BRAINTREE, MASS. (WHDH) – Archbishop of Boston Richard Henning spoke Thursday about Pope Leo XIV being elected to serve as the leader of the Catholic Church.
Henning spoke to members of the media in Braintree, saying Leo addressed the world with a “beautiful appeal to all of us to seek that peace that comes from Christ and to live that peace with one another in compassion.” He said he gives thanks for this “gift” to the church.
White smoke billowed out of the Sistine Chapel chimney at 6:07 p.m. in Vatican City, signaling a new pontiff had been elected.
Many of the Archdiocese of Boston’s employees and clergy members gathered in an auditorium to watch Leo speak from the balcony above St. Peter’s Square for the first time as pope, Henning said.
“It’s been a dramatic few days with a lot of hopes and a lot of prayers, certainly a dramatic couple of weeks with the loss of Pope Francis, you know, ‘What comes next?’ It’s nice now to have that answer and, in some sense, get a bit of a surprise,” Henning said. “I think that surprise is a happy one.”
Henning said that Catholics around Greater Boston will, as they did with Francis, pray for the new pope and support him by living out their faith.
“He is the one who holds us together across countries and cultures and languages, but it’s our job to be the church here in Boston. So, the best thing we can do to honor him is to do that to the best of our ability,” Henning said.
Henning said that while he doesn’t know Leo personally, he was touched by his address and his way of greeting the Catholic faithful.
“I certainly observed some things in his first remarks, I think his remarks made it clear that he honors and reveres Pope Francis and Pope Francis’ style of ministry, so that was a beautiful thing,” he said. “I was touched that he said a few words in Spanish, so of course he’s being introduced as the Bishop of Rome, he’s got to speak in Italian, but he switched to Spanish because I understand he’s had many years of missionary work in Peru, so I thought that was a really nice gesture that he made.”
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