On January 9, 2026, Pope Leo XIV delivered an Address to Members of the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to the Holy See. The address begins in the present moment, so to speak, with Pope Leo acknowledging that he was new to this particular event that was traditional for the diplomatic corps. Pope Leo welcomed representatives from nations that newly established representations to the Holy See, referred to the closing of the Holy Doors from the Jubilee year, and thanked the people of Rome.

The people of Rome serve as something of a transition appoint in the Address. With his direct address, “Dear Ambassadors,” effecting the transition, Pope Leo then begins a more formal set of reflections beginning with consideration of St. Augustine’s City of God:

Dear Ambassadors,

Prompted by the tragic events of the sack of Rome in 410 AD, Saint Augustine wrote De Civitate Dei, The City of God. This is one of the most powerful of his theological, philosophical and literary works. As Pope Benedict XVI observed, it is an “impressive work crucial to the development of Western political thought and the Christian theology of history.” [1] It draws, as we would say in contemporary terms, on a “narrative” that was spreading, for “the pagans, still numerous at that time, and even quite a few Christians, thought that the God of the new religion and the Apostles themselves had shown themselves incapable of protecting the city. In the days of the pagan gods, Rome was caput mundi, the great capital, and no one could have imagined that it would fall into the hands of its enemies. Now, with the God of the Christians, this great city no longer seemed secure.” [2]

Certainly, our times are very distant from those events. This is not simply a question of temporal distance, but also of a different cultural awareness and a development of categories of thought. However, we cannot overlook the fact that our own cultural sensibilities have drawn nourishment from that work, which, like all the classics, speaks to people of every generation.

[1] Benedict XVI, Catechesis (20 February 2008).

[2] Ibid.

Before going over to read the whole, it is perhaps worthy of pausing to consider how the Augustinian Pope Leo signaled continuity with his predecessor Pope Benedict XIV by citing Benedict’s catechesis regarding Augustinian texts so important to both of them.