Pope Leo says Church must fight 'lack of faith' in first mass

Pope Leo XIV urged the Catholic Church to “desperately” counter a lack of faith in his first homily as pope yesterday, a day after the modest cardinal largely unknown to the world became the first US head of the 2,000-year institution.

Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost on Thursday became the 267th pope, spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics and successor to Argentina’s Pope Francis, after a secret conclave by his fellow cardinals in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.

In today’s world, there are places or situations where “it is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied,” he said.

Thousands of pilgrims in St Peter's Square cheered as Pope Leo XIV, Robert Prevost, appeared on the balcony of St Peter's Basilica. Reuters

“Yet, precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed,” said the new pope, 69, standing at the Sistine Chapel altar with Michelangelo’s famed fresco of The Last Judgment behind him.

The former missionary deplored “settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent” and, in an echo of his predecessor, Francis, said people were turning to “technology, money, success, power or pleasure.”

“A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society,” said Leo in Italian, wearing a white papal robe trimmed in gold as he addressed the seated white-robed cardinals.

In an apparent message to evangelical Christians, Leo also warned that Jesus cannot be “reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman.”

“This is true not only among non-believers, but also among many baptized Christians, who thus end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism,” he said.

In an unscripted introduction to his homily in English, he also evoked a need to overcome divisions within the church, telling his fellow cardinals: “I know I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me.”

Many around the world were still digesting the choice of the man sometimes referred to in Rome as the “Latin Yankee” for his decades-long missions in Peru.

“A pope from the United States is almost more surprising than an Argentine and Jesuit pope,” such as Francis, the Corriere della Sera daily wrote.

Francis was the first pope ever named from the Americas.