Pope Leo XIV Urges Italians to Rediscover Faith at St. Augustine's Relics in Pavia

On Saturday morning, Pope Leo XIV climbed aboard a helicopter and flew to Pavia, a city near Milan, to pray before the remains of St. Augustine. The fifth-century saint's relics sit in a small glass box with a gold rim. For the occasion, the box had been placed on the altar of the basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, and Leo prayed there quietly.

The stop was close to obligatory. Leo is the first Augustinian pope in history, and on the night of his election he called himself a "son of St. Augustine." In his first year he has quoted the saint often, which makes plain that Augustine is the guiding inspiration of his pontificate.

The visit was also the midpoint of what the Vatican has framed as his summer 2026 grand tour of Italy. The American pope has scheduled a series of Saturday day trips up and down the peninsula and its islands, a way to get to know his new flock. Later on Saturday he was due to travel to nearby Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, the birthplace of Mother Frances Cabrini, the first American saint.

Speaking to the faithful in the basilica, Leo urged Italians to discover or rediscover their faith, and held up Augustine as a model. The message addresses a real trend. Like many once-Christian strongholds in Europe, Italy has seen its churches empty in recent years. Fewer Italians marry in the church, and fewer go to Mass regularly. "At a time when many people seem to have lost their spiritual appetite or, for various reasons, no longer find the Christian faith appealing for their lives, we are called first and foremost to proclaim the Gospel," Leo said.

Augustine, he suggested, has something to offer people in that position. Born in 354 in what is now Algeria, Augustine spent five years in and around Milan, where he converted to Christianity. He went on to become a bishop, wrote a rule for monastic life, and produced some of the most important works of Western thought, among them "Confessions" and "The City of God." Leo said the saint's thought, the story of his conversion and his spirituality "remind us of the value and primacy of interiority," meaning the search for meaning within oneself.

The afternoon stop turns toward migration. Cabrini, the patron saint of migrants, is well known to many Americans for caring for Italian immigrants in the United States at the turn of the last century. She died in 1917 as a naturalized U.S. citizen in Chicago, Leo's native city, and was beatified. In 1946 Pope Pius XII made her a saint, the first from the United States, and in a radio message that year called her a "heroine of modern times." Last year Villanova University outside Philadelphia, Leo's alma mater, opened a new campus named for her, along with an Institute on Immigration inspired by her work.

Leo has taken up the church's Gospel-mandated call to "welcome the stranger," as the late Pope Francis did before him. Last week he spent two days in Spain's Canary Islands, a major destination for migrants leaving West Africa, where he called for welcoming and integrating people fleeing hardship and conflict.

His next day trip falls on July 4, when he goes to Lampedusa, the Sicilian island that is a main arrival point for migrants crossing from North Africa. As the first U.S.-born pope, Leo has clashed with the Trump administration over its migrant crackdown and mass deportation program, so spending U.S. Independence Day there carries added symbolic weight. Lampedusa was also where Francis made his first trip outside Rome as pope, in 2013.