As Catholics prepare to enter the holy season of Lent, Pope Leo XIV has issued a powerful appeal for conversion rooted in attentiveness to God and restraint of heart and tongue.
In his Message for Lent 2026, released at the Vatican on 13 February, the Holy Father invites the faithful to embrace Lent as a renewed journey of “Listening and Fasting: Lent as a Time of Conversion.” The message will shape the Church’s prayer and practice as Ash Wednesday approaches.
At the heart of the Pope’s reflection is a simple but demanding challenge: to place God once again at the centre of life. Lent, he writes, is a time when the Church, “guided by a sense of maternal care,” calls believers away from distraction and anxiety and back to the transforming power of God’s word.
Listening: making room for God and for others
Pope Leo XIV places particular emphasis on listening, describing it as the first step in any genuine relationship, including our relationship with God. Drawing on the biblical image of Moses before the burning bush, the Pope recalls a God who listens to the cry of the oppressed and invites his people to do the same.
Listening to Sacred Scripture in the liturgy, he explains, trains Christians to listen attentively to reality itself, especially to those who suffer. The Pope stresses that the cry of the poor is not peripheral to faith but a constant challenge to the Church and to society as a whole.
Fasting: disciplining desire and expanding the heart
Alongside listening, the Holy Father highlights fasting as an essential Lenten practice. Far from being merely symbolic, fasting involves the body and helps believers rediscover what they truly hunger for. When lived with humility and faith, fasting purifies desire, renews the thirst for justice and opens the heart more fully to God.
In a strikingly practical invitation, Pope Leo XIV urges Catholics to rediscover an often-overlooked form of fasting: abstaining from harmful speech. He calls on the faithful to “disarm our language”, avoiding harsh words, rash judgement, slander and online hostility and instead to cultivate kindness, respect and peace in families, workplaces, social media and public debate.
A shared journey of conversion
The Pope also underlines the communal nature of Lent. Conversion, he insists, is never purely private. Parishes, families and communities are called to walk together, listening both to God’s word and to the cry of the poor and of the earth. True repentance, he notes, is reflected in the quality of our relationships and in our willingness to be challenged by reality.
Concluding his message, Pope Leo XIV prays that this Lent may form communities where suffering voices are heard, harmful words give way to hope, and listening opens paths to liberation. He entrusts the Church’s Lenten journey to God’s grace, imparting his blessing to all the faithful.
The Message is dated 5 February 2026 and was signed at the Vatican on the Memorial of Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr, a reminder, as Lent begins, that attentive faith and disciplined love remain at the heart of Christian witness.
Photo Credit : CBCEW
