Jules Gomes (PhD Biblical Studies, Cambridge), Pope Leo XIV Drops Papal Supremacy, Urging ‘Full Communion’ with ‘All Christians’:
In his trailblazing inaugural sermon, Pope Leo XIV pointed to Christ, rather than Peter, as the foundational “rock” of Christianity, using the term “sister Christian churches” to mark his desire for ecumenical unity.
“Love and unity: these are the two dimensions of the mission entrusted to Peter by Jesus,” he told the 150,000 Catholics, as well as representatives from both Protestant and Orthodox churches, gathered at St. Peter’s Square for his inaugural Mass on Sunday morning.
Leo XIV noted that “the Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone,’” expressly designating Jesus as the founding rock of the Church.
“Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him,” the pontiff emphasized, in a significant departure from conventional Catholic interpretation, which identifies Peter as the “rock” on which Jesus built the Church.
Leo XIV described the papal office as a calling to “serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them,” underscoring the role of all baptized believers as “living stones” (1 Peter 2:5), called “to build God’s house in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity.”
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