The virtue of caritas (God’s divine love), given in baptism, is a force that can inspire the Christian politician’s work to better society, but its effectiveness depends on his fidelity to Christ.

That’s according to Pope Leo who spoke to elected officials and civil servants visiting Rome last week on a jubilee year pilgrimage from France.

Drawing on his Augustinian roots, the Pontiff urged the group to not try to separate their work from their deeper identity as Christians, but encouraged them instead to draw strength from their faith, and knowledge from the social doctrine of the Church.

“Its foundations”, he said “are fundamentally in harmony with human nature, with the natural law that all can recognize, even non-Christians, even non-believers. You must not therefore fear to propose it and to defend it with conviction”.

The Pope acknowledged the difficulties this could present for his interlocutors, as France has a very strong form of secularism that stridently excludes appeals to faith.

He said he was also aware “of the pressures, the party directives, the ‘ideological colonization’—to borrow an expression of Pope Francis—to which politicians are subjected”.

“They need courage: the courage at times to say, ‘No, I cannot!’ when the truth is at stake”.