Most Blessed Father:
Benedictus Deus!
With immense and heartfelt joy, united fraternally with all believers and with men and women
of goodwill, I extend to you, Pope Leo XIV, in my name and on behalf of the entire Order of the
Somascan Fathers, our most sincere congratulations on your election as shepherd of the one, holy and catholic Church.
As you begin your ministry as the successor of the Apostle Peter, the entire Somascan Family welcomes you with gratitude to the Father of mercies, who has given the Church a new pastor in your person. We pray for you, with whom we already feel in communion, as “a synodal Church, a Church that moves forward, a Church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close above all, to those who are suffering”, to the little ones and the poor.
Your message of greeting to the Christian people and to the world, from the balcony of St Peter’s, touched our hearts, as it did the hearts of the immense multitude who, whether present or following through the media, were awaiting your words and were able to receive – perhaps surprised but deeply interested – together with the peace of the Risen Christ, your invitation “to walk together, with you as a Church, united, ever pursuing peace and justice, ever seeking to act as men and women, in order to proclaim the Gospel without fear, to be missionaries”.
In the name of the Order I represent, I wholeheartedly support, Holy Father, your sincere appeal for unity and peace.
As religious, we are also joyful that the Lord has once again granted us a religious Pope, this time from one of the oldest Orders in the millennia-old history of consecrated life in the Church: the Augustinians, to whom we feel fraternally united. Our Company of the Servants of the Poor, raised up in the Church by the action of the Holy Spirit in the person of the Venetian patrician St Jerome Emiliani, was canonically established as the Order of Clerics Regular of Somasca in 1568 by St Pius V, who placed it under the Rule of St Augustine: for several centuries, the Somascans made their religious vows under the promise “in communi vivere secundum regulam sancti Augustini, Patris nostri, iuxta Constitutiones”. We are therefore proud to have had as our “Legislator” the great Bishop of Hippo, Doctor of Grace and master of community life.
We humbly ask you, then, to confirm us in the life of the Holy Spirit, reminding us, as often as
needed, of the exhortation of St Augustine: “keep charity, love truth, long for unity; and thus you shall reach eternity.”
At the same time, we assure you of our obedience and prayer – our Founder already prayed for
the “reform of the Christian people according to the holiness of apostolic times” – and we implore your blessing.
Fr. José Antonio Nieto Sepúlveda crs
Superior General
Rome, May 11, 2025
Good Shepherd Sunday