Leo XIV calls the Perpetual Adorers to be « weavers of communion »

On Saturday 5 September 2026, in the Consistory Hall, Leo XIV received the Perpetual Adorers of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Federation of the Holy Spirit, come on pilgrimage to Italy for the fiftieth anniversary of their founding by Blessed Mary Magdalen of the Incarnation. Led by their superior, Mother Alma Ruth of the Holy Spirit, these cloistered nuns adore the Blessed Sacrament solemnly exposed day and night, relieving one another so that it is never left alone. In an address delivered in Spanish, he exhorted them to be « weavers of communion » through « the threads of prayer and work, of Eucharistic adoration and fraternal sharing in the monastery », greeting their presence as « a luminous witness to the gratuitousness of God ».

The worth of such a life is not measured by the words that praise it, but by the faith it confesses. The Church has always taught that, under the consecrated species, Christ is present whole — body, blood, soul and divinity — by virtue of transubstantiation. From this follows, not as an optional devotion but as a duty of justice, the worship of latria owed to the Most Blessed Sacrament: adoration, exposition, genuflection. What these religious guard night and day is not one practice among others; it is the direct consequence of what the altar contains. To adore without ceasing Him who made Himself bread is simply to draw the conclusion of the Real Presence.

So we receive without reserve the reminder, resting on Saint Augustine, that the bread and wine on the altar are « the sacrament of the unity of the faithful in Christ », and the call to « a Eucharistic spirituality ». This is the very doctrine the Council of Trent fixed: the Eucharist is the sign of unity, the bond of charity, the symbol of the concord of the mystical Body. Perpetual adoration is its visible fruit and not its ornament: who believes in the Real Presence remains before it, and who remains before it learns the unity it works. The seeking of the face of God that the psalmist implores — « thy face, O Lord, will I still seek » — finds in the cloister its most faithful dwelling.

Sources. Council of Trent, Session XIII, Decree on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist (1551); Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the Sacrament of the Eucharist; Saint Augustine, Tractate XXVI on the Gospel of Saint John, on the sacrament of unity; Psalm xxvi, 8-9 (Vulgate).