Pope Leo XIV Drops Papal Supremacy, Urging ‘Full Communion’ with ‘All Christians’

Pontiff’s inaugural sermon highlights the ecumenical interpretation of ‘the Rock’ as Christ

May 19, 2025

In his trailblazing inaugural sermon, Pope Leo XIV pointed to Christ, rather than Peter, as the foundational “rock” of Christianity, using the term “sister Christian churches” to mark his desire for ecumenical unity.

“Love and unity: these are the two dimensions of the mission entrusted to Peter by Jesus,” he told the 150,000 Catholics, as well as representatives from both Protestant and Orthodox churches, gathered at St. Peter’s Square for his inaugural Mass on Sunday morning.

Leo XIV noted that “the Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone,’” expressly designating Jesus as the founding rock of the Church.

“Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him,” the pontiff emphasized, in a significant departure from conventional Catholic interpretation, which identifies Peter as the “rock” on which Jesus built the Church.

Leo XIV described the papal office as a calling to “serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them,” underscoring the role of all baptized believers as “living stones” (1 Peter 2:5), called “to build God’s house in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity.”

Leo’s Interpretation Draws on the Church Fathers

The new pope’s interpretation of Christ as the rock draws on patristic exegesis, which was brought to the attention of Pope Pius IX in 1870 by Archbishop Peter Kenrick of St. Louis, Missouri.

Kenrick, alarmed by the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility at Vatican 1, demonstrated that most of the church fathers did not believe that the “rock” of Matthew 16:18 was Peter. Instead, 44 fathers understood the rock as Peter’s confession, 16 interpreted it as Jesus, eight interpreted it as all the apostles, and a few believed the rock to be the faithful. Only 17 fathers thought the rock was Peter.

“From this it follows, either that no argument at all, or one of the slenderest probability, is to be derived from the words, ‘On this rock will I build my church,’ in support of the primacy,” Kenrick concluded.

According to an ecumenical study document, The Bishop of Rome, published last November by the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity during the reign of Pope Francis, “It is never forgotten that the first stone on which the Church is built is Christ himself.”

The document warns Catholics against using “an anachronistic projection of all doctrinal and institutional developments concerning papal ministry into the ‘Petrine texts,’” particularly Matthew 16:18 (“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church”).

“From the moment they appear in patristic literature at the beginning of the third century, the interpretations of Matthew 16:17–19 are multiple,” the document states in exploring how “theological dialogues have challenged confessional readings of the New Testament.”

The authors agree with the Eastern Orthodox Churches that the pope did not enjoy universal jurisdiction in the first thousand years of Christianity, and quote Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI): “As far as the doctrine of the primacy is concerned, Rome must not require more of the East than was formulated and lived during the first millennium.”

On Sunday, Leo relied on this interpretation as he preached, “I was chosen, without any merit of my own, and now, with fear and trembling, I come to you as a brother, who desires to be the servant of your faith and your joy, walking with you on the path of God’s love, for he wants us all to be united in one family.”

Pope Emphasizes Fraternity over Autocracy

The Vatican’s official text of the sermon italicized the words “I come to you as a brother” — a consequential marker indicating Leo’s intention to remodel the papacy into the office of a primus inter pares (first among equals), which has been a significant demand of Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches in ecumenical dialogues with the Vatican in recent years.

The pope’s words echo 1 Peter 5:1, where Peter designates himself as a “fellow elder” and urges the other elders to pastor God’s flock with humility and love. Catholic historians and biblical scholars agree that applying the term “pope” to the Apostle Peter is historically inaccurate.

Alluding to Ignatius’s epistle to the Romans, Leo XIV stressed that “the Church of Rome presides in charity and its true authority is the charity of Christ. It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power.”

While the letters of Ignatius, written in the early second century, do not refer to the office of a pope or a single monarchical bishop with universal jurisdiction, the church father writes of the church of Rome “having the presidency of love.”

Interestingly, in his letter to the Roman church, Ignatius does not refer to a bishop in Rome, which scholars interpret as evidence that the concept of a single bishop with authority over the entire Roman church may not have existed at that time.

“It is striking that even Ignatius, this defender and ideologue of the monarchial episcopate, did not address a bishop in his letter to the Roman community any more than Paul did,” writes Swiss theologian Fr. Hans Küng in his book The Catholic Church: A Short History.

Leo Calls for Full Communion with Churches

A consensus of Catholic, Protestant, and secular historians agrees that for the first 140 years of its existence, the Church of Rome did not have a presiding bishop, let alone a pope.

“All the indications are that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the apostles,” the eminent Catholic historian Eamon Duffy writes in his magisterial book Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes.

The followers of Jesus met in a “constellation of independent churches, meeting in the houses of the wealthy members of the community,” Duffy observes. Each house church was led by a plurality of elders or presbyters.

On Monday, Leo received leaders of “other Churches and Ecclesial Communities,” as well as non-Christian religions. The new pope commended the “great strides” made by Pope Francis under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in cultivating interreligious and ecumenical dialogue.

“While we are on the journey to reestablishing full communion among all Christians, we recognize that this unity can only be unity in faith,” he stated. “As Bishop of Rome, I consider one of my priorities to be that of seeking the reestablishment of full and visible communion among all those who profess the same faith in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

“The Pope of Fratelli Tutti promoted both the ecumenical path and interreligious dialogue,” Leo noted. “May God help us to treasure his witness!”

Vatican Clarifies Use of “Sister Churches”

Speaking to The Stream after the inaugural Mass, Vatican insiders confirmed that Leo XIV had personally written his sermon. One insider, who has known the pope as Cardinal Robert Prevost, said the pontiff’s vision fully aligned with Pope Francis’s desire for a Petrine office that would function as a “first among equals” and that his sermon was “code” for an “ecumenical papacy.”

“It is also significant that Pope Leo has sent out his message of unity by using the term ‘sister Christian churches,”’ the source observed. “Vatican II referred to Protestants as ‘separated brethren’ and Protestant churches as ‘ecclesial communities.’”

In 2000, Pope John Paul II clarified in a magisterial document that Vatican II adopted the expression “sister churches” only to “describe the relationship between particular Churches” of the East and not to describe the relationship between the Church of Rome and Orthodox or Protestant churches.

“No Roman pontiff ever recognized this equalization of the sees [bishoprics] or accepted that only a primacy of honor be accorded to the See of Rome,” stated the document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under prefect Cardinal Ratzinger. “It must always be clear, when the expression ‘sister Churches’ is used in this proper sense, that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Universal Church is not sister but mother of all the particular Churches.”

On Sunday, U.S. media praised Leo’s ecumenical credentials by revealing a 25-year-old friendship between the pontiff and the Rev. John Snider, pastor of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in West St. Paul, Minnesota.

In 2010, Snider visited then-Father Prevost in Rome.

“He was grounded. He was mature,” Snider said. “He knew how to move among people, to say his piece, to be aware of others. If you know how to love, you’ve come a long way. And I think Bob knew how to love; that has not changed.”

Originally published in The Stream.

Dr. Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.