Pope Leo expresses worries about religious formation

Making history for this blog; the third successive post quoting from a pope. But this surely is worth mentioning.

While the man might be skirting the issue, it’s clear he knows what’s happening. 

It's worth recalling what the late taoiseach Charles Haughey had to say about any organisation that includes the words superior and general in its title.

Below is an extract from words spoken by Pope Leo at  a meeting of the Union of Superior Generals in Rome on November 26, 2025.

It’s a pity the translation is so poor and includes typos. The text below was forwarded from the provincial office of the Irish Dominicans, who received it from HQ at Santa Sabina in Rome.

Question asked by representative from the USG.

What guidelines can you indicate for the formation of young religious and for strengthening community life in the new challenges of our time?

Pope Leo XIV

I think that this is a very important question for several reasons, especially in those parts of the world where our communities are challenged to find vocations. You may find in some of  your communities, monasteries, provinces, regions, a situation where you might have only one student in formation, maybe two. In that case, to create an environment and the culture of formation is a real challenge, when you don't have the basic elements necessary to create the environment to form a new member for communal and consecrated life. So that we end up sometimes forming in individualism because perhaps there's only one candidate. And so

the great challenge for formation, is giving greater emphasis to participating in intercongregational formation experiences, in having a greater number of encounters with other members of the congregation or order. It may not be people in formation, but for example with the younger members of a community or congregation who could be of closer support in a positive way to those who are in formation.

Another important issue is that there are still today groups that do not pay attention to so many guidelines that have been given about receiving people into formation that have been sent out of other formation houses or other seminaries. The Dycastery for clergy that are casting for consecrated life to see all the problems that there are because people started off on the wrong. It's wonderful that someone says he has a vocation. But part of our role is discernment. And that discernment for the good of the Church means we can't accept everyone who knocks at the door. And we have to be very serious about that. Oftentimes that very first step was ignored.

One other aspect which I would like to specifically mention is what I would call formation in freedom or liberty. A true formation, a healthy formation, I think, needs to accompany the young candidates who come to us, so that they first become healthy human beings. There are a number of modern movements which under the guise of being traditional or conservative, take in young people and oblige them to fit into a mold and say if you do this you will be a good candidate. Sometimes we're repeating the same errors that were committed many years ago, and they're coming back to haunt us. Instead of being able to develop first as a human being and understand what human freedom is, we are sometimes forming young people in a situation where we oblige them under conscience, we remove their freedom, we make them feel guilty if they say, well I don't think I have a vocation. We sometimes put obligations on young people that are not healthy. Our formation, especially in the first stages, really needs to be to form people to become true human beings with the gifts that God has given them and to see how the Lord is calling them through those gifts, not through the mold that we’re forcing them to fit into. 

There are real challenges in that. I'm sure many of you have been formators and understand that, but again nowadays I think a lot of people in religious life and in seminaries have forgotten the lessons learned in the past. So it's very important for our formation that we form healthy human beings who then with that health of uh their own humanity discover how God is working in their lives and how God is calling them to give those gifts to the Church to service.