Pope Leo XIV praised San Marino on Saturday as a model of freedom, mutual respect and the common good, turning a visit to the tiny republic into a sermon on how power likes to dress itself up as virtue. He spoke in San Marino to local authorities of the world’s oldest surviving republic and held up its political order as an example of public service and social cohesion, while the machinery of church and state once again found common language in the management of people’s lives.
A Small State, A Familiar Lesson
San Marino has about 35,000 people and is completely surrounded by Italy. It traces its origins to the fourth century and is governed by a 60-member parliament that elects two captains regent every six months to serve jointly as heads of state, a power-sharing arrangement designed to prevent the concentration of authority. Leo is the third pope to visit San Marino, after St. John Paul II in 1982 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2011. The pageantry changes. The message doesn’t much.
Leo said Saints Marino and Leone helped create a society rooted in freedom, mutual respect and community. He described them as having translated the Christian message into "a new community and political model, strongly characterized by the Christian principles of freedom, mutual respect and communion" and said that legacy continues to shape the republic today. The language is lofty, but the frame is plain enough: a tiny state, a tidy story, and a public lesson in how authority likes to present itself as moral order.
He praised a society "built on respect for one’s own freedom and that of others and above all on respect for the sacred Will of God." That’s the old trick, polished for the microphone. Freedom, but only inside the lines drawn by institutions. Respect, but with obedience folded in.
Leo warned that modern societies face increasing threats from violence, social fragmentation and ideologies that put self-interest ahead of the common good. "We live in a world wounded by many conflicts," he said, citing growing violence, closures and fear of others. He urged Christians to respond through forgiveness, solidarity and concern for the vulnerable. The words land in a Europe where borders harden, closures multiply and fear gets managed as policy.
Dignity, Profit, and the Political Script
Leo also described San Marino as a "laboratory of good politics" and called for public life to uphold the dignity of every human person "from conception to natural death." In 2021, San Marino voters approved a referendum legalizing abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, overturning a decades-old ban. Leo did not directly address the referendum, but he repeatedly stressed the need for political, social and economic systems to place human dignity at their center and warned against models that present themselves as liberating but ultimately fail to serve the human person and the common good.
That’s the familiar church-state choreography: speak of dignity in the abstract, ignore the concrete vote, and keep the moral frame broad enough to cover whatever the authorities want to bless. The referendum sits there anyway, a reminder that people can vote one way and institutions can keep talking as if the old order still owns the room.
Later Saturday, Leo addressed the annual Rimini Meeting, a major Catholic cultural festival organized by the Communion and Liberation movement, and urged Catholics to respond to a world marked by war, division and inequality with dialogue, friendship and encounter. He said peace is built by people "who love to encounter one another and are not afraid to engage with one another," and argued that human dignity must come before political, social and ideological divisions. He warned against what he described as a growing culture of confrontation and militarization.
Against War, Against Profit, Against the Script
The pope said Christians should recognize that "there can be no enemies," and that even opponents are "a brother or sister to be looked in the eye and encountered in truth." He urged Catholics to challenge systems that fuel poverty, inequality and conflict, saying: "Let us expose unjust structures of power that lie at the root of poverty, inequality, war and environmental disasters," while urging believers to free "work from the idolatry of profit" and to "disarm technological development whenever it becomes invasive and destructive."
Those lines cut closer to the machinery than the rest of the speech. They name structures, not just moods. They point at power, not just bad behaviour. But they still come wrapped in the language of pastoral appeal, as if the same institutions that manage the damage might somehow be persuaded to stop producing it.
A significant portion of the speech focused on young people. Leo said they are "a sign that the future is promising, and not a threat!" and urged them: "Do not be afraid to give yourselves fully!" and "Go forth to meet everyone!" He encouraged Catholics to embrace listening and dialogue, saying the church grows through the attraction of authentic witness rather than proselytism.
The future, in this telling, belongs to those who are told not to fear it. The present belongs to the institutions that keep speaking in the language of common good while the borders, bans, and hierarchies stay exactly where they are.