Pope Leo XIV receives Augustinian study center that bears his name
The pope met members of the Pope Leo XIV International Center for Studies, founded in Florence in October 2025 by the Order of St. Augustine, and said their mission is to promote training for public and political life as service to the common good
Pope Leo XIV received members of the Centro Internacional de Estudios Papa León XIV (Pope Leo XIV International Center for Studies) in the Consistory Hall at the Vatican on September 18, 2026. The center, a research and cultural production body based in Florence, was founded in October 2025 by the Order of St. Augustine. Its purpose is to promote the figure and teaching of Pope Leo XIV and to provide training for public and political life as service to the common good.
The pope stressed the importance of the mission entrusted to the center and said he was glad to support the initiative from its first steps. That mission of hope, he said, is to promote in Italy and around the world training for public and political life understood as service to the common good.
The Church's social teaching and humanism
Leo said critical thinking and reflection matter in building a civilization founded on love, and that the Church's social teaching has much to offer in that area. He also welcomed the center's intention to engage in broad dialogue with academic institutions, public bodies and civil society organizations, nationally and internationally, as set out in its founding decree.
The pope turned to the choice of Florence as the center's home, calling it an invitation to draw on the values of humanism. He said civilization is produced not by wars but by the weaving of peace and just balances, with the active participation of all the social and cultural components of an open society.
Popular roots of the Church's social teaching
Leo said the Church's social teaching is rooted in the faithful people, roots that should not be forgotten, above all in times of change. "Its reinterpretation of Christian Revelation in modern social, labor, economic and cultural circumstances would be unimaginable without the Christian lay people who faced the challenges of their time," he said, stressing the importance of the interaction between the baptized and the Magisterium.
He asked the center's members to nurture that interaction, which he said requires pioneers and facilitators, especially when mistrust and resignation threaten to take hold. "Even at the risk of going against the current, your mission of hope consists in promoting, in Italy and throughout the world, a formation for public and political life understood as service to the common good, responsibility toward the community and the building of relationships based on solidarity, justice and peace," he added.
Love as a fundamental bond
Recalling Pope Francis's visit to Florence in November 2015, Leo said that "there is no authentic humanism that does not see love as a bond between human beings, whether interpersonal, intimate, social, political or intellectual." The Augustinian thought behind the initiative, he said, has much to offer the current international scene, with love as a principle of renewal in personal, economic and political life.
Closing the audience, Leo urged the center's members to be "experts in the newness of God," able to look at history in the light of the Crucified and Risen One. "We do not interpret the present as a closed destiny, but as a field open to personal and collective conversion," he said, calling on them to trust in the power of the Kingdom that springs from the humility of a mustard seed.
