The apostolic visit of Pope Leo XIV to Spain is strengthening our faith. It is doing so through its prodigious and moving sowing of enthusiasm, hope, joy, optimism, and love. It is doing so through its kindness, goodness, empathy, affection, charity, openness to dialogue, beauty, poetry, passion, and competence, and in a very compelling way, it is teaching us the beauty of theocentric humanism.

It is evident that human beings have a beautiful mission: to be truly human, and to be good. They are made for truth and goodness, and thus to be happy. On the one hand, by their very nature and conception, humans are always truly human, and no one is more human than another. On the other hand, humans can be inhuman. They can also bring their humanity to its fullest expression, and in this sense, become more human.

When man loses God, he also loses his humanity; that is, he becomes inhuman, since man was made by God and for God, and only in God does he find his fulfillment and his rest. Without God, he can only be restless; he cannot be happy. Grace heals the wounds of our nature. How much good religion has done by making man more human, healing also the wounds of inhumanity that can easily take root in the heart!

How much good the Catholic religion has done in elevating the human person, giving them fulfillment, happiness, joy, and salvation! We can never be grateful enough for the immense good that religion does for us, for the profound salvation it works in the human heart!

Many have tried to tear Christ from the soul, when the reality is that in Christ we have all our good. It is a great deception to believe that Christ can be cast out of the human heart! This great deception—how many wounds and how much suffering it has caused! There is a new rebirth; many young people are seeking what only God can fill: religion! The Pope has opened new horizons for countless young people, sown fundamental ideas, and awakened questions that invite them to be more, to gain new insights, to be happier, to live life with greater joy, and to choose a responsible, excellent, and good life.

As Pope Leo XIV said, recalling Pope John Paul II: “Do not be afraid, open wide the doors of your hearts to Christ!” The current Supreme Pontiff also reminded us of Pope Benedict XVI’s words: “Christ takes nothing away, and gives everything.” This can be complemented by another of Pope Benedict’s own words: “The world promises everything, and gives nothing.”

The Catholic religion, the foremost teacher of humanity, has been sowing, throughout history, a marvelous seed, populating the world with magnificent flowers and fruits. The most important of these is to enlarge the human heart so that it may fully enjoy God, both here on earth and even more so in eternity. To be in heaven with God, seeing Him, enjoying Him, loving Him, and all this forever, without ever being able to lose it. Possession in celestial glory of all good, without any mixture of evil. Oh, infinite treasure of God, who loves us with an infinite and eternal love!

Where God is, there is heaven. The Church does not look only to the individual, but to the good of all human beings, to building bonds of charity, to the unity of humankind. She is a builder of friendship, love, encounter, welcome, solidarity, justice, and positive social interaction. And while the dehumanized heart, when faced with the most needy, turns its face away, she looks upon them with special affection, recognizing Christ in them.

The Church, by sowing seeds along life’s journey, has brought forth in countless places immense treasures of theology, philosophy, science, art, culture, sport, and more—reflections that share in the beauty of God. The Church is a teacher of humanity and wisdom! The Church, follower of Christ, perfect and most human God and Man, is most humane!

As the immense beauty of the genius of Christianity unfolds before our eyes, our hearts are filled with wonder at so much good, and so much to thank the Holy Mother Catholic Church for, the continuator of Christ’s work.

How much we also owe to the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ, for the immense good, the great sowing of truth, and the poetic beauty he is bestowing upon us these days in Spain, inviting men to lift their hearts to God, to the Savior, and to build a more fraternal and more humane world! Long live the Pope!