Pope Leo XIV has warned priests in Madrid that a 'growing polarization' threatens to 'banalize' faith. In a letter sent this Monday to the assembly of priests of the Madrid diocese, the pontiff stated that faith 'runs the risk of being instrumentalized' in contexts of 'increasing political and social polarization'. The American pontiff, in the missive, provides an interpretation of a present that, in his opinion, 'cannot do without the cultural and social framework in which faith is lived and expressed today'. 'In many environments, we are witnessing advanced processes of secularization, growing polarization in public discourse, and the tendency to reduce the complexity of the human person, interpreting it from ideologies or partial and insufficient categories,' he maintains. In this context, he warns, 'faith runs the risk of being instrumentalized, trivialized or relegated to the realm of the irrelevant, while forms of coexistence that do without any transcendent reference are being consolidated.' Leo XIV, who plans to travel to Spain this year, as confirmed by the Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal José Cobo, also laments that the 'substrate' of Christian faith 'has been notably weakened' by a supposed mental and cultural change. 'Many of the conceptual presuppositions that for centuries facilitated the transmission of the Christian message have ceased to be evident and, in no few cases, even comprehensible.' 'The Gospel does not encounter only indifference, but a different cultural horizon, in which words no longer mean the same thing and where the first proclamation cannot be taken for granted,' he affirmed. Nevertheless, the pontiff emphasizes that, despite all this, the 'absolutization of well-being has not brought the expected happiness' nor the 'promised fullness' to contemporary societies. 'Material progress, by itself, has not managed to fill the deep desire of the human heart,' he alleges. For this reason, the pope affirms that it has begun to be noted that 'many people are beginning to open up to a more honest and authentic search' for faith. And, in this context, he asked 'what kind of priests Madrid and the entire church need in this time.' 'Certainly not men defined by the multiplication of tasks or by the pressure of results, but men configured with Christ, capable of sustaining their ministry from a living relationship with Him, nourished by the Eucharist and expressed in a pastoral charity marked by the sincere gift of self,' he clarified. But he also defended the practice of 'celibacy, poverty and obedience' not as 'a denial of life,' he said, 'but as the concrete form that allows the priest to belong entirely to God without ceasing to walk among men.'
