Pope Leo: The Church is God’s Plan for Humanity

by Admin · March 5, 2026

Pope Leo XIV at Wednesday General Audience (@Vatican Media)

Pope Leo’s Audience of March 4 continued his catechism on Lumen Gentium, Light for the Nations. This document was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1964, and is one of the four “Constitutions” resulting from the Second Vatican Council.

Pope Leo explored the concept of the Church being described as a “complex reality” in the document, saying that “The human and divine dimensions integrate harmoniously, without one overshadowing the other; thus, the Church lives in this paradox. She is a reality that is both human and divine, which welcomes the sinful man and leads him to God.” For this reason, Lumen gentium can affirm that the Church is a well-organised body, in which the human and divine dimensions coexist without separation and without confusion. [The divine dimension] …does not consist in an ideal perfection or spiritual superiority of its members, but in the fact that the Church is generated by God’s plan for humanity, realised in Christ.

“This is what constitutes the holiness of the Church: the fact that Christ dwells in her and continues to give himself through the smallness and fragility of her members. Contemplating this perennial miracle that takes place in her, we understand ‘God’s method’: He makes himself visible through the weakness of creatures, continuing to manifest himself and to act.”

Special greetings:

I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s Audience, particularly the groups from England, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States of America. With prayerful good wishes that this Lent will be a time of grace and spiritual renewal for you and your families, I invoke upon all of you joy and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ.