New appeal for peace, then the Pope embraces Rome

Pope Leo XIV has launched a new appeal for peace and dialogue between the parties in the many conflicts that afflict the world. At the Regina Coeli, recited for the first time from the window of the Apostolic Palace, Prevost said: "Our prayer embraces all the peoples who suffer because of war" and "we invoke courage and perseverance for those who are engaged in dialogue and in the sincere search for peace".

After Moscow's frostiness over the Vatican's offer to host and facilitate possible negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the Pope reiterated his request to look after the people suffering because of the bombs. Then in the afternoon, in a long tour of the capital, the Pope was installed as bishop of Rome and embraced the city. "Today for you and with you I am Roman," he told Mayor Roberto Gualtieri. Resuming an ancient tradition of pontiffs, Pope Leo XIV, before taking possession of the Roman Chair, in San Giovanni in Laterano, stopped at the foot of the steps of the Campidoglio where he exchanged greetings with the mayor.

The last Pope to make this gesture was John Paul I in 1978. And it is Luciani that Pope Prevost quotes when he says: "I express to you all my affection, with the desire to share with you, in the common journey, joys and sorrows, efforts and hopes. I also offer you 'the little that I have and that I am', and I entrust it to the intercession of Saints Peter and Paul and of so many other brothers and sisters whose holiness has illuminated the history of this Church and the streets of this city".

Pope Leo thus entered his diocese on tiptoe, with that measured and almost timid style that has characterized him in these first days of his Pontificate. He speaks several times of collaboration, asks to "walk together" and to be helped in this task of bishop of Rome. He knows well the city in which he has lived for two years. He knows that it is "a very complex reality" in which the diocese carries out "courageous projects". But to the pilgrims, who have arrived in recent months for the Jubilee, it appears "like a large, open and welcoming house", he says in the homily of the mass in San Giovanni where he performed the symbolic gesture of taking possession of the Chair. For the Pope who arrives from the Americas, the eternal city must not be distinguished only for its beauty and its history but above all "for those values ​​of humanity and civilization that draw their lifeblood from the Gospel".

Mayor Gualtieri - to whom the Pope says they are now "collaborators", each for his own skills, in the construction of the common good - reminds Prevost that "peace is the strongest universal vocation of Rome". "The spiritual bond - added Gualtieri - between the Roman episcopal mission and the universal perspective of Christianity has nourished this city over the centuries, generating culture, civilization, relationships. It has enriched Rome with beauty, ethical values ​​and, also, common responsibilities". A responsibility "of peace, first and foremost".

That same peace that has been at the center of Leone's words since the first moment and for this reason "a joyful wave of hope has crossed the entire city and touched the heart of each of us", recalled the mayor.

The Pope's day ended with a visit to the other Roman basilica, that of Santa Maria Maggiore. A prayer before the icon of the Salus Populi Romani, so dear to the citizens of the capital but also to Pope Francis who chose to be buried here for this reason. And Leo closes the long day with a tribute to the tomb of his predecessor.