religious tradition with state leadership, reinforcing the historic bond between the Holy See and Italy. 1*
Pope’s gratitude underscores Catholic–state relations and European family policy
Pope Leo XIV’s “gratitude” rhetoric is not simply diplomatic courtesy: it frames Catholic–state relations as a structured cooperation between two autonomous spheres, while also placing European family policy (and demographic decline) inside the Church’s moral and social argument about human dignity, subsidiarity, and protection of the vulnerable.
In his official address to Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Pope Leo XIV explicitly ties gratitude to the broader architecture of relations between the Holy See and the Italian State. He thanks Italian authorities for what they have done—especially for major ecclesial events centered in Rome—and then draws a doctrinal conclusion: collaboration is legitimate only under the principle of mutual respect and “reciprocal distinction of the spheres.”
He states that the relationship is “stably” grounded in “sincere friendship” and “mutual collaboration,” and that, even as the Church and State cooperate, the decision-making priority must remain the inviolable dignity of the person and the common good, “especially for the tutela dei più fragili e bisognosi.”
This logic is not unique to Leo XIV. Stated in different words, the Church’s teaching repeatedly returns to the same formula: the political community and the Church are autonomous/independent in their proper fields, yet both are devoted to the personal and social vocation of the same human beings and should cooperate for the common good. John Paul II explicitly links this to the Lateran agreements and to Gaudium et Spes 76.
Likewise, Benedict XVI summarizes a “healthy secularism” in Italy as governed by “separation of contexts and cooperation” and insists that collaboration must respect independence and sovereignty.
Even older Church teaching in Commissum Divinitus (Gregory XVI) provides the underlying boundary condition: civil power must not dominate the Church’s ability to teach and govern in religious matters; otherwise, it injures faith and overturns God’s ordinance for the Church.
So the Pope’s gratitude functions as a public acknowledgment of good-willed cooperation while also reaffirming a normative framework:
In the same Mattarella address, Pope Leo XIV thanks Italy (and Rome’s public authorities, broadly understood) for hospitality during the Jubilee Year: logistics, security, infrastructure, services, and the welcome offered to pilgrims.
He then connects that practical cooperation to the Jubilee’s theological theme—hope—not by reducing hope to logistics, but by interpreting well-ordered public stewardship as a concrete sign that supports the spiritual purpose of the pilgrimage.
This “spiritual reading of civic competence” appears again in his address to the Diplomatic Corps, where he expresses specific thanks to the Italian Government, Rome’s administration, and police forces for ensuring Jubilee safety and peaceful celebration, including after Pope Francis’s death.
Analytically, this matters because it shows the Church’s preferred model: the State’s protective role supports the Church’s mission, rather than substituting for it.
Pope Leo XIV’s European policy emphasis is especially explicit in his address to Members of the Demography Intergroup of the European Parliament. There he identifies the “heart” of demographic solutions as the fundamental dignity of all persons and “the role of the family in society.”
He then grounds his policy argument in Catholic social teaching through Saint John Paul II, calling the family “the first and irreplaceable school of social life,” and he stresses that it is founded on marriage between a man and a woman (integrating personal and public dimensions).
From there, he articulates a political principle—subsidiarity—as the guardrail for policy design: respecting and promoting the family and applying subsidiarity avoids “two extremes”:
Two closely connected claims appear in this address:
First: national and EU policies should be formulated “in partnership with civil society.”
This resonates with the Church’s repeated insistence on cooperation without absorption: the State should not replace the social fabric; it should support it.
Second: demographic crisis is tied to a broader cultural and moral failure to protect life and families. The Pope criticizes policies he describes as “purportedly family-friendly” while simultaneously:
In the same stream of thought, he warns Europe about the lack of intergenerational solidarity and about social realities (including “loneliness”) that accompany zero-growth demographics—again treated as human rather than merely economic facts.
Your headline suggests (correctly) that the gratitude for Catholic–state relations and the discussion of European family policy are linked. The link is not rhetorical—it is structural.
So the Church’s political posture is consistent: respect religious freedom and dignity; cooperate for common good; and implement social policies oriented toward the family and protection of life—without collapsing either sphere into the other.
A common point of confusion (especially in secular European contexts) is whether Catholic advocacy for family policy implies the State must adopt Catholic doctrine coercively.
Catholic teaching, as expressed in the sources here, instead emphasizes:
Therefore, Pope Leo XIV’s approach—at least as reflected in these texts—can be read as advocacy for ethical and legal conditions that allow families to flourish and life to be protected, while keeping the State from becoming an instrument that either:
Pope Leo XIV’s gratitude underscores two integrated Catholic themes. First, it presents Catholic–state relations as cooperation under reciprocal distinction—supported by agreements like the Concordat and oriented to human dignity and the common good. Second, it connects that same dignity-based logic to European family policy, arguing that demographic and cultural renewal require policies respecting marriage, supporting families, applying subsidiarity, and defending the vulnerable—especially the unborn.