Dear reader friendssomewhat surprisingly on December 29th the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia Treccani nominated character of the year Pope Leo XIV. A surprise because the character chosen for the year 2024, Sophia Loren, was from a completely different “environment”, while for 2023 the choice fell on President Sergio Mattarella.
It is certainly pleasing that a Pope has been chosen, a personality like few others who refers to a specific religious world, the Catholic one, which although great does not belong to everyone. But evidently today the Pope is one of the few authoritative voices who proposes a word “high” and against the current which is listened to even a little outside the ecclesial precincts.
It is also a sign that a world often robbed of hope and lost in the face of the tangle of an often indecipherable history watches and awaits words that give a horizon to hope. Pope Leo was inducted into the Treccani Book of the Year 2025 because, declared the director Marcello Sorgi, “in a difficult year” and “a very complex present”, “we have identified in the Church of Pope Leo XIV a new important protagonist on the international scene, hence the choice to name him Person of the Year”.
In a geopolitical context marked by the return of the American President Trump, by wars near and far to us, by the dominance of autocrats and by the dream of powers that want to become “great” again, the Pontiff appears as a reference for the many ways in which he has expressed and declines the word “peace”: in a theological and spiritual sense first of all, but also as social peace (to the mayors of the ANCI), as peace in interpersonal relationships, peace between peoples, as an attitude that requires the responsibility of each one.
It’s impossible to do it here in a small space, but it’s really interesting to go and see how the word “peace” occurs often in Leone’s mouth, each time with new emphases. A real one teaching of peacewhich today sounds very against the grain, and which speaks to everyone.
Another trait that Treccani shows she appreciates about Pope Leo is “having based the pontificate on fundamental values of the Christian experience, such as sobriety, moderation and listeningideal expression of a poor Church for the poor.” In a cultural environment of the hypertrophied ego, these characteristics evidently strike and make inroads.
The Treccani Book of the Year 2025then, he appreciates the American Pontiff, “parsimonious of presence and words”, because “he has chosen to nuance his figure, reduce his noise, balance positions and audiences, patiently avoiding attempts to place him on the right or left, both on a political and theological level”.
In short, in a world where who emerges “he raises his voice”those who know how to put themselves aside to make themselves appear are appreciated Someone Else. The words of Pope Leo – the first Pontiff of the modern era with missionary experience – ring true because they are deeply rooted, just as his style, so little “aligned” with today’s times, is convincing.
Even this can be the case today, in an unexpected way, “sign of contradiction” (Luke 2.34).
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