Homily of Cardinal Nichols
reflecting on the election of Pope Leo XIV
Chapel of the Venerable English College, Rome
Sunday, 11 May 2025
We are the humble flock on a journey to the place where the Brave Shepherd has already reached, the Risen Lord, our heavenly home. The first reading vividly portrays how this journey took on a particular moment, a decisive moment, how the message broke out into new missionary endeavour beyond its Jewish birthplace.
The second reading offers a vivid description of the fulfilment this humble flock is striving for and which we are to proclaim. The Gospel proclaimed the brave shepherd in his fullest nature, one with the Father, and it is he who protects and guides his flock. We know our weaknesses. He knows our weaknesses. For our journey, he stays with us in many ways, one of which is in the person of the Bishop of Rome.
I asked Father Stephen Wang [Rector of the Venerable English College] if I could speak at Mass today about this moment of the election of a new Pope. I wanted to do so here because it is much more than a dramatic moment of history. For me, it was an intense experience of the working of the Holy Spirit.
So what can we learn about that working of the Holy Spirit? What touched me most deeply and what has it taught me?
Well, firstly, an awareness of the prayers of the entire Church. An intense focus of prayer. A proclamation of a sensus fidei, and of the nature and importance of this decision. Then, of course, this was firmly focused on us cardinals - humble agents of the Holy Spirit. Humbled, not least, because of the wounds in the Church. The wounds of abuse, the wounds of the misuse of power, all of which we were very conscious of.
There are many signs of the grandeur of a cardinal's office, but there was among us, no sense of grandeur or self-importance. More precisely, when we moved from the General Congregations to the conclave on Tuesday evening and entered that sealed space - no phones, no contact with the outside world. What happened there? For me, it became not so much such a sealed space as a precious space. It was peaceful. There was no clamour. There was attentiveness to each other. In fact, I was a bit sorry when it ended, because there was so much more time to use creatively and to give generously. It suggests that we might all benefit from a day a week without our phones, and allow that inner freedom to flourish again, which is so often distracted by that compulsive turning to the Internet. So it was a precious space of peace.
Secondly, it was very prayerful. And by prayerful, I mean the atmosphere in which we lived, the simple ways in which we greeted each other. It was a prayerfulness to which everybody contributed. There weren't too many formal prayers, but being prayerful is a disposition, not necessarily an activity. I think it was that disposition, that turning to God, that marked this time most strongly, and all the relationships formed in there.
The third quality was fraternity - another essential quality that needs to be present if we are to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. That comradeship. There was, I tell you, no rancour. There was no competitiveness. There were no harsh words, no denigration of one another, and no expressions of ambition. There was a shared knowledge that the decision, the prize, was a Cross - a death to self and a most intense self-sacrifice into service. That we all knew, and prayed for the one to whom it would be given.
So what was our discernment like?
Who was prepared for this by experience and gifts? In whose heart was this vocation written since his first conception in the mind of God?
We chose a son of St Augustine, and I was just a few yards away when Cardinal Parolin put the question to Cardinal Prevost, "Do you accept?" And with utter calmness, he said, "I accept".
As a son of Augustine, his life and theology has been marked by it being 'affective'. Theology springing from the heart, from Augustine's conversion experience. A theology, a life, a preaching, centred on an awareness of the restlessness of the human heart until it finds rest in God. A way of life in Augustinian communities which has, as its principle, belonging to one another. He will show us again and again that the very core of our journey lies in our relationship with Christ Jesus, in love, in gratitude, and in joy. Without that, everything else counts for little.
Pope Leo described the conclave as a Pascal experience, lived in the light of Christ, to whom we wish to stay close, wanting above all to let His life shine in our world.
So let us pray for Pope Leo XIV, as he leads this humble flock to the joys of heaven, where the Brave Shepherd has gone before.
Amen.
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