Leo XIV to the bishops: the shepherd does not govern from behind a desk

Leo XIV has addressed a Letter to the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean for the third centenary of the canonisation of Saint Toribio (Turibius) of Mogrovejo, Archbishop of Lima and patron of the continent's bishops. Dated 8 September, the Nativity of the Virgin, and made public on 19 September 2026, it is built from beginning to end on the rite by which a bishop is received in his cathedral: the threshold crossed, the kiss of the crucifix, the sprinkling of holy water, the adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, the approach to the altar, the proclamation of the bull of appointment.

A former bishop in Peru, the pope confides that he there “understood better what it means to be a pastor” and felt close to this Spanish saint, born at Mayorga in 1538, died at Lima in 1606, called “the bishop of the Andes.” He recalls that Toribio corrected abuses, drew near to the indigenous peoples, the poor and the suffering, and saw to it that evangelisation took up the local languages. He asks that the seminary and the first years of ministry be cared for with particular attention, and that Eucharistic adoration be made a “pastoral priority.”

At the heart of the Letter, a warning: certain aspects of a diocese escape whoever remains “behind a desk.” The pope writes that “the abandonment of the flock can begin well before any visible flight, when comfort, fear or self-interest weigh more than the good of the faithful. The hireling calculates what he can lose; the shepherd knows that he will have to give up something of himself to remain faithful.”

What the Church teaches of the bishop's charge

The Catechism of the Council of Trent says it without evasion: the Bishops “are set at the head of the Dioceses, to govern not only the other Ministers of the Church, but also the faithful people, and to occupy themselves with their salvation with the utmost vigilance and care.” Scripture, it adds, names them for this reason “the Shepherds of the sheep.” The charge is not first of all an administration: it is the guard of souls, and one does not keep that watch from afar.

The division the pope draws between the hireling and the shepherd is not, moreover, his own; it is Our Lord's. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling […] seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and flieth […] because he is a hireling: and he hath no care for the sheep” (Saint John, X).

The measure

On this point the Letter does not break with tradition: it restates it. To ask the bishop to go himself to meet his people, to visit, to know his sheep, is to require what the charge of the Shepherd has always demanded: presence, vigilance and the care of souls. To place the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at the head of the priorities is to set God back where He belongs. We say this as plainly as we note ruptures elsewhere: here the call is right, and it is measured against the good Shepherd of the Gospel.

There remains a nuance of form, as to the recipient. The text is addressed to the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean; it has been presented here and there as a letter to the bishops of Peru alone. The difference bears on the address, not on the doctrine, which holds for every successor of the Apostles.

For the faithful

A bishop who is present, who corrects abuses, stands near the poor and puts salvation before comfort, is no novelty: it is the perennial mark of his charge, the one Saint Toribio carried as far as the Andes. The faithful can recognise it, rejoice in it when they see it, and ask it for their pastors, for it is Christ, and not the age, who has fixed what a shepherd must be.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the Episcopate; Gospel according to Saint John, X, 11-13 (the good Shepherd and the hireling), according to the Vulgate (Douay-Rheims).