VATICAN CITY — Police work is a service for the safety and security of people and institutions, Pope Leo XIV said, but it is also a way for Christians to give witness to their faith.
“Yours is not just a profession: it is a service for the good of the church. Your daily work, in fact, gives witness to the Gospel,” the pope told members of the Vatican gendarmerie, or police force, at Mass the evening of Oct. 5.
The liturgy in the Vatican Gardens, at the replica of the Lourdes grotto, was a delayed celebration of the Sept. 29 feast of St. Michael the Archangel, the patron of the police.
The second reading at the Mass, 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14, encourages believers to “not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord,” and reminds them that “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.”
Pope Leo told the Vatican police, “Often — and you know this from experience — your discreet and reassuring presence can express a Gospel style not with words, but with a watchful glance, with a thoughtful gesture that protects everyone around you.”
“You have power from the law, but not to dominate,” the pope told them. “You have love for the little ones, but not to curry favor with authority,” and they should have “prudence in action, but not out of fear of the responsibilities entrusted to you.”
