(ZENIT News / Rome, 05.26.2025).- Pope Leo XIV has rekindled a tradition that had quietly faded: the distribution of a 500-euro bonus to Vatican employees upon the election of a new pope. The gesture, while financial on the surface, has resonated far deeper across the walls of the Apostolic Palace and the corridors of the Vatican’s many offices.
The bonus, given on May 23, reaches around 5,000 workers—from the 2,000 employees of the Roman Curia who assist in governing the global Church, to the many others who sustain the daily functions of Vatican City State. It’s a modest sum, but one charged with symbolic weight: a message that continuity, dignity, and personal commitment are seen, valued, and rewarded.
The reinstatement marks a subtle but pointed break with Pope Francis, who had suspended the practice in a spirit of institutional austerity. Pope Leo, while not rejecting that ethos, appears instead to be carving out a different tone—one that values memory, ritual, and the moral of small gestures.
The day after the bonus was quietly disbursed, Pope Leo met face-to-face with the people who keep the Vatican running. Five thousand employees and their families—children in arms, aging clerks, guards, archivists, gardeners, and diplomats—filled the vast Paul VI Audience Hall, greeting the Pope with a prolonged and heartfelt ovation.
He stood before them not as an executive addressing his staff, but as a shepherd meeting the flock he had inherited. “This is not the time for programmatic speeches,” he said. “This is the moment to thank you.”
Leo XIV, still early in his pontificate, reflected not on policy but on permanence. “Popes come and go,” he said simply, “but the Curia remains.” Not as a bureaucratic relic, but as a living organ of memory. He stressed that this institutional body does more than file documents or issue decrees—it guards the memory of the Church and guides its continuity. “Memory,” he noted, “is not nostalgia. It is the root of purpose, the map of meaning.”
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