Vatican City: “Before being believers, we are called to be human.” With these simple yet profound words, Pope Leo XIV, during his General Audience at the Vatican, returned to one of the deepest truths of the Christian vocation: faith finds its most authentic expression in compassion and human solidarity.
Reflecting on the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Pope underscored that how we respond to others in moments of vulnerability reveals our true character. It is not piety, liturgical participation, or religious status that defines our closeness to God, but our willingness to draw near to the wounded, the ignored, and the abandoned.
In this, Pope Leo’s teaching draws remarkable continuity from the thought of Joseph Ratzinger—later Pope Benedict XVI—who, in the late 1950s, warned of a Church too focused on ritual and identity, and not enough on incarnating the love of Christ through lived witness.
In his catechesis, Pope Leo recounted how the priest and Levite in Jesus’ parable, despite being religious figures, chose to walk past the suffering man on the road to Jericho. Meanwhile, it was the Samaritan—an outsider to Jewish orthodoxy—who stopped, helped, and ultimately showed what it means to be a neighbor.
“The practice of worship,” the Pope warned, “does not automatically lead to compassion. Compassion is first and foremost a matter of being human.” He stressed that ministerial roles and religious performance can never substitute for empathy or justify detachment from the struggles of others.
In the Pope’s vision, compassion is not merely a virtue—it is a radical demand. “We are not truly Christians if we do not let ourselves be touched, disturbed, and transformed by the suffering of others,” he said.
This focus on humanity before religiosity is not new. In 1959, then Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, writing in Die neuen Heiden und die Kirche (“The New Pagans and the Church”), predicted the challenges of modern secular societies. He saw that in such a context, evangelization would require not confrontation or dogmatic insistence, but the humble presence of people who are simply and truly human.
“The Christian,” Ratzinger wrote, “must be a joyful companion among others, a neighbor where he cannot be a Christian brother.” He emphasized the importance of presence over preaching, urging Christians not to impose but to embody the Gospel in everyday encounters.
What mattered to Ratzinger then—and to Pope Leo XIV now—is the credibility of Christian witness: not through argument or cultural power, but through a life lived with openness, empathy, and sincerity.
Both leaders reject the temptation to retreat into ideological or cultural fortresses. Pope Leo echoed this when he warned against reducing Christianity to tribal identity or political alignment. The Church, he suggested, must be a field hospital—close to the wounded, listening, healing, accompanying.
In our fragmented and often polarized world, the Pope’s words are a clarion call to return to the roots of Christian discipleship—not as a position of superiority or defense, but as a movement of loving proximity.
The Good Samaritan becomes not just a moral example, but a theological key: those who are considered outsiders may in fact be the ones who most deeply reveal the heart of God. And believers are reminded that their first calling is not to win arguments or convert others through words, but to be present, merciful, and fully human.
As Western societies grow increasingly secular and skeptical of institutional religion, Pope Leo and Pope Benedict—two very different yet deeply aligned voices—point to the same enduring truth: the mission of the Church in the 21st century begins not in power or preaching, but in witness.
In being fully human, Christians discover anew what it means to be fully faithful. And in every encounter—on every roadside where someone lies wounded—it is our response, not our religious status, that reveals who we truly are.