In his message for Lent 2026, published on Friday, February 13 from Vatican City, Pope Leo XIV invites the faithful to live this "liturgical time" as a path of inner and communal conversion.

According to the Holy Father, “listening” and “fasting” are two fundamental attitudes for putting God back at the center of life and allowing faith to regain its momentum.

Lent is the time when the Church, with maternal solicitude, invites the faithful to put the mystery of God back at the center of their lives.

Faced with the "daily worries and distractions" that scatter the heart, this liturgical time becomes a privileged opportunity to "renew the decision to follow Christ," walking with Him towards Jerusalem, where "the mystery of His passion, death and resurrection" is fulfilled.

For Pope Leo XIV, every path of conversion begins with a fundamental attitude: "To allow oneself to be reached by the Word and to welcome it with docility of spirit," because there is "a link between the gift of the Word of God, the space of hospitality that we offer it and the transformation that it brings about."

Fasting: discerning the essential and expanding desire

While Lent is a time for listening, “fasting is a concrete practice that prepares us to receive the Word of God.” Abstinence from food, the Pope reminds us, is “a very ancient and irreplaceable ascetic practice. Precisely because it involves the body, it makes more evident what we ‘hunger’ for and what we consider essential to our sustenance,” because it helps us discern what we truly hunger for and to order our “appetites, to keep vigilant the hunger and thirst for justice by freeing them from resignation, by training them to become prayer and responsibility toward our neighbor.”

Quoting Saint Augustine, Leo XIV reminds us that man experiences a tension between the desire for justice and its ultimate fulfillment: "This tension in desire expands the soul, increases its capacity."

Fasting thus allows one to purify desire, "to make it freer, but also to broaden it so that it turns towards God and is oriented towards doing good."

“However, for fasting to retain its evangelical truth and avoid the temptation of inflating the heart, it must always be lived in faith and humility.” “No one truly fasts if they do not know how to nourish themselves with the Word of God,” he writes, reminding us that evangelical austerity leads to “a more sober way of life” and to an authentic and strong Christian life; “it is austerity alone that makes our Christian life authentic and strong.”

Disarming language to open paths to peace

The Pope also invited the faithful to a concrete and demanding fast: "I would therefore like to invite you to a very concrete and often unappreciated form of abstinence: that of words which offend and hurt others," calling for "disarming language," and for renouncing "cutting words, hasty judgments, slander and calumny."

“Let us strive instead to learn to measure our words and cultivate kindness: within families, among friends, in workplaces, on social media, in political debates, in the media, and in Christian communities,” he encourages. Then, the Pope affirms, “words of hatred will give way to words of hope and peace.”

Finally, Leo XIV emphasized the communal dimension of Lent, which highlights “listening to the Word and the practice of fasting”.

To conclude his message, the Holy Father prayed for a Lent that makes "our ear more attentive to God and to the most destitute" and that makes Christian communities "places where listening engenders paths of liberation", contributing to the building of the "civilization of love".