Leo’s Ordination Homily: Vatican II in Vestments

The Mass of priestly identity becomes a manifesto for conciliar modernism.

The ordination homily delivered by Leo XIV on May 31, 2025 was marketed as a joyful celebration of priestly vocations. What it revealed instead was a blueprint for the modernist reprogramming of the Catholic priesthood, complete with Vatican II ecclesiology, ambiguous theology, and the unrepentant resurrection of liturgical abuse. For those with ears to hear, it was not a celebration, but a warning.

A Homily Without Christ the High Priest

The most glaring absence in Leo’s homily was Christ the King and High Priest. While the text pays lip service to Christ: speaking of his life, death, and even his resurrection; what it never clearly affirms is that the priest is an alter Christus who offers sacrifice on behalf of the people. Instead, Leo frames priesthood as a sort of egalitarian mission of accompaniment. The new priests are not exalted by ordination, but flattened into the “people of God” from which they are said to emerge and to which they return, as if being set apart were a mistake.

“To them you consecrate yourselves, without separating yourselves from them, without isolating yourselves, without making the gift you have received some kind of privilege.”

Here we see the core contradiction of Leo’s vision: ordination is simultaneously presented as sacred and demystified. It is a vocation, but not a privilege. It is a calling, but not a separation. The entire concept of priesthood as sacrifice is replaced with priesthood as shared accompaniment.

Vatican II as Foundation

Leo explicitly invokes Vatican II as the revival of a new ecclesial awareness:

“Vatican Council II made this awareness more alive, almost anticipating a time when belonging would become weaker and the sense of God more rarefied.”

This line is telling. For Leo, Vatican II is not just a historical moment or a doctrinal council. It is the hermeneutic through which all current experience is interpreted. The weakened sense of identity and belief in the modern world is not seen as a crisis to be corrected, but as a landscape to which Vatican II providentially adjusted the Church in advance. Rather than resisting the cultural collapse, Leo seems to suggest that the Council was a gift precisely for navigating it passively.

“For All” Returns

The most brazen moment comes in the heart of the homily, when Leo directly invokes the words of consecration:

“You will make his words your own in every Eucharist: it is ‘for you and for all.’”

This is the explicit reintroduction of the mistranslation that dominated the Novus Ordo for decades, condemned by theologians, corrected under Benedict XVI, and now openly reimposed. The phrase “for all” not only mistranslates the Latin pro multis but implies a universalist soteriology that contradicts Scripture, tradition, and the Roman Catechism.

That same phrase appears in the official Vatican libretto for the ordination Mass:

“versato per voi e per tutti in remissione dei peccati”

This is the consecration formula. Printed. Deliberate.

And Leo canonized it. He told the new priests to use it. The message was unmistakable: this is the standard. This is the model.

Disorientation as Theology

Leo presents the Church as a wounded healer: broken, imperfect, but journeying. Phrases like “a wounded Church sent to a wounded humanity” sound pious but displace Catholic clarity with sentimentalism. The priest is no longer a minister of absolution, a dispenser of grace, or a steward of the sacred. He is now a custodian of wounds, a spiritual companion, a psychological support figure.

“We are not yet perfect, but we must be credible.”

Credibility replaces sanctity. Accompaniment replaces hierarchy. Wounds replace sacrifice. This is the new gospel of ecclesial therapy.

Flattening the Priesthood

The repeated denial of priestly privilege betrays an embarrassment with the priesthood itself:

“Without separating yourselves… without making the gift some kind of privilege.”

But the Catholic priesthood is a privilege. Not a personal boast, but a supernatural grace. It is precisely because it is a privilege that it demands humility. By pretending it isn’t, Leo turns humility into self-denial of identity. Priests are not meant to be indistinguishable from the laity. They are meant to stand in persona Christi.

Pentecost Without Fire

The homily ends with platitudes about mission, motherhood, and shared richness. But there is no Pentecost fire or urgency for souls. No mention of sin, judgment, penance, or Hell. No exhortation to preach the truth in season and out of season. Just a softly glowing message of inclusion, wrapped in Vatican II sentimentalism and sealed with a universalist wink.

Conclusion: A Liturgical Coup in Homily Form

This homily was a theological reorientation. The “for all” formula, the flattening of priesthood, the sidelining of sacrifice, and the overt resurrection of Vatican II as the new cornerstone of Catholic identity; all of it amounts to a public declaration of continuity with Francis and rupture with tradition.

Leo XIV, instead reforming the priesthood, is finishing what Paul VI and Francis began: replacing it.

And he’s doing it through the Mass itself.

The words of consecration are not his to change.

But he has done so.

What more will it take for Catholics to notice?