His Holiness Pope Leo XIV at Audience: Lay people help Church reach all and promote peace

During his weekly General Audience, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV highlights the important role that lay people play in the Church’s mission in bearing witness to the Gospel, as he continues his reflection on the conciliar document "Lumen gentium."

By Isabella H. de Carvalho

Lay people’s contribution, service and witness is essential to building a Church that reaches out to all and spreads the Gospel, along with justice, charity and peace, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV said during the Wednesday General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on April 1, 2026.

“The vast field of the lay apostolate is not confined to the Church, but extends to the world,” Pope Leo underlined.

“The Church is present wherever her children profess and bear witness to the Gospel: in the workplace, in civil society and in all human relationships, wherever they, through their choices, show the beauty of Christian life, which foretells here and now the justice and peace that will be accomplished in the Kingdom of God.”

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV was continuing his catechesis series on the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, reflecting again on the 1964 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium.

In this week’s catechesis he highlighted that lay people play an important role in creating a Church that “goes out,” as Pope Francis liked to say, meaning “a Church embodied in history” and “always open” to the mission of bearing witness to the Gospel.

The equality of all the baptized

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV emphasized that the fourth chapter of Lumen gentium seeks to explain “in positive terms, the nature and mission of the laity, after centuries in which they had been defined simply as those who are not part of the clergy or the consecrated life.”

Citing his Predecessor His Holiness Pope Francis, he noted that “lay people are, put simply, the vast majority of the people of God,” while ordained ministers are the minority and at their service.

The nature and mission of the laity, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV continued, is founded in the chosen People of God being one and sharing the same common dignity in Christ. “Before any distinction of ministry or state of life, the Council affirms the equality of all the baptized,” he insisted.

“The Constitution does not want us to forget what it had already affirmed in the chapter on the People of God, namely that the condition of the messianic people is the dignity and freedom of the children of God.”

The People of God is not a formless mass

Having explained how the laity’s important role comes from the dignity of their baptism and being part of the People of God, the Pope then noted how the Council also emphasized their mission “in the Church and in the world.”

Citing point 31 of Lumen gentium, Pope Leo underlined how the laity “are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly functions of Christ; and they carry out for their own part the mission of the whole Christian people.”

“The holy People of God, therefore, is never a formless mass, but the body of Christ or, as St. Augustine said, the Christus totus,” meaning the whole Christ, the Pope continued…

This report was originally published on the Website of Vatican News. Please click here to read the full text.