News Briefs

Pope Leo XIV explains why Christian hope is better than optimism

October 15, 2025 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Leo XIV waves from the popemobile during an Oct. 15, 2025 public audience in St. Peter’s Square. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA.

Rome Newsroom, Oct 15, 2025 / 11:00 am (CNA).

Optimism can disappoint us, but Christian hope “promises and fulfills” our hearts’ desire for fullness, Pope Leo XIV said at his weekly audience on Wednesday.

Addressing thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 15, the pope said, “This deep desire in our hearts can find its ultimate answer not in roles, not in power, not in having, but in the certainty that there is someone who guarantees this constitutive impulse of our humanity; in the awareness that this expectation will not be disappointed or thwarted. This certainty coincides with hope.”

“This does not mean thinking in an optimistic way: often optimism lets us down, causing our expectations to implode, whereas hope promises and fulfills,” he added in his weekly message.

The Holy Father continued his reflections on the mystery of Christ, which culminates in the Resurrection, but this time he linked it to “current human and historical reality, with its questions and challenges.”

“From Christ’s Resurrection springs that hope that gives us a foretaste, despite the fatigue of living, of a deep and joyful calm: that peace that only he can give us in the end, without end,” the pope explained.

Leo recalled that human existence is full of contrasts — joy, sadness, gratitude, and stress — but that only in the Risen Christ does the heart find the fullness it seeks.

“We live busy lives, we concentrate on achieving results, and we even attain lofty, prestigious goals. Conversely, we remain suspended, precarious, awaiting success and recognition that are delayed or do not arrive at all,” he continued.

The pope acknowledged that this tension between the desire for fulfillment and the experience of limitation defines much of the human condition: “We find ourselves experiencing a paradoxical situation: we would like to be happy, and yet it is very difficult to be happy in a continuous way, without any shadows. We come to terms with our limitations and, at the same time, with the irrepressible urge to try to overcome them. We feel deep down that we are always missing something.”

However, the pontiff said, this feeling of “lack” is the call to find fulfillment in the Risen One.

“In truth,” he said, “we were not created for lack, but for fullness, to rejoice in life, and life in abundance, according to Jesus’ expression in the Gospel of John [10:10],” which says, “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

Leo emphasized that the Risen Christ “is the wellspring that satisfies our thirst, the infinite thirst for fullness that the Holy Spirit imbues into our hearts. Indeed, the Resurrection of Christ is not a simple event of human history, but the event that transformed it from within.”

The Holy Father noted that spiritual thirst is a permanent condition of the human heart, and only Jesus, who died and rose again, can answer our deepest questions, such as, “is there really a destination for us? Does our existence have any meaning? And the suffering of so many innocents, how can it be redeemed?”

“The Risen Jesus does not bestow upon us an answer ‘from above,’ but becomes our companion on this often arduous, painful and mysterious journey. Only He can fill our empty flask when our thirst becomes unbearable,” he explained.

“We are fragile creatures,” Leo added. “Mistakes are part of our humanity; it is the wound of sin that makes us fall, give up, despair. To rise again instead means to get up and stand on our feet.”

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Vatican approves auxiliary bishop for Shanghai

October 15, 2025 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Leo gives an address in St. Peter’s Basilica. 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media

EWTN News, Oct 15, 2025 / 09:45 am (CNA).

The Vatican announced Wednesday that Pope Leo XIV appointed Father Ignatius Wu Jianlin as auxiliary bishop of Shanghai on Aug. 11, with his episcopal ordination taking place today under the framework of the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China.

Father Wu Jianlin’s consecration at St. Ignatius Cathedral marks a further development in the complex relationship between Beijing and the Vatican.

Chinese authorities had previously announced Wu’s “election” by an assembly of priests and laypeople on April 28, during the sede vacante period following the death of Pope Francis.

The Vatican Bollettino, published Wednesday, revealed that the Holy Father approved Wu’s candidacy on Aug. 11.

While his appointment was not previously made public, the announcement suggests the move was made in accordance with the Vatican-China agreement.

At the time of Wu’s election, observers expressed concern that Beijing was exploiting the papal interregnum to assert control over episcopal appointments.

Wednesday’s Vatican statement confirms the new appointment was approved by Pope Leo XIV.

Bishop Wu, 55, was born on Jan. 27, 1970, and studied philosophy and theology at Sheshan Seminary in Shanghai from 1991 to 1996. He was ordained a priest in 1997, and served in a number of roles as cleric. 

Between 2013 and 2023, he helped administer the diocese during Shanghai’s prolonged sede vacante, and later served as vicar general.

Agreement as ‘seed of hope’?

The Provisional Agreement, first signed in 2018 and renewed in 2024 for four more years, establishes a system in which Chinese authorities apparently propose candidates for episcopal office, who must then receive pontifical approval before being appointed.

The exact terms of the controversial agreement remain unpublished, however, and the way the process is applied has repeatedly come under scrutiny.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, has long defended the agreement as an instrument of dialogue in an imperfect situation.

In an Oct. 11 address commemorating the 1924 Council of Shanghai, Parolin described the agreement as a “seed of hope” which, despite setbacks, could bear fruit in the long term “in the proclamation of the Gospel, in communion with the universal Church and the Bishop of Rome, and in authentic Christian life.”

At the same conference, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, affirmed “the real life and ordinary daily routine of Catholic communities in China,” even if “attention is usually focused on issues of episcopal appointments, local incidents, relations between the Chinese political authorities and the Holy See, or problems related to the state’s religious policy.”

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