Pope Leo XIV Affirms Church’s Role in Preserving and Interpreting Scripture

Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday affirmed that Sacred Scripture has been entrusted to the Catholic Church, which preserves and explains it, and safeguards its purpose of making Christ known to the world.

“The Church is the rightful home of Sacred Scripture,” the Pope said during the General Audience on February 11.
“With its efficacy and power, Sacred Scripture sustains and invigorates the Christian community. All the faithful are called to drink from this wellspring, first and foremost in the celebration of the Eucharist and the other sacraments,” he added.

Addressing thousands of pilgrims in Paul VI Hall, Pope Leo said Scripture “finds the sphere in which to carry out its particular task and achieve its purpose, to make Christ known and to open dialogue with God—within the Church community.”

The Pontiff pointed to the 2008 Synod of Bishops on The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church as one of the Church’s most important recent reflections on Scripture.

He quoted from Pope Benedict XVI’s post-synodal exhortation Verbum Domini, in which the late Pope affirmed that “the intrinsic link between the word and faith makes clear that authentic biblical hermeneutics can only be achieved within the faith of the Church… the primary setting for scriptural interpretation is the life of the Church.”

Pope Leo also recalled the well-known phrase of St. Jerome that “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”

This expression, he said, reminds believers of the ultimate purpose of reading and meditating on Scripture: to know Christ and, through him, to enter into a relationship with God—one that can be understood as a conversation or dialogue.

“We live surrounded by so many words, but how many of these are empty!” the Pope said.
“By contrast, the word of God responds to our thirst for meaning and for the truth about our lives. It is the only word that is always new: revealing the mystery of God to us, it is inexhaustible and never ceases to offer its riches.”

Pope Leo said those entrusted with the ministry of the word—bishops, priests, deacons, and catechists—must be guided by love for Sacred Scripture and deep familiarity with it.

“The Church ardently desires that the word of God may reach every one of her members and nurture their journey of faith. But the word of God also propels the Church beyond herself, opening her continually to mission towards everyone,” he said.

The catechesis formed part of a broader series on the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Leo explained that the sixth chapter of Dei Verbum, Vatican II’s constitution on divine revelation, expresses a “profound and vital link” between the word of God and the Church.

The document, he said, presents revelation as a dialogue “in which God speaks to human beings as friends.”

Quoting Dei Verbum, the Pope noted that “the Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the Body of the Lord, since especially in the sacred liturgy she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body.”