In St Peter’s Basilica on Friday, the day’s Gospel reading cut through the stillness with an ancient cry: “Lord, if you want, you can heal me.” The passage, from Mark, tells of a leper who dared approach Jesus, defying the purity laws that kept him at a distance. As the words faded, Pope Leo XIV, the US-born pontiff elected just over a year ago, rose to address the College of Cardinals gathered for a rare extraordinary consistory. His homily, too, was a plea for healing — not of a single body, but of a “human family” lacerated by war.

“International tensions and conflicts seriously wound the human family,” the pope said, according to transcripts of the mass. “War is never worthy of humanity, and it is never blessed by God.” He urged the cardinals, and through them the world, to “resolve conflicts as human beings and not as beasts, even if we are equipped with high-tech weapons.” The message, delivered in the marble vastness of the basilica, was both a theological statement and a direct challenge to the logic of great-power confrontation. It echoed his previous anti-war appeals, which have drawn sharp criticism from US President Donald Trump.

This consistory — the second since Leo’s election in May 2025 — is emerging as a signature instrument of his pontificate. Where previous popes convened cardinals sporadically, Leo has made such gatherings a regular feature of Church governance, a mechanism to bind the Vatican more closely to local churches from the Amazon to the Pacific islands. Italian commentators have taken to calling him a “tessitore” — a weaver — intent on creating a collegial culture that can hold together a global institution riven by divergent social and theological currents. A new book, L’Ultimo Conclave by Elisabetta Piqué and Gerard O’Connell, reconstructs the slow, unorchestrated rise of his candidacy during the 2025 conclave. It reveals how, in the absence of organised blocs, a push from cardinals of the global South helped a figure with no initial backing emerge as the choice to navigate a Church still digesting the Francis era.

Inside the consistory, the pope’s call for frankness was explicit. “I need your strong, explicit, public support,” he told the cardinals, asking them to accompany him “not only in these days but every day.” He urged them to share what they hear from their churches, not to hide resistance or misunderstanding. Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, Archbishop of Algiers, captured the mood: “There will be genuine sharing among us. It’s clear that Pope Leo wants us to form a college, to get to know one another… The more we have these meetings, the more united we will be.” The closed-door sessions, which continue on Saturday, are designed to address a range of global challenges, from the “culture of power” to the “sufferings and problems” of the international situation, as well as preparations for a major ecclesial assembly planned for 2028.

As the cardinals moved from the basilica to the Paul VI Audience Hall for workshops and plenary sessions, the Gospel’s question hung in the air — a leper’s bold request for cleansing, now refracted through a pope’s insistence that humanity can choose a different path. Outside, the world’s conflicts rumbled on, but within the Vatican walls, a different kind of architecture was being tested: one built not of stone, but of shared listening and the conviction that even the most entrenched divisions might be healed.