At 10:00 this morning, the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, in the Church of Saint Anne in the Vatican, the Holy Father Leo XIV celebrated Holy Mass.

In his homily, he warned that one cannot serve both God and wealth, and invited the faithful to opt for a lifestyle centered on trust, fraternity, and the common good.

Below we publish the homily that the Pope delivered after the proclamation of the Gospel:

***

Homily of the Pope

Dear brothers and sisters,

I am particularly pleased to preside at this Eucharist in the Pontifical Parish of Saint Anne. I greet with gratitude the Augustinian religious who serve here, in particular the parish priest, Father Mario Millardi, as well as the new Prior General of the Order, Father Joseph Farrell, who is here with us today. Likewise, I also wish to greet Father Gioele Schiavella, who recently celebrated the venerable age of one hundred and three.

This church is in a special location, which is also key to the pastoral ministry carried out there: we are, so to speak, “on the border,” and almost everyone who enters and leaves Vatican City passes through St. Anne’s. There are those who pass through for work, those who pass through as guests or pilgrims, those who are in a hurry, those who are restless or serene. May each of us experience that here there are doors and hearts open to prayer, listening, and charity!

This is precisely why Jesus contrasts wealth with God: the Lord speaks this way because he knows that we are destitute creatures, that our lives are full of needs. From the moment we are born, poor and naked, we all need care and affection, a home, food, clothing. The thirst for wealth risks taking the place of God in our hearts, when we believe that it is wealth that saves our lives, as the dishonest steward in the parable thinks (cf. Luke 16:3-7). The temptation is this: to think that without God we could still live well, while without wealth we would be sad and afflicted by a thousand needs. Faced with the test of need, we feel threatened, but instead of asking for help with confidence and sharing with fraternity, we tend to calculate and accumulate, becoming suspicious and distrustful of others.

These thoughts turn one’s neighbor into a competitor, a rival, or someone to be exploited. As the prophet Amos warns, those who want to make wealth an instrument of domination are eager to “buy the poor with money” (Amos 8:6), exploiting their poverty. On the contrary, God destines the goods of creation for all. Our indigence as creatures thus attests to a promise and a bond, for which the Lord personally takes care. The psalmist describes this providential style: God “bends down to look upon the heavens and the earth”; He “raises the needy from the dust, lifts the needy from the ash heap” (Ps 113:6-7). This is how the good Father behaves, always and with everyone: not only with those poor in earthly goods, but also with the spiritual and moral misery that afflicts both the powerful and the weak, the destitute and the rich.

The word of the Lord, in fact, does not pit men into rival classes, but rather exhorts them all to an interior revolution, a conversion that begins in the heart. Then our hands will be open: to give, not to seize. Then our minds will be open: to plan a better society, not to seek deals at the best price. As Saint Paul writes: “First of all, then, then, supplications, intercessions, prayers, and thanksgivings be made for all people—for kings and all those in authority” (1 Tim 2:1). Today, in particular, the Church prays that the rulers of nations may be freed from the temptation to use wealth against humanity, transforming it into weapons that destroy peoples and monopolies that humiliate workers. Those who serve God are freed from wealth, but those who serve wealth are enslaved by it. Those who seek justice transform wealth into the common good; those who seek dominion transform the common good into prey to their own greed.

The Holy Scriptures shed light on this attachment to material goods, which confuses our hearts and distorts our future.

Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you because, in various ways, you help to keep the community of this parish alive and also carry out a generous apostolate. I encourage you to persevere with hope in a time seriously threatened by war. Entire peoples are today crushed by violence and, even more so, by a shameless indifference that abandons them to a fate of misery. In the face of these tragedies, we do not wish to be submissive, but to proclaim by word and deed that Jesus is the Savior of the world, the One who frees us from all evil. May his Spirit convert our hearts so that, nourished by the Eucharist, the supreme treasure of the Church, we may become witnesses of charity and peace.