ROME (OSV News): Pope Leo XIV will celebrate a public Mass every week of August after taking time to rest in Castel Gandolfo during the month of July.
The Vatican published the pope’s liturgical schedule for August on July 30. It includes Masses in of Assisi and Rimini, along with celebrations for the liturgical feasts of the Transfiguration and the Assumption of Mary.
Pope Leo will also resume his weekly Wednesday general audiences in August, after suspending them for the month of July, and will lead five Angelus addresses during the month when many Europeans are on vacation.
Here is a look at the pope’s schedule for the rest of the summer.
Celebrating the Year of St. Francis in Assisi
Pope Leo will celebrate Mass in Assisi on August 6 for the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. The 10:30am liturgy in the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels will be offered for participants in the “Go! Franciscan Youth Meeting,” a four-day meeting of young people ages 18 to 33 from across Europe.
The pope is scheduled to travel to Assisi by helicopter that morning, where he will meet with young people in the Piazza Santa Maria degli Angeli and greet representatives of the Franciscan orders before celebrating Mass in the basilica.
The visit to the birthplace of St. Francis is part of the Church’s celebration of a special jubilee year marking the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’ death. It also coincides with the annual celebration for the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, a 16th-century church built over the small chapel where St. Francis founded the Franciscan order.
Each year during the first week of August, pilgrims to the basilica can receive a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, recalling St. Francis’ mystical experience there in 1216, when he asked Christ to grant complete remission of sins to all who, having repented and confessed, prayed within the church.
Solemnity of the Assumption in Castel Gandolfo
Pope Leo will return to Castel Gandolfo, where he spent much of July, to celebrate Mass for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Aug. 15, at 10:30am in the parish of St. Thomas of Villanova. He will also lead a special Angelus address at noon to mark the Marian feast.
Travelling north to Rimini and San Marino
Since May, Pope Leo has made a series of pastoral visits to Italian cities, from Naples to Pavia. The final stop in this round of domestic visits will take him to San Marino and Rimini on August 22.
The pope will begin the day with a pastoral visit to the Republic of San Marino, a landlocked microstate on the Italian Peninsula and the third-smallest independent state in Europe after Vatican City and Monaco. Its capital sits atop a mountain and traces its origins to a settlement founded by St. Marinus in the 4th century.
In the afternoon, Pope Leo will travel to the seaside town of Rimini, where he will take part in the Meeting for Friendship Amongst Peoples, an annual gathering organised by Communion and Liberation, a Catholic lay movement with roots in Italy. He will be the first pope to attend the event, known informally as the Rimini Meeting.
Pope Leo will celebrate Mass with Catholics of the Diocese of Rimini at 6:30pm local time in the city’s port.
A return to Castel Gandolfo
Pope Leo will return to Castel Gandolfo once more at the end of the month to celebrate Mass and lead a procession at the Church of Our Lady of the Lake on August 29, at 6:00pm.
