Religious obedience is 'act of love' that builds community, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — For members of religious orders, obedience is “an act of love” and a powerful witness to the world of how gestures of selflessness are needed to build true community, Pope Leo said.

“Obedience, in its deepest meaning of active and generous listening to others, is a great act of love by which we accept dying to ourselves so that our brothers and sisters may grow and live,” the pope said Sept. 18 during an audience with men and women from four religious orders.

Pope Leo XIV greets visitors and pilgrims from the popemobile as he rides around St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican before his weekly general audience Sept. 17, 2025. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

Members of the general chapters or assemblies of the Ursuline Sisters of Mary Immaculate, the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, the Marists and the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate met with the pope in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace.

The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate were accompanied by Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, who assisted the friars at the end of a nine-year period when they were under the direction of an apostolic commissioner. The friars returned to normal self-governance in 2022.

Announcing the appointment of a commissioner in 2013, the Vatican office for religious said Pope Francis required all the friars “to celebrate the liturgy according to the ordinary rite,” the post-Vatican II Mass, and that use of the extraordinary form, the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, “must be explicitly authorized by the competent authorities for every religious or community that makes a request.”

Some members of the order, which was founded in 1990, apparently had insisted on celebrating only the old Mass and had publicly criticized the Second Vatican Council and its teachings. Pope Benedict XIV ordered an apostolic visitation of the order in 2012.

Speaking to members of the four religious orders, Pope Leo said he wanted to talk about “the vital importance of obedience as an act of love in religious consecration. Jesus gave us an example of this in his relationship with the Father: ‘I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.'”

St. Augustine, the pope said, defined obedience as “the daughter of charity.”

“Talking about obedience is not very fashionable today because it is considered a renunciation of freedom,” the pope said. “But that is not the case. When it is professed and lived with faith, obedience reveals a luminous path of self-giving that can help the world rediscover the value of sacrifice, the capacity for lasting relationships and the maturity in community that goes beyond the ‘feelings’ of the moment by establishing itself in fidelity.”

“Obedience is a school of freedom in love,” the pope said.