Pope Leo Urges Swift, Transparent Quake Rebuild
A decade after the central Italy quakes that killed 299, he invoked Nehemiah and Haggai to link shared duty, vision, and hope to rebuilding work.
On Saturday, October 31, 2026, Pope Leo XIV received delegations from municipalities in central Italy that were struck by earthquakes a decade earlier in an audience at the Apostolic Palace. The disasters left 299 dead and 365 injured, with serious material damage and wounds that still mark communities ten years later.
Scripture and the Work of Rebuilding
Drawing on the Book of Nehemiah—cited in the encyclical Magnifica humanitas (no. 8)—the Pope said Nehemiah teaches a twofold path. Reconstruction is communal: the city is reborn “not through the efforts of a single person, but through the shared responsibility of the whole people.” It also demands vision, “because to rebuild, one must have a vision.”
He warned that “it is not enough to merely have good intentions or to rely on disorganized voluntarism.” What is required is “a gaze that can discern, within the present evil, the good that it is both possible and our duty to realize.” Delegates were urged to join “the synodal approach in order to build together” with “the prophetic vision” that looks ahead to “the common good to be actively pursued.”
Saints of the Land and a Call to Courage
The Holy Father recalled saints of the region—Saint Rita of Cascia, Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, Saint Benedict, and Saint Francis of Assisi, marking eight hundred years since Francis’s death. He remembered the Lord’s word to Francis: “Go and repair my house, which, as you see, lies in ruins.”
Hope, he stressed, “requires, first and foremost, tangible and urgent responses.” All energy must ensure that physical reconstruction “takes place as quickly as possible, safely and transparently.” Turning to the prophet Haggai, he said one cannot start afresh “without first rebuilding that which gives meaning and foundation to a community.” The task is “starting anew from the center, of starting anew from God, from people, from the common good, and from relationships.”
He closed with Haggai 2:4—“Take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you”—and imparted his blessing, invoking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the delegates’ patron saints.
The audience placed the long work of recovery under the Church’s constant teaching: charity ordered to the common good, truthfulness in public works, and the primacy of God and human persons over mere technique. For the faithful of the affected dioceses, the Pope’s words frame reconstruction not only as engineering and administration, but as a shared Christian responsibility lived in communion and hope.