
Join Dr. Ben Akers and Dr. Carl Vennerstrom as they discuss St. Leo the Great, who served as pope during the tumultuous time of the Council of Chalcedon. With the heart of a pastor, St. Leo modeled Christian charity amidst the debates and controversies on the divine and human nature of Jesus. He blessed the Church by using his gift of administration to create a healthy bureaucracy where brotherly love could flourish. Watch Catholic Saints on FORMED. Sign Up for FORMED. Support this podcast and the Augustine Institute on the Mission Circle.
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You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
B
Hello, and welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Dr. Ben Akers. I'm the Chief Content Officer here at the Augusta Institute. And joining me today is Professor Carl Venestrom, who is one of our professors in the Graduate School of Theology. And today we're talking about Pope St. Leo the Great. Who? Pope Benedict XVI, a recent Holy Father, said that Pope Leo the Great is one of the greatest and most prominent popes in the Church's history, which is probably why we give him the name Great.
C
Yeah, that's right. Actually, I think the word great is a good place to start. This is a kind of acclimation for saints. Right.
B
So he didn't become Pope and say, hey, my name. Call me Pope Leo the Great.
C
Leo Magnus. Yeah, yeah, that's right. No, he didn't take it for himself. And it's not a designation that I think the Church gives people. Like, the Church might declare someone a doctor of the Church. We've had a few of those recently, but, yeah, instead, this is how they're received in the history of the Church. And there's only, I think, around four of them. So there's Pope Leo the Great, who's the first. Then Pope Gregory the Great comes after him, Pope Nicholas the Great. And then Gertrude, Saint Gertrude, who's a Benedictine mystic from the medieval period. She's unlike the others. And then people are calling Pope St. John Paul II the Great. So, yeah, the word great is important in a way. I mean, it just means big, right?
B
Yeah.
C
And part of. Like, for most of these people, their circumstances are very big. Pope Pope Leo is.
B
What are his dates? Like, so we get a sense of, like, historical context and when he's living.
C
Yeah. So he was ordained a Deacon in 430, and then a priest after that, and then Pope in 440 until 461. Okay, so this is a.
B
It's a long reign, though. That's like 21 years of reign.
C
Yeah, it is an extremely long reign. Yeah. Especially for. Yeah, for this period.
B
Right.
C
Yeah. So he's at a very tumultuous time in the history of the Church. There are a lot of controversies throughout all of Christianity, east and west, about the nature of Christ. So in the 5th century, we get the Council of Ephesus, which is an ecumenical council, and then during. During Leo's reign, the Council of Chalcedon. And these follow, of course, the Trinitarian Councils of the the 4th century. So there was a, a lot of dissension and disagreement in the Church at this time. And Leo was famous for having a kind of moderation and courage. He was able to take on heretics on the one hand, but he didn't push people over the edge on, on the other, I think now.
B
So what if, if I'm listening to this and I'm hearing for this first, first time about what is a council of the Church?
C
Yeah, that's a great question.
B
Why do we have so many at the beginning? And I think most of our viewers, listeners would hear Second Vatican Council from the 1960s.
C
Yeah, that's right.
B
But at the beginning of the Church's history in the third and fourth century, there was just a lot. There were several.
C
Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. And there were a lot of meetings and different kinds of councils. And so we refer to seven ecumenical councils. And these are ecumenical by the fact that they had a kind of universal participation. So bishops from all over the Christian world participated in these councils and they also established doctrine which was universally received as well. So, yeah, they're to be distinguished from all the other different councils and synods. And there were very many of them that met kind of in between them. Yeah.
B
What I love about the thinking about the councils is because it sounds like, ah, the church just loves its meetings. Right. And they just love getting everybody together. Send it on citadelity. But these were doctrinal councils where these are holy men that are wrestling with the fact of the text of the New Testament, call Jesus Son of God, they call him Christ, they call him Lord. Like what does that mean to say Son of God? And they have all these interpretations that we call the ones that are incorrect heresies, but they're really trying to get to know who Jesus is.
C
Yeah, yeah. And each of these councils, we start with the Trinitarian councils that first the Council of Nicaea would tackle what's the nature of Christ or the Son relative to the Father? And then Council of Constantinople brings in the Spirit and answers that question. And then with Pope Leo, the question is really about Christ specifically and how do these divine and human natures work together. And I guess if we should really briefly sketch out the controversy during Pope Leo's time, it was between the Nestorians or the Diaphysytes. That means like two natures and the Meophysites, which be one nature. So the question is really, does, does one of these natures take over completely?
B
So the human and divine nature of Christ, how do they relate to one another.
C
Yeah. So with the one side, the m. The bad consequences, that the divine nature completely obliterates the human nature. So Christ is no longer really a person and so salvation is impossible. And then the other side, the Diaphysytes and the historians, the two natures are so separated that it's impossible to think about how God could act that person. And Leo wasn't in the place where these controversies were necessarily happening in the east, but he had a kind of middle ground which both sides, at least many of them could, could accept. And, and, and this gets to, I think, the point about his kind of moderation and his prudence and judgment, I think. Yeah.
B
So he's trying to mediate between these, these, these views and it really is everyone trying to seek to understand who Jesus is and how does, how do the, the, the human nature and the divine nature work together. And so what's at stake is the true understanding of who Christ is, but also in a sense, our salvation. Because if he's not God with the divine nature.
C
That's right.
B
Then he can't save us from our sins.
C
Yeah.
B
And if he's not man, if he's not fully man, then he can't actually atone for our sins.
C
Right. Yeah, yeah. Because then he has, in a way, or at least we have no access to him. If our access is only to the divine nature and it only has this loose connection to, I'm sorry, to the human nature, and if it only has this loose connection to the divine nature, we're stuck at square one, basically. Yeah.
B
So what, what's the, what's the, the heart of what Leo does in his proposal?
C
Yeah. So he's in conversation with the Bishop of Constantinople or the Patriarch of Constantinople.
B
So most of the, the, the, the Empire, Roman Empire, what's left of it, is focused on the East.
C
Yeah, that's right.
B
Rome is kind of the Western. Mm.
C
Yeah. Yeah. So in the west, and this is really important to these series of raids and problems with the Goths, the Visigoths, the Huns, all the scary sounding people from the, from the steppes. Right, yeah. The political power there is really limited and the central power of the Roman Empire had moved to Constantinople and places like Antioch in Syria, Alexandria and Egypt. And this is where the controversies are really happening. So he writes what's called the Tome of Leo to the Patriarch Flavian of Constantinople.
B
And tome just means like letter.
C
Yeah, just a letter, basically. Yeah, it's just a fancy word. Yeah, yeah, he just writes a letter and it's actually just in his letter collections. It's just like letter 28.
B
Right.
C
But this letter gets taken up at the Council of Chalcedon and like the other ecumenical councils. The, the. The Roman Patriarch or the Pope had always sent representatives, and so he sent representatives. And this is one of the first councils, actually, that has, like, good minutes and a good record keeping. Like, the Church is becoming, like, much more organized.
B
And.
C
And his letter, which describes Christ in two natures, which is this kind of compromise, is included. And it actually says that Peter spoke through Leo. So there's this kind of acknowledgment of Roman primacy in matters of doctrine.
B
I remember reading in a collection of the acts of the council. So it's just kind of summaries of this. And I was just struck by the fervor and the enthusiasm that came, that seemed to have come at least, were kept in the minutes. Like, you know, this is the faith of our Fathers. This is the faith. You know, exclamation points. This is the faith of our fathers. Peter has spoken through Leo. And just like a really. It becomes a famous line in Catholic theology.
C
Right? Yeah, it's something that the whole Christian world was able to gather around in a way. Yeah, that's right.
B
Which is beautiful to see that that's the hope of the role of the Roman Pontiff of the Holy Father is to be a person of unity. And as Jesus says in Luke to Peter at the Last Supper, you're going to deny me, but when you turn again, I want you to strengthen your brothers. And so the real role of the Pope is to strengthen the brothers and to bring unity to the faith.
C
Yeah, that's right. I think we can often think of hierarchy as this sort of cold system of obedience, but it's kind of servile obedience, and you just have to, like, take the yes or no and move on. And the whole point, really, and kind of the whole point of these councils was to, like, keep the unity of the Church. And sometimes that does require discipline. But the purpose is the mutual love of Christian brothers and the mutual love and unity in our expression for who God is and who Christ is and who we are.
B
Yeah, I brought my catechism out because on the section in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where it's going through the Creed and who Jesus is, in paragraph 467, it talks about this, the Monophysite, the heresy that Leo's going to combat, but actually has an extended quotation from his letter. And so if you actually have A catechism at home. You can go and look this up and you actually get the words of Leo that have been transferred over the council in paragraph 467. It really is a beautiful kind of a famous formulation. We confess that one, and this is just part of the paragraph. We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord and only begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, or without separation. And there's four adjectives. And I remember in studying theology that they're putting the negative kind of the without or, you know, there's no change, there's no mixture, no separation was a way that he was trying to respect the mystery.
C
Yeah, that's right.
B
Setting up boundaries.
C
Yeah. And this is a tradition that goes back to the 4th century, to the Trinitarian controversies, that often we have to be careful about what we say about God positively. And part of the way we get to an understanding of who God is is to say what he's not. Because our mind tends to think in categories which are inadequate to God, which all categories ultimately are in some sense, even if they're true, you have to pull them back a little bit and just acknowledge human finitude. Right, yeah. Before God.
B
Now, you mentioned Attila. Can expand on that story a little bit.
C
Yeah. Yeah. So Attila the Hun. The famous Attila the Hun. Yeah.
B
I didn't know he went to Rome to visit the Pope.
C
Yeah, he did go to make a visit to the Pope. It wasn't a friendly call, but. But, yeah, this gets to this idea that the Roman Empire in the west had kind of degraded politically, and it fell to people like Pope Leo to actually just bring some organization to the world. And part of this was a kind of ambassadorship. He was actually asked by the Roman Empire to make this INC. Intervention. So he goes as part of. He goes as part of this embassy and actually convinces Attila the Hun, who's on the sort of doorsteps of Rome, to turn back, which requires, I think, incredible bravery. Obviously, he doesn't have the sword. Even if he does have this administrative and ambassadorial prowess, he has to go with a lot of faith to meet this. I mean, we think of him as a very scary person for a good reason, I think.
B
Yeah. No, this really is like all his reputation, I'm sure, is being transferred down. And as Leo's deciding what he's going to do, am I going to do this? Or I'm going to stay behind the safety of the walls of Rome and maybe suffer an attack. I didn't know the story of Attila the Hun, but I was blessed to go and spend some time in Rome. And St. Pope St. Louis was actually buried in St. Peter's Basilica. And above his tomb, there's this beautiful sculpture, bas relief of this scene of Leo going to Attila. And he's kind of got his hand pointing at him. You can look this up online. But there's this on the image above, in the sky above Attila, there's Peter and Paul, the apostles of Peter and Paul with their swords drawn.
C
Yeah, that's right.
B
I know, it's fascinating. So I was like, I did research in this story and apparently there's also like a legend.
C
Yeah, there's this legend. Yeah.
B
They asked Attila, they said, why did you turn around? Like, these guys are weak. And it was those two figures in the sky that scared me.
C
Yeah, those two, like ten foot giants with their huge swords.
B
Yeah. So like this. And we don't know if it's true or not, but it's like, it's beautiful. It makes its way in art, but the idea that Peter and Paul would defend Rome even against its enemies, but that really what Leo was doing is really wanting to, you know, he wanted to preserve and protect the beautiful church, the churches that were being built in Rome at the time, the Catholic churches, but also the people.
C
Yeah, that's right.
B
For the people.
C
Yeah. And he wanted to provide a kind of structure so things could just work. I was mentioning this earlier. I kind of think about him as the perfect holy bureaucrat. I think when we say the word bureaucrat, you think like, oh, like that's the worst. Especially academics, like, everyone complains about the administration all the time. But I've actually found, just in my experience, at different places, if you have an administration that works well, it's so beautiful because it opens up the possibility for everyone everywhere in the organization to be able to do the thing they're meant to do. And I think Pope Leo had a kind of humility about him to constantly deal with, like the many letters from all over the Western Roman Empire, people asking him questions about this or that controversy or thing or how to deal with this. And I think he probably would have preferred to live a life of prayer and contemplation. And you can see that in his homilies, which are such beautiful reflections on the Gospels and especially on these important feast days. But realistically, he spent a lot of his time on this tedious stuff. So that's a kind of cruciform life that people probably don't think of, but it's extremely important, I think.
B
No, that was beautiful that you mentioned that. Because I think of Paul in one of the Gifts. He actually talks about administration being a gift. And I remember reading that in Paul in the Greek. I'm like, I hope I don't get that one.
C
Yeah.
B
Because it just doesn't sound. That's too late. You almost hope that you don't. As you said, it doesn't sound like something one wants. But if you do have a good administration, it does. And I just think of this in a home too, where if the home is run well, it's just, it's a place for the. The husband and wife to be able to spend time with their children, the children to grow up in brotherly love and peace. And that is kind of an unthanked or unwanted position. But it can serve the good of the family and even in Leo's case, the good of the church.
C
Yeah. And it requires his self denial too, because to be effective at it, to a certain sense, you have to become the office and your personal attributes and characteristics sort of fade in the background in place of this function that you serve on behalf of other people. And in fact, we don't know that much about him personally. Even we, his biographers don't really tell us anything about his life prior to being pope. And in his letters he hardly ever reflects on himself at all. So yeah, we get the fruit of what he did. But I mean, it's good for saints to let us into their inner life. Like the Confessions is amazing work, but there's a kind of beauty in this. Yeah, his personality is in a way kind of anonymous to us.
B
And you mentioned his homilies. And I would just encourage our listeners to. You can go to newadvent.org I think you'll be able to find some of his sermons on there, especially with relation to like as you said, the big feast, Christmas.
C
Yeah.
B
And then paschal ministry and resurrection of our Lord. And he's mentioned several times because you get the really hard of a pastor. He wasn't just an administrator, but he actually was a pastor who took Jesus seriously, believed Jesus was God and man, but wanted the people to know and live those mysteries in their own life. And he's quoted several times in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Again, that's a great way to kind of get to know these saints that we're having through this series is go to the back of the Catechism. It tells you look up a Saint and see if they're quoted and they'll give you the paragraph numbers to go to. And what I was struck by when I was just doing this before in preparation, he's actually quoted. He's the very first one quoted in the third pillar of the catechism, which has to do with morality or life in Christ, a life of discipleship. And it's this beautiful opening line from one of his sermons. Christian, remember your dignity. And he's trying to. He's like, you know, remember you were baptized into Christ. By being baptized into Christ, you're filled with the Holy Spirit, your soul is a temple, and you need to live in such a way that you can actually bear the name of Christ courageously. And just. I just. It really is a. It's really nice paragraph.
C
Yeah. Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah. And I think he's a great example for us today of the virtues of moderation and courage together. I think we can think of those as opposed in some way that if you're courageous, you're going to be on the forefront and you just don't care what anyone thinks or what their response is going to be. And he was obviously very courageous and was willing to stick his neck out there, but in his interventions, religious and ecclesiastical and political, he had this moderation that allowed him to understand how his words might be received and to give them in a way that could be effective in the lives of other people. So, yeah. Great.
B
Well, thank you. Anything else you want to say about Pope St. Leo?
C
I think that. That's it.
B
That's it. Great. Well, thank you for joining me, Carl.
C
Yeah, thanks for having me.
B
This conversation about Pope St. Leo. So remember that we're not just talking about these saints. They are historical figures lived at a particular moment in time. But there are men and women who have given their lives over to Christ that allow Christ to win the victory in their life and that they're friends in heaven. So Pope St. Leo the Great, pray for us.
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Augustine Institute
Host: Dr. Ben Akers
Guest: Professor Carl Venestrom
Release Date: November 10, 2025
In this episode of Catholic Saints, Dr. Ben Akers is joined by Professor Carl Venestrom to delve into the life and legacy of Pope St. Leo the Great. The conversation presents Leo as both a theological luminary and a courageous leader during a tumultuous era in Church history. The hosts explore Leo’s significant theological contributions, notably at the Council of Chalcedon, his role in cementing papal primacy, and his exemplary balance of courage, moderation, and administrative skill. Through historical anecdote and reflection, the episode inspires listeners to see sanctity not just in extraordinary acts, but in ordinary, often unseen service.
[00:19–01:50]
[01:58–02:23]
[02:23–06:29]
[07:17–09:36]
[09:42–10:40]
[10:40–11:40]
[11:41–12:17]
[12:17–14:54]
[14:54–17:42]
[17:42–19:08]
[19:08–19:49]
On Papal Titles:
“He didn’t become Pope and say, hey, call me Pope Leo the Great.” – Dr. Ben Akers [00:56]
On Doctrinal Councils:
“These were doctrinal councils where these are holy men... wrestling with the fact of the text of the New Testament.” – Dr. Ben Akers [04:09]
At the Council of Chalcedon:
“Peter has spoken through Leo.” – Council acclamation, via Dr. Ben Akers [09:15]
On the Role of the Pope:
“The real role of the Pope is to strengthen the brothers and to bring unity to the faith.” – Dr. Ben Akers [09:42]
Leo’s Formula on Christ’s Natures (CCC 467):
“We confess that one and the same Christ... is to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, or without separation.” – Dr. Ben Akers [11:40]
On Administration as a Gift:
“I kind of think about him as the perfect holy bureaucrat... if you have an administration that works well, it’s so beautiful because it opens up the possibility for everyone everywhere in the organization to be able to do the thing they’re meant to do.” – Prof. Venestrom [15:00]
Christian Dignity:
“Christian, remember your dignity.” – St. Leo (via Dr. Ben Akers) [18:08]
St. Leo the Great, pray for us.