Pope Leo XIV convened the Catholic Church’s cardinals in Rome for a two-day consistory and asked them to advise him on key priorities for the next year or two. The Vatican gathering marked the first consistory of his papacy, with cardinals responding in a way that emphasized continuity with Pope Francis’ aims of making the church more missionary and responsive to the needs of ordinary faithful.
Roughly two-thirds of the College of Cardinals—about 170 red-capped cardinals—took part in the opening session in the Vatican’s audience hall. In his remarks, Leo asked the cardinals to share what they considered the priorities that should guide him and the Holy See for the coming year or two, and he narrowed the discussion by asking them to choose two topics after initially offering four.
The cardinals ultimately chose not to center the meeting’s focus on liturgy questions or the divisive issue tied to the old Latin Mass. “This day and a half together will point the way for our path ahead,” Leo said, as the consistory began its two-day work.
The consistory followed signals Leo had given earlier that day. In a weekly general audience, Leo called for the full implementation of reforms associated with Vatican II, describing the 1960s council as modernizing and revolutionizing the Catholic Church while remaining a source of debate.
Leo also said he would devote his weekly catechism lessons, for the foreseeable future, to rereading key Vatican II documents. “Therefore, while we hear the call not to let its prophecy fade, and to continue to seek ways and means to implement its insights, it will be important to get to know it again closely, and to do so not through hearsay or interpretations that have been given, but by rereading its documents and reflecting on their content,” he said. He added, “Indeed, it is the magisterium that still constitutes the guiding star of the church’s journey today.”
Vatican II, according to the report, helped enable the use of the vernacular rather than Latin for Mass, increased participation of lay faithful in the life of the church, and transformed Catholic relations with Jews and people of other faiths. The changes also crystallized divisions that have endured, separating traditionalist and conservative Catholics from a more progressive wing of the church.
Before the consistory, the article says Leo’s first months were dominated by completing intense Holy Year 2025 obligations and by wrapping up outstanding matters from Francis’ pontificate. It also says Leo called the consistory to begin the day after he closed out the Jubilee, a timing the report described as an unofficial launch of his pontificate and a move to look ahead to his agenda.
The report characterized Leo’s decision as significant because it contrasted with how Francis governed. Francis, it said, relied less on consistories or the College of Cardinals as a whole, and more on a small, hand-picked group of nine cardinals that met every few months at the Vatican. It added that cardinals complained they had been sidelined during Francis’ 12-year pontificate, and that Leo responded by bringing them together.
The official agenda presented at the start of the meeting, the report said, included four topics: discussion of two of Francis’ reform documents (one describing the missionary nature of the church and another, from 2022, that reformed the Vatican bureaucracy), a discussion of synodality—described as responsiveness to rank-and-file Catholics—and a discussion of the liturgy.
At the start of the meeting Wednesday, Leo asked the cardinals to choose two of the four topics. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the majority decided to focus on the issues of the missionary and synodal church rather than the liturgy or Vatican reform. He also said that although the majority did not make liturgy one of the two main themes of discussion Thursday, individual cardinals remain free to speak about it.
The liturgy question, Bruni’s comments reflected, was expected to refer to divisions within the church over the celebration of the old Latin Mass, which became a source of division in some parts of the world after Francis restricted it.