Pope praises Monaco, issues challenge, during one-day visit

The Pope visited the Principality of Monaco, one of the last European countries to maintain Catholicism as a state religion, on March 28.

The first Pope to visit Monaco in nearly 500 years, Leo XIV also met the principality’s royal family. In an address at the Prince’s Palace, the Pope denounced the “unjust configurations of power, structures of sin that dig chasms between poor and rich, between the privileged and the rejected, between friends and enemy”, Agence France-Presse reported.

Pope Leo insisted that wealth should serve “law and justice, especially at a historical moment when displays of force and the logic of omnipotence wound the world and jeopardise peace”.

At Monaco’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the Pope praised the hospitality of the small cosmopolitan state characterised by cultural and socioeconomic diversity.

But it is important, the Pope pointed out, that the proclamation of the Gospel and the forms of faith “are preserved from the risk of being reduced to habit, even if it is good”.

“A living faith is always prophetic, capable of raising questions and offering provocations: Are we really defending the human being? Are we protecting the dignity of the person in the protection of life in all its phases? Is the current economic and social model really fair and inspired by solidarity?” he said.

Pope Leo cited Pope Benedict XVIʼs encyclical Caritas in Veritate, published in 2009: “Is this model inhabited by the ethics of responsibility, which helps us to go beyond the ‘logic of the exchange of equivalent things and profit as an end in itself?’” he said.

The Pontiff also warned about the “impulses of secularism”, which can reduce humanity to individualism and orient social life only towards the production of wealth.

In a homily delivered during Mass at the Louis II Stadium, the Pope condemned all military conflicts, which he argued are the result of the “idolatry of power and money” and which “bloody” Godʼs gift of grace to humanity.

“Every truncated life is a wound to the body of Christ. Letʼs not get used to the rumble of weapons or the images of war!” he said.

Pope Leo also met young people and catechumens of Monaco at the Church of Saint Devota.

“Good is stronger than evil, even when, at times, it may seem – in the immediate moment – to be getting the worst of it,” the Pope told them.

FULL STORY

Pope Leo XIV warns of a faith reduced to ‘custom’  (By Victoria Cardiel/EWTN News)

Pope Leo XIV: Wars are ‘the result of the idolatry of power and money’ (EWTN News)

Pope Leo XIV to youth of Monaco: ‘Do not be afraid to give everything to God’ (EWTN News)

Pope denounces widening gap between the rich and poor on Monaco visit (Agence France-Presse/Radio New Zealand)