FROM SILERI NON POSSUM:
Vatican City - The letter that Pope Leo XIV addressed to the presbytery of the Archdiocese of Madrid on the occasion of the "Convivium" Presbyteral Assembly (February 9, 2026), released only yesterday, brings the essential issues of priestly life back to the forefront with sober authority. The Pope adopts a tone that is at once spiritual, almost poetic, yet surprisingly concrete: clear words, capable of breathing high without losing touch with reality, and of touching—without concessions—on what many priests today feel is most urgent and most true.
The clergy, and not only those of Madrid, have welcomed it with enthusiasm: in these hours the letter is being circulated on WhatsApp, forwarded, commented on, even printed. This morning it was also a topic of discussion during a clergy retreat. Precisely for this reason, what happened this morning on X (formerly Twitter) is disconcerting: Archbishop Giovanni Checchinato, Metropolitan of Cosenza-Bisignano, retweeted a post by an unknown, non-Catholic author who frontally attacked the Pope for his use of the expression “alter Christus,” derided as a residue to be erased: “I hoped never to hear the expression ‘being alter Christus’ again in my life, and instead the Pope even defines it as the ‘most authentic nucleus of the priesthood’.” What a non-Catholic who, with singular presumption, claims to judge and criticize the choices of Peter’s Successor might hope for is of no interest to us. What is striking, however, is that a Catholic Archbishop, who in recent years has never dared to question the Pope, should now choose to relaunch an attack as insignificant as it is frontal against the Pontiff: a gesture alien to Catholic sentiment and, for this very reason, also dangerous.
The crux of the matter:
This isn't a simple lexical detail, as some would have us believe with barbs designed more to discredit than to argue: it's the usual style of keyboard warriors, who strike sideways precisely because they have nothing to prove in terms of reasoning. Here, a precise theological core is being challenged and, at the same time, an attempt is being made to delegitimize a magisterial line that some would now like to make impracticable. An episcopate selected in past years according to ideological criteria is beginning to emerge, one that today takes the measure of Leo XIV with the same posture with which, in other times, a section of the clergy and episcopate chose to wear down Benedict XVI. In this context, the retweet is not a neutral gesture: it becomes the sounding board for an attack that not only targets the Pope, but also wounds the priesthood.
The Pope's Letter
In the letter, the Pope describes a time of secularization, of words that "no longer mean the same thing," and calls for "educating the gaze" in discernment. He then explains: Madrid, and the Church, need "men configured to Christ," capable of sustaining the ministry through "a living relationship with Him, nourished by the Eucharist and expressed in a pastoral charity marked by sincere self-giving." Within this framework lies the phrase that got Checchinato on edge: "It is not a question of inventing new models or redefining the identity we have received, but of re-proposing... the priesthood in its most authentic core—being an alter Christus." Leo XIV is not launching a slogan: he is summarizing what the Church means when it speaks of the ordained priest.
“Alter Christus” is not an invention of Leo XIV
The expression “alter Christus” has been part of Catholic language for decades to express a precise point: in the ordained ministry, Christ truly makes his action operative in the Church through a sacramentally marked man. One need only look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Speaking of the ordained ministry, it explains that “it is Christ himself who is present to his Church” and that the priest “acts ‘in persona Christi Capitis’” (CCC, 1548). This is not a poetic way of saying “imitating Jesus.” Here, it is stated that, in the sacrament of Holy Orders, the priest receives a real configuration that enables him to represent Christ the Head and Shepherd in ecclesial action. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council uses the same conceptual framework: priests, “by virtue of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are marked by a special character that configures them to Christ the priest” so that they can “act in the name of Christ, the Head of the Church.” (Presbyterorum ordinis, 2). And, even before that, Pope Pius XI dedicated an entire section of the encyclical Ad Catholici Sacerdotii to the "sublime dignity" of the priest, summarizing it unambiguously: "the priest... is truly another Christ." (Pius XI, Ad Catholici Sacerdotii).
Contesting that formula means ignoring that it is already written in recent and contemporary magisterium, from the Catechism to the Second Vatican Council, up to the pontifical texts of the twentieth century. It means ignoring what the priesthood is, even if some like to call themselves "happy priests" within a certain perspective—often only apparent—of humility, which then emerges very little when it comes to actually interacting with their own diocesan priests.
"In persona Christi Capitis": What the Church Really Says
The social media attack stems from a caricature: "alter Christus" as exalting the priest above the faithful. This interpretation clashes with the texts themselves. Vatican II states that "the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood... differ essentially and not only in degree," and immediately adds that they are "ordered to each other." (Lumen Gentium, 10). The ordained ministry has a real difference, but that difference has a purpose: it is for the edification of the People of God, not for the creation of castes. The Catechism is even more explicit in preventing distortions: the presence of Christ in the minister "must not be understood as if he were protected against every human weakness... error, even sin." (CCC, 1550). The Church, therefore, cuts at the root two illusions: the clericalism that feels untouchable and the anti-clericalism that claims to demolish the sacrament because some ministers are unworthy. The guarantee concerns the sacramental action, not the automatic sanctity of the minister. As usual, moreover, these keyboard haters so dear to a certain type of bishop with party membership cards, do not even know how to read the context, the entire speech. In fact, this is the point that Leo XIV dismantles when he offers this meaningful image: before the altar, "the People of God is born in the baptismal font; in the confessional it is continually regenerated"; in the sacraments "grace manifests itself as the most real and effective force of the priestly ministry." Then he uses a phrase that demolishes any self-divinization of the priest: "you are not the source, but the channel." Alter Christus, precisely from this perspective, means being made instruments of an action that comes from Christ and leads to Christ.
"Configured to Christ" means sacraments, prayer, fraternity, service
"Configured to Christ" is not a spiritualist label, but a concrete grammar of priestly life: sacraments, prayer, fraternity, service. If the Pope, in his letter to Madrid, returns to the term "alter Christus," he is not raising the priest's "sacred" tone: he is recalling the essential Catholic fact, namely, that the priest, in the Church and for the Church, is "a sacramental re-presentation of Jesus Christ, Head and Shepherd," and for this reason "repeats His gestures of forgiveness and the offering of salvation, especially through Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist," "in the name and person of Christ, Head and Shepherd," as Pastores Dabo Vobis reminds us. Here lies the heart: the "alter Christus" lives on the real ground of Christ's action in the sacraments, not on that of self-referentiality. "This pastoral charity... springs above all from the Eucharistic sacrifice," which is "the center and root of the entire life of the priest," to the point of characterizing priestly existence "in a 'sacrificial' sense": it is the opposite of the clerical pose, because it refers to the altar and the gift of self.
And precisely here prayer as identity enters: Benedict XVI said this by linking the "alter Christus" to a life "ontologically configured to Christ" and therefore "essentially relational," "in Christ, for Christ, and with Christ"; not to dominate, but "in the service of men," developing this conformation "in prayer, in 'being heart to heart' with Him" (General Audience, June 24, 2009). Fraternity also follows: pastoral charity "requires" that priests work "in the bond of communion with the Bishops and other brothers in the priesthood," because the "alter Christus" is not a spiritual monad but a man inserted into a body, responsible for concrete bonds. Finally, service: Pastores dabo vobis itself recalls that the authority of Christ the "Head" coincides with his being a servant, with "the total gift of self"; and Benedict XVI, along the same lines, clarified that the priest is not "master," but "servant," the "voice" of the Word, to the point of "losing himself" in Christ that makes the proclamation credible. This is what is challenged today when "alter Christus" is ridiculed: not a word, but the Catholic content it enshrines, namely, Christ at the center, the sacraments as the axis of ministry, prayer as breath, communion as ecclesial discipline, service as a form of authority. One wonders how Archbishop Gianni plans to train his priests, and one is left scratching one's head.
d.F.R.
Silere non possum
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