Bishops must 'sow' with patience, foster respect, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The first lesson every bishop must learn is humility, Pope Leo XIV said.

"Not humility in words, but that which dwells in the heart of those who know they are servants, not masters; shepherds, not owners of the flock," he said in his homily during a Mass for the episcopal ordination of the new nuncio to Iraq.

Then-Msgr. Miroslaw Wachowski, an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State, was ordained a bishop by Pope Leo during a ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica Oct. 26, after appointing the 55-year-old Polish priest to be papal nuncio to Iraq Sept. 18.

"The bishop is called to sow with patience, to cultivate with respect, to wait with hope," Pope Leo said in his homily. "He is a guardian, not an owner; a man of prayer, not of possession."

"This is the first lesson for every bishop: humility," he said.

An apostolic nuncio is not just any kind of diplomat, he said. "He is the face of a church that accompanies, consoles and builds bridges. His job is not to defend partisan interests," but to be at the service of communion.

With his new mission in Iraq, Archbishop Wachowski is called to be "a father, a shepherd and a witness of hope in a land marked by pain and the desire for rebirth," Pope Leo said. "You are called to fight the good fight of faith, not against others, but against the temptation to grow weary, to close yourself off, to measure results."

Iraq represents "a mosaic" of faiths and cultures, "which asks to be welcomed and preserved in charity," he said.

"People pray in the language that Jesus spoke: Aramaic," which is "a sign of continuity that the violence, which has manifested itself with ferocity in recent decades, has not been able to extinguish," the pope said. "Indeed, the voice of those who have been brutally deprived of their lives in those lands does not fade away."