“The Holy Father wishes to express his sorrow for the people who lost their lives, uniting himself spiritually to the pain of their families,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, wrote in his January 30 message to the president of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference. “His Holiness prays for the national and local authorities, as well as for the civil, military and religious institutions that are uniting to come to their aid.”

“These beautiful images we are contemplating today recall the greatness of the vocation to which God calls us, namely, the universal vocation to holiness,” Pope Leo continued. “I encourage you, with God’s grace, to be witnesses and examples of that holiness in today’s world. For that is God’s will: our own sanctification.”

The event took place on the afternoon of January 31, with the Peruvian bishops, the ambassador of Peru to the Holy See, and the president of the Governorate of Vatican City State in attendance.

Addressing young people involved in a political innovation hackathon associated with the Focolare Movement, Pope Leo XIV reflected on peace as “a gift, a covenant and a promise” and said that “there can be no peace while humanity wages war against itself.”

February 2, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, is also the 30th World Day for Consecrated Life, a commemoration instituted by Pope St. John Paul II in 1997.

Pope Leo XIV said today that the Beatitudes are “lights that the Lord kindles in the darkness of history, revealing the plan of salvation that the Father accomplishes through the Son, with the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Pope Leo XIV today called for “sincere and effective dialogue” between Cuba and the United States amid mounting tensions.

Noting that prayer is “not external to the evangelical work of the Body of Christ, but an integral part of it,” Pope Leo XIV praised the work of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network and encouraged it to “invite young people to take part so that they may form the next generation of intercessors for the needs of the whole world.”

Pope Leo XIV encouraged participants in the general assemblies of the consecrated members of Regnum Christi to define their charism “with ever greater clarity,” to identify their own style of “authentically evangelical governance,” and to “promote ever deeper communion” within the Regnum Christi family.

Bishop Anthony Taylor, whose grandfather lost 20 cousins in the Holocaust, wrote in a recent diocesan newspaper column that “I fear that the same dynamics are now happening in our country with the decline of civil discourse.”

Hitler’s atrocities “ are not what is happening here today,” Bishop Taylor said. “But these are the kinds of atrocities to which the dehumanization of mass, indiscriminate deportation can naturally lead.”

The prelate concluded:

But aside from our political situation, I pray that we will begin to look at the immigrants and refugees in our midst not as enemies or as “other.” Not as different in color or in accent. Not as dangers or risks. But as created in the image and likeness of the same true God—as the stranger in our midst—as Jesus (Matthew 25:35). Peace be with you.