ROME – In a special Mass celebrated prior to the start of the conclave that will open Wednesday afternoon in Rome to elect the next pope, one of the most senior cardinals stressed the importance of unity and prayed for a pontiff who reminds the world of human and spiritual values.

During the May 7 Mass pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, or “for electing the new pope,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 91, Dean of the College of Cardinals, noted that they were standing above St. Peter’s tomb.

In that spot, and on the cusp of casting their first vote for the new pontiff, “We feel united with the entire People of God in their sense of faith, love for the pope and confident expectation,” he said.

“We are here to invoke the help of the Holy Spirit, to implore his light and strength so that the pope elected may be he whom the Church and humanity need at this difficult and complex turning
point in history,” he said.

The conclave takes place amid a several raging global conflicts and a changing geopolitical situation as old alliances appear to be dissolving while new ones yet to be fully understood are slowly taking shape,” Re said.

After Wednesday’s Mass, the 133 cardinals who will elect the next pope will have time for lunch, rest and to finish moving into the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse before the official start of the conclave later that afternoon.

Calling the election of the pope of “the highest human and ecclesial responsibility,” Re in his homily stressed the importance of prayer in the process and the need to set aside “every personal consideration,” and instead prioritize the good of the Church, and of humanity.

He reflected on the day’s Gospel reading, in which Jesus tells his disciples “love one another as I have loved you,” adding that, “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

With this instruction, Jesus transformed the old teaching not to do something to others that one would not done to themselves into “something positive” and new, he said.

“The love that Jesus reveals knows no limits and must characterize the thoughts and actions of all his disciples, who must always show authentic love in their behavior and commit themselves to building a new civilization, what Paul VI called the ‘civilization of love,’” he said.

In this sense, Re said, “love is the only force capable of changing the world.”

Jesus gave an example of this love, he said, while humbling himself to wash the disciples’ feet during the Last Supper, “without discrimination” and without excluding Judas, despite knowing that Judas would betray him.

This serves as a reminder, Re said, “that the fundamental quality of pastors is love to the point of complete self-giving.”

Re said the readings were an invitation to cardinals electing the pope “invite us to fraternal love, to mutual help and to commitment to ecclesial communion and universal human fraternity.”

“Among the tasks of every successor of Peter is that of fostering communion: communion of all Christians with Christ; communion of the bishops with the pope; communion of the bishops among themselves,” he said.

Re insisted that this “is not a self-referential communion,” but is rather one “entirely directed towards communion among persons, peoples and cultures, with a concern that the Church should always be a home and school of communion.”

It also represents a strong call “to maintain the unity of the Church on the path traced out by Christ to the apostles,” he said, saying unity within the Church “is willed by Christ.”

This is a unity, he said, “that does not mean uniformity, but a firm and profound communion in diversity, provided that full fidelity to the Gospel is maintained.”

Each pope who is elected continues to carry forward Jesus’s mandate to Peter and is a representative of Christ on earth and is “the rock on which the Church is built,” Re said.

The election of a new pope, then, is “not a simple succession of persons,” but is rather it is always “the apostle Peter who returns,” he said.

Addressing the cardinals who will elect the new pope, Re said they must remember that “everything is conducive to an awareness of the presence of God, in whose sight each person will one day be judged,” which is why the voting takes place before Michaelangelo’s famed fresco of the Final Judgement.

“Let us pray, then, that the Holy Spirit, who in the last hundred years has given us a series of truly holy and great pontiffs, will give us a new pope according to God’s heart for the good of the Church and of humanity,” he said.

Re also prayed that God would give the Church a new pope who “knows how best to awaken the consciences of all and the moral and spiritual energies in today’s society, characterized by great technological progress but which tends to forget God.”

“Today’s world expects much from the Church regarding the safeguarding of those fundamental human and spiritual values without which human coexistence will not be better nor bring good to future generations,” he said.

He closed his homily asking for the Virgin Mary’s intercession so that God would “will enlighten the minds of the Cardinal electors and help them agree on the pope that our time needs.”

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