Pope Leo comes alive! An unscripted Leo XIV opens his heart and mind

Pope Leo comes alive! An unscripted Leo XIV opens his heart and mind

November 01, 2025

By Robert Mickens

Pope Leo, over the last several days, has had a chock-full calendar of events, and at several of them he revealed new and encouraging aspects of his personality, which many of us had never seen before. First of all, the pope and his aides put a lot of effort into commemorating the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the "landmark" decree the Second Vatican Council issued on October 28, 1965, condemning antisemitism and expressing its desire to engage in dialogue and friendship with the Jewish people and other non-Christian religions. "This luminous Document teaches us to meet the followers of other religions not as outsiders, but as travelling companions on the path of truth; to honor differences affirming our common humanity; and to discern, in every sincere religious search, a reflection of the one divine Mystery that embraces all creation,” Leo said before numerous leaders of various world religions that had gathered at Rome's Colosseum for an event sponsored by the Sant'Egidio Community. Afterwards, many of those same leaders joined Leo at the Vatican for further discussions on the text and its teaching.