Pope to hermits: Your isolation is a connection with God, others, creation October 14, 2025By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service Filed Under: Consecrated Life, News, Vatican, World News VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Modern hermits seek solitude not to escape the world but to learn how to listen more closely to God, to their neighbors and to creation, Pope Leo XIV said as he met about 50 Italian hermits who came to the Vatican for the Jubilee of Consecrated Life. The hermits, both men and women, include members of religious orders, diocesan priests and diocesan hermits who have chosen to live mostly alone in prayer, study and manual labor. For a short period each day, many of them also welcome visitors coming for spiritual direction. Meeting them Oct. 11, Pope Leo said their primary goal is “a regeneration of the heart, so that it may be capable of listening, a source of the creative and fruitful action of the charity that God inspires in us.” “This call to interiority and silence, to live in contact with oneself, with one’s neighbor, with creation and with God, is needed today more than ever, in a world increasingly alienated by the media and technology,” the pope told them. “From intimate friendship with the Lord, in fact, the joy of living, the wonder of faith and the taste for ecclesial communion are reborn,” he said. Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, reported Oct. 8 that there are about 200 religious hermits in Italy. They live in isolated shacks in the mountains, in small huts on monastery grounds or in tiny houses in cities. The call to a hermit’s life, the pope said, is a call from God to devote oneself “entirely to him, to seek him and listen to him, to praise him and invoke him, day and night, in the secrecy of their hearts.” Distance from the world is not separation from it, he said, “because prayerful solitude generates communion and compassion for all humankind and for every creature, both in the dimension of the Spirit and in the ecclesial and social context in which you are placed as leaven of divine life.” In such “troubled times,” Pope Leo said, hermits are asked to “enter into the mystery of Christ’s intercession on behalf of all humanity, accepting to ‘place yourselves in the middle’ between creatures, fragile and threatened by evil, and the merciful Father, the source of all good.” “Called to stand in the breach with your hands raised and your hearts alert, walk always in the presence of God, in solidarity with the trials of humanity,” he told them. “Keeping your gaze fixed on Jesus and opening the sails of your hearts to his Spirit of life, sail with the whole church, our mother, on the stormy sea of history, toward the kingdom of love and peace that the Father prepares for all.” Read More Vatican News Pope Leo takes road trip to mountainside shrines during his summer vacation Pope Leo quotes Bob Dylan song in book foreword calling for nuclear disarmament Pope Leo XIV makes surprise visit to pray for peace at the tomb of St. Benedict Ukraine remains hopeful for a papal visit, ambassador says Pope Leo XIV in Castel Gandolfo: God’s kingdom grows in the ‘little things of daily life’ Catholic group helps parishes to share a table with the poor, following pope’s example Copyright © 2025 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Print
