Pilgrims need a beautiful goal that orients their journey, revives them when they are tired and rekindles their hope and desire. When the clouds come and the road seems uncertain, let us lift our gaze and look at Mary, the Mother of Jesus, a living spring, the first of all believers, gushing with hope that does not disappoint. Like Mary, we aspire to be a welcoming vessel for the Most High, a humble tent of the Word, moved only by the Holy Spirit. We ask for the gift of a listening heart, our hope guided by the gentle and persistent light of Mary’s words at the wedding feast in Cana: “Do whatever he tells you.” Like a beacon, Mary points beyond herself to the Lord Jesus and his word: the axis around which time and eternity revolve.
THE NUN’S GUIDE | November 2025
“Con tutti voi!”
“We are one family, with one Father,
who makes the sun rise on everyone;
we inhabit the same planet and we
must care for it together”
TEACHINGS of PAPA LEONE XIV
© Shutterstock: Riccardo De Luca
The Peace of Christ
“Peace be with you all! Brothers and sisters, these are the first words spoken by the risen Christ, the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for God’s flock. I would like this greeting of peace to resound in your hearts, in your families, among all people, in every nation throughout the world: peace be with you!
It is the peace of the risen Christ. A peace that is unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering, a peace that comes from God, the God who loves us all, unconditionally. To all of you, brothers and sisters in Rome, in Italy, throughout the world, we want to be a Church that moves forward, that always seeks peace, that always seeks to be close above all to those who are suffering.”
Pope Leo XIV’s first address to the faithful
Saint Peter’s Square
Thursday 8th May 2025
DIARIO del PAPA
Saturday 29th November
Visiting Turkey’s Blue Mosque
and Patriarch Bartholomew I,
before Holy Mass in the
Volkswagen stadium
Sunday 30th November
Atatürk airport to Beirut, visiting
Lebanon’s prime minister and a
shrine to Our Lady of Harissa
Edizione © 2026
the Nun’s guide
to the treasures of the Church:
Landmarks
& pilgrimages
Thriving monasteries
Seminarians on the
calling to the cloth
Finding today’s Bernini
Heavenly cathedrals
Understanding all 38
“Doctors of the Church”
Sisters of Charity of Saint
Vincent de Paul by Armand
Gautier 1850
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PRAYER OF DON TONINO BELLO
“Holy Mary, nourish in our Churches the desire for communion. Help them overcome internal divisions, intervene when the demon of discord creeps into their midst, extinguish the fires of factionalism, reconcile mutual disputes, defuse their rivalries, stop them when they decide to go their own way.”
A Humble Church
“We must dream of a more humble Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity. In the Christian community, primacy belongs to the spiritual life, where relationships do not respond to the logic of hierarchies and power. We are all children of God, called to serve one another. The supreme rule in the Church is love. No one is called to dominate; all are called to serve. We must all listen to one another. No one is excluded and no one possesses the whole truth; we must humbly seek it together. We are invited to rediscover the mystery of the Church, where God intends to bring us all together into one family of brothers and sisters and make us his people, united in the embrace of his love.”
Holy Mass in St Peter’s
Sunday 26th October 2025
COMMUNION WITH GOD
“Your gold and silver have rusted,” warns the Letter of James, “and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord.”
Such is the Bible’s call to those living in luxury and pleasure. For Saint Ambrose (c.339 to 397), Bishop of Milan, giving alms was not a paternal gesture, but justice restored. “Do not honour Christ’s body here in church with silk fabrics,” preached Saint John Chrysostom (347 to 407), Archbishop of Constantinople, “while he himself dies of hunger in the person of the poor.”
Saint Clare of Assisi (1194 to 1253) also chose barefooted poverty over papal privileges, teaching her sisters to trust purely in God and see Christ as their only inheritance, letting nothing obscure their communion with him. Poor from the day of his birth in a humble manger, taken to the Temple by Joseph and Mary with two turtledoves, the sacrifice of the poor, God lived on earth as an itinerant teacher, his poverty and precariousness both signs of his bond with his Father, and his trust in providence to the end.
“I express my heartfelt gratitude to all those who have chosen to live among the poor,” writes Pope Leo XIV in his first Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi Te, “not merely to pay them an occasional visit but to live with them as they do… one of the highest forms of evangelical life.”
Expend Yourself to the Utmost
“In many settings the Christian faith is considered absurd, for the weak and unintelligent. It is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth: believers are mocked or pitied and Jesus is reduced to a charismatic leader. This is the world that has been entrusted to us, in which we bear witness to our joyful faith in Jesus the Saviour. I say this first to myself, as I begin my mission as Bishop of Rome. According to Saint Ignatius of Antioch, led in chains to this city, the place of his impending sacrifice: ‘I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ when the world no longer sees my body,’ devoured by wild beasts in the arena, and so it happened, but his words apply to all those who exercise authority in the Church, to move aside so Christ may remain; to make oneself small, so he may be known and glorified; to expend oneself to the utmost.”
Homily to cardinals the morning after his election
The Sistine Chapel
Friday 9th May 2025
The Last Supper (1999) by Adi Nes in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem
La Preparazione di Cristo
Go into the city and you will meet a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him, and say to the owner of the house which he enters, “The Master says, where is my dining room in which I can eat the passover with my disciples?” He will show you a large upper room furnished with couches, all prepared
Mark (chapter 14, verse 13)
Pope Leo XIV on the Passion of Christ
Let us reflect on a word that holds a precious secret of Christian life. His disciples say to Jesus, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” His answer is almost a riddle: “Go into the city and a man carrying a pitcher of water will meet you,” as if everything has been arranged in advance.
The Gospel tells us that love is not the product of chance. Jesus does not face his passion out of fatalism, but fidelity to a path carefully followed. The gift of his life stems from profound intention, not a sudden impulse. The upper room, furnished and ready, tells us that God always precedes us and prepares a place for us. This space is fundamentally our heart, a room that may seem empty, but waits to be recognised, filled and cherished.
Today too, there is a supper to prepare: the Eucharist is not only celebrated at the altar, but in daily life, where it is possible to experience everything as a thanks-giving. This does not mean doing more, but leaving room, removing what encumbers us, reducing our demands. Illusions distract us and seek a result; preparations guide us and make encounter possible. True love, the Gospel reminds us, is given in advance, not based on what it receives, but on what it wishes to offer. Every gesture of availability, every gratuitous act, every act of forgiveness made in advance, every struggle patiently accepted, is a way to prepare a place where God can dwell. What spaces in my life do I need to put in order so they are ready to receive the Lord? What does it mean for me today to prepare?
If we accept the invitation we will discover that we are surrounded by signs, encounters and words that guide us towards that room, spacious and prepared, in which the mystery of an infinite love is celebrated unceasingly. May the Lord grant us to be humble preparers of his presence, and, in this daily readiness, may serene trust grow in us, allowing us to face everything with a free heart. Because where love has been prepared, life can truly flourish.
Saint Peter’s Square
Wednesday 6th August