Follow Jesus in the company of Mary, pope tells pilgrims

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — As spring turned into summer, some 2,000 people closed the month of May with a rosary walk through the Vatican Gardens.

The temperature was still close to 90 degrees Fahrenheit at 8 p.m. May 31 when the pilgrims set off from behind St. Peter’s Basilica, led by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of the basilica.

At the top of the Vatican hill, at the ivy-covered replica of the grotto at Lourdes, France, they were joined by Pope Leo XIV.

The rosary walk, he said, brings together the most important aspects of the Jubilee Year: “praise, a journey, hope and, especially, faith pondered and demonstrated together.”

As they walked, the pilgrims recited the five joyful mysteries of the rosary — the Annunciation, the Visitation, the birth of Jesus, the Presentation and the finding of Jesus in the Temple — and listened to the Scripture passages that recount the events in the life of Mary and Jesus.

“Your steps have been marked by the Word of God, whose rhythm has marked your progress, your stops and starts, just as it did for the people of Israel in the desert on their way to the promised land,” the pope told the pilgrims.

The Christian life should be like that, too, Pope Leo said.

“Let us look, then, at our existence as a journey following Jesus, to be traveled, as we did tonight, together with Mary,” he said. “And let us ask the Lord to teach us to praise him every day with our life and our tongue, with our heart and our lips, with our voice and our conduct, avoiding dissonance: our speech in harmony with our lives, and our lips with our conscience.”