Pope Leo XIV's Wednesday General Audience is set for May 6 in St. Peter's Square. [1] It follows the Sunday Regina Caeli at which the paper reported Leo named, in plain language, the journalists killed in war and violence and called the right to a free press one "often violated, sometimes blatantly and other times in subtle ways." The Wednesday Audience is the next scheduled point on the calendar at which the Pope speaks ex officio to the world rather than to the church.

The pending agenda the Vatican has not closed runs to two items the paper has tracked. The first is the formal answer to the Pachamama question — the proper reception of indigenous Andean symbols in Catholic liturgical settings, on which the curia has not produced a final ruling under Leo. [2] The second is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' November reversal of its long-standing death-penalty position; the USCCB asked Rome for guidance and Rome has not yet given it. Both files are open. Neither is on the Wednesday docket as published, which is the quiet way Vatican governance tends to keep open files open.

What is on the docket, by precedent, is the continuation of Leo's ongoing catechesis on Lumen gentium — the Second Vatican Council's constitution on the Church. [3] The Wednesday Audience is the format in which a pope's voice settles into doctrine over weeks. The press-freedom register from Sunday will not be repeated verbatim. Whether it returns in another form — through a remark on language, on truth, on witness — is the line the Vatican hands monitor.

The institution's currency is speech in public. Leo has spent it carefully so far.

-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London