Don Stefano Stimamiglio with his book dedicated to Pope Leone XIV
The link between the San Paolo Companypublisher of Christian familyAnd Leo XIV It strengthens with the first book dedicated to the American pontiff by the director Don Stefano Stimamiglio.
We start from Christ, This is the title of the volume – delivered to the Pope on 4 September during the hearing with the San Paolo publishing group (pictured above, editor’s note) – wants to trace a biographical portrait of the Augustinian Pope and provide the reader a first interpretation of the programmatic lines and challenges that Pope Leo has set himself, on the basis of the words and gestures of these first months of the ministry.
Enriched by the preface of the Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, The volume is in distribution combined with this number of Christian family For only 12.90 euros plus the price of the magazine. It is available on newsstands and in the parish, or by calling 02.48027575, visiting the website www.famigliacristiana.it/ripartiamoadacristo, in the bookstores San Paolo and Paoline and in the best bookstores.
We publish an excerpt that comments on the choice that emerged from the conclave last May.
«What may have been the urgencies of the Church that the cardinals have identified at that time of comparison and discernment?
Certainly the first is the one that explains his raison d’etre: the announcement of the good news to the men of today, who live in a secularized world that has lost the sense of transcendence, which are immersed in a fragmented and dispersive culture and which, especially in the younger generations, are affected by an absence of hope and the fear of the future.
Therefore, the missionary dimension. “Don’t be afraid!”, He is echoed in St. Peter’s Square in the first Regina Caeli, Sunday 11 May 2025, recalling Paul VI and John Paul II to memory. Even the need for unity in the Church and in the world, the task of every pontiff, can be an inconvenience that the conclave has assigned to Pope Leo. His episcopal motto is not by chance “In ILLO UNUM”, that is “in him (Christ) who is one, we are one too”.
These are the words of a sermon of Sant’Agostino, whom the new pontiff has made his horizon of his episcopate and, now, of his papacy: the unity between the brothers in the church is possible, beyond every division, only in communion with Christ. (…) Pope Leone is the right person to whom to entrust the task of unite, to be a “bridge”, as the term “Pontiff” says the same term (From the Latin Pontifex, creator of bridges), where walls and dividers are built everywhere. His same biography says it: North American by birth and Latin American adoption; Missionary in the midst of the people of God in Peru and government man (he was twice the general general of his order and prefect of the important dicastery for the bishops in the Vatican Curia); Pastor (parish priest and bishop) and at the same time jurist, that is, specialized in canon law – competence that will come in handy when he will have to put his hand concretely to the reforms; Graduated in mathematics, and therefore endowed with a iron logic, and set of great spirituality, “son” of Augustine, who was a man of enormous intelligence who found peace, after years of restlessness, only after meeting Christ.
Leo XIV by character and nature, but also for theological formation, will be a Pope different from Francesco, less than rupture compared, for example, to teaching the Church in the field of family; but also more institutional, in the positive sense of the term, because it will be called to give continuity to the reforms that its predecessor has started And above all, to give them a legal certainty, an indispensable passage for the reforms of an organized reality such as the Church is.
Leone will have Vatican II as a polar star IIas immediately explained to the cardinals, in the mass held in the aftermath of his election, but will start from the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudiumthe programmatic document of Francesco, who traced the fundamental instances of the Church of the future: the return to the primacy of Christ in the announcement; the missionary conversion of the whole Christian community; growth in collegiality and synodality; attention to sensus fidei of the Christian people, especially in the most inclusive forms, such as popular piety; the care of the last and excluded; the care of the environment; the dialogue open with the contemporary, Starting from the prospects of artificial intelligence, disruptive factor in the near future that inspired the choice of his name “.
