We appreciate with profound admiration that Pope Leo XIV is the first Augustinian Pope in history. He was drawn to Christ through Saint Augustine of Hippo, a great Father and Doctor, whose life and work are vibrantly relevant today.

Augustine was born in Tagaste in 354 AD, in North Africa, 70 km from the Mediterranean coast. Today, the site is Souk Ahras, in Algeria. It preserves historical and cultural vestiges that remind us of the saint’s life and legacy. The region was incorporated into the Roman Empire in the first century AD, when they achieved dominance over Numidia, home to Berber tribes. There was a crossroads of languages ​​and cultures. Latin dominated official affairs, but local languages ​​remained alive in everyday life. Augustine read and wrote in Latin. He knew the works of the Greeks in Latin translations.

He was born into a wealthy, but not wealthy, home. His mother, Monica, was a Christian, but his father was not. He wasn’t baptized as a child, but received a Christian education early. His mother always wanted him to be a Christian.

In his Confessions, he recounts that, in his adolescence and youth, he was immersed in a certain frivolity, attracted by distractions and superficial pleasures, with which he sought to satisfy his desire for happiness.

While studying Rhetoric—now Communications—he read Hortensius by Cicero, who was a sceptic. This reading sparked an interest in the search for truth. Like so many young people today, he became concerned with the problem of why there is evil in the world: corruption, crime, and people who cause harm. At that time, he became acquainted with the Manichean sect and became a member. According to them, the universe is governed by two principles: that of evil or darkness, and that of good or light. Both have equal power. Evil in the world is therefore due to the predominance of the evil principle. Thus, a person is not responsible for doing evil, since, when they do so, they act under a higher power that dominates and drives them. Some time after becoming a Manichean, Augustine recognized the errors of the sect, especially the inconsistency between what they preached and what they practiced.

Thus, Augustine’s reading of the works of the Neoplatonists influenced him. He found the solution to the problem of evil offered by them to be correct and adopted it: evil has no principle of its own, but is the absence of good.

Augustine taught Rhetoric first in Rome and then in Milan. There he frequented the speeches of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, and was initially interested in his rhetoric, but later became convinced of the value of Christianity and decided to be baptized at Easter in 387. While still in Italy, he wrote some of his first philosophical and anti-Manichean works. He then returned to Africa, where he was ordained a priest in 391 and appointed bishop in 395. He died as Bishop of Hippo in 430, while the city was besieged by the Vandals.

Augustine’s writings have been wonderfully preserved over the centuries. They are now available on the website:  https://www.augustinus.it/spagnolo/

In his copious work, one can see a harmonization of Greco-Latin wisdom with Christian doctrine, to better explain the latter and defend it from the attacks and errors of the time that, nevertheless, remain permanently relevant.

Augustine is the first author in the Latin West to develop a concept of will and assign it a prominent role in human life. He refers to freedom as a property of the will, in the midst of his polemic with the Manicheans and the Pelagians regarding the problem of evil.

In contrast to the Manicheans, Augustine demonstrates human responsibility in choosing. Thus, one of his first works after his baptism in Milan is De libero arbitrio.

On the other hand, the Pelagians held within Christianity that good action requires nothing but one’s own willpower; it is not necessary to seek divine help to do good. In contrast to these, Augustine emphasizes the contingency of human freedom: without divine help, we cannot choose the good. Augustine helps us understand how, according to Catholicism, human beings are neither totally dependent—like an automaton—on the Supreme Being in their free action, nor totally independent.

Augustine has had a tremendous influence on Western culture. His work De Civitate Dei (On the City of God) has been widely read since its publication. It was composed in response to his criticisms of Christianity, blaming it for the collapse of the Roman Empire, most poignantly demonstrated by the sack of Rome in 410.