As we mark the first year of Pope Leo XIV’s papacy, here are five messages he has shared that can shape our personal mission and the mission of the Church.
🌍 1. Carry peace like a missionary carries the Gospel – into every corner of the world.
When Pope Leo stepped onto the balcony of St Peter’s and said, ‘Peace be with you,’ he did what missionaries do: he brought the words of the Risen Christ to people who needed to hear them. Robert Prevost spent over two decades as a missionary bishop in Chiclayo, Peru, learning that the Gospel is carried not by arguments or armies, but by presence, relationship and witness.
His vision of peace – ‘unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering’ – is the peace missionaries plant in conflict-torn communities: not through power, but through patience and caring presence.
Our mission: We are all sent. Every Christian can carry this peace into workplaces, families and neighbourhoods where anxiety and division have taken hold. Everywhere can be mission territory.
✝️ 2. The missionary’s one message: The Church is not an institution, but a person.
Pope Leo’s first homily returned to Jesus’ question to the disciples: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ He presented Jesus as both gift – God’s closeness – and path – the way to true fulfilment.
That is the heart of mission: the Church does not offer a set of rules, but rather an encounter. As St Augustine was changed by meeting Christ and then spent his life leading others to him, Pope Leo’s Augustinian formation shines through his teaching.
Our mission: Before we introduce others to Christ, we must know him ourselves. Conversion is not a prerequisite for mission; it is the mission, deepening throughout life. Jesus still asks: ‘Who do you say that I am?’
🤲 3. The missionary goes to the margins – because that’s where Christ already is.
Robert Prevost chose to serve in Peru, where he saw priests and sisters walk with – and advocate for – the poorest and most forgotten. In his apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te, Pope Leo wrote that ‘in every rejected migrant, it is Christ who knocks at the door of the community’, and described the Church’s mission as one of welcome, protection, promotion and integration. The Holy Father reminds us: we do not wait for people on the edges to come to the Church; we go out to meet them.
Our mission: Ask: where are those who are rejected, lonely or invisible? The margins are often closer than we think. Near home or far away, mission asks not, ‘How do I protect my comfort?’ but ‘Where is Christ calling me to go?’
🌐 4. Mission is listening: through our listening, Christ speaks.
Pope Leo’s trip to Africa, beginning in Algeria where St Augustine is buried, underlined a simple truth: as Christianity grows in the global south, the Church must learn to listen. Mission has always been a two-way exchange: the missionary brings the Gospel and is also shaped by the community. Pope Leo’s decades in Latin America shape his papacy. The people of Chiclayo formed him, too.
Our mission: We carry the light, but we are not its source. Those we meet– especially people with different cultures and experiences – can teach us something about God. Mission requires ears as much as a voice.
🌱 5. Christian hope is missionary hope – sent into the world, not retreating from it.
In a general audience in November 2025, Pope Leo drew on the image of Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. He urged every Christian to turn around, as she did, and let the Resurrection reshape our relationship with God, with one another and with creation.
Facing the threats our world carries, Pope Leo urges us not to disengage but to step in. Missionaries go into the world because it is broken, not because it is easy. And because they do, he explains: ‘Paradise is not lost, but found again.’
Our mission: The Resurrection is a commission. Like Mary Magdalene, we are sent to announce that death does not have the last word. It is the oldest missionary message, and still the most urgent.
Together, these lessons from Pope Leo’s first year sketch a leader who is, at heart, still a missionary – calling the whole Church to remember it was never meant to be anything else.