Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
In Rome, Pope Leo the Fourteenth will preside over All Souls' Mass at the Verano Cemetery, alongside celebrations for the Dedication of Saint Peter's Basilica. These ancient rituals of remembrance invite us to sit with what endures, and what we owe to those who came before us.
From remembrance to a grief far more immediate, at least sixty people have been killed in attacks on Orthodox Christian villages in Ethiopia's Oromia region, roughly two hundred seventy kilometers south of Addis Ababa. The violence, carried out by an armed group, leaves communities shattered, and asks the world whether solidarity can still find its way across distance and silence.
And yet, against such darkness, there is a forty-year thread worth holding. The Spirit of Assisi, born when John Paul the Second gathered the world's faiths in prayer for peace in nineteen eighty-six, now reaches into a fourth pontificate. Pope Leo the Fourteenth carries that invitation forward, asking religions not merely to coexist, but to reimagine what shared longing for peace might yet build.
That's this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
