The National Constitution Center awarded Pope Leo XIV with the Liberty Medal on Friday ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
According to the National Constitution Center, the award honors the Pope’s “lifelong work promoting religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression around the world—ideals enshrined by America’s founders in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
The Pope, born in Chicago, honored the nation’s foundational values in a speech live-streamed from Rome. “As a son of this great country, founded by courageous men and women who dreamed of liberty and of a better life for themselves and for their children, I join you in asking God’s blessings upon America’s future, that the lofty ideals enshrined at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence may continue to guide the flourishing of the nation in unity, justice and peace,” he said.
Discussing the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Pope declared that such a claim is “ultimately grounded in an understanding of the human person inspired by the great biblical vision of man and woman being created in the divine image.”
He went on to celebrate the country’s religious freedom, saying that such freedom “gave rise to the American tradition of allowing for interfaith dialogue and interreligious cooperation in promoting the public good and enriching the debates on the great moral and ethical issues that have faced the nation and shaped the course of its history.”
The Pope concluded by urging Americans to look to the “One who is himself the source of true freedom and lasting peace, the One whose very name is Peace.”
