At 06:00 Rome time, Pope Leo signed an apostolic exhortation titled Dilexi te, and the pen made that tiny church-organ sound pens make when history pretends to be stationery. The room exhaled incense and procedural Latin. The Vatican press desk stamped our badges like passports to a country made of marble and paperwork. My notebook clicked shut like a customs gate trying to be polite.

Exhortation is church for “gentle shove toward holiness,” the way a tugboat is a gentle shove toward docking a cathedral. He called it a love letter, which is accurate if your love letters include footnotes, an index of saints, and the quiet threat of beatitude. The tone was warm enough to brown bread, and stern enough to file a tax return on your conscience.

A choir practiced vowels until they were legally noon. Swiss Guards posed as traffic pylons wrapped in Renaissance fabric, guarding a pen like it was a small, blessed cruise missile. Someone whispered that the Holy Spirit prefers italic.

Dilexi te — “I have loved you” — he said, as though translating both scripture and the note you leave on a refrigerator magnet for eight billion roommates. Reporters nodded like bobbleheads in the glove compartment of theology. A cameraman tried to zoom in on mercy and accidentally framed eternity.

Then he produced his gilded ceremonial fountain pen, which looked capable of absolving a spelling error by laying on ink. It glinted with the confidence of a chalice that moonlights as a mic. He signed with a flourish that could have excommunicated a paperclip.

The document itself is twelve chapters, three weather systems, and one deliberate coffee ring, which is the Vatican’s way of watermarking love. Every paragraph walks like a processional; every footnote behaves like a customs officer for facts. The margins breathe, and you get the sense a monk in logistics tested the binding at sea.

Outside, pilgrims livestreamed the sacrament of Waiting, refreshing feeds until grace had strong Wi‑Fi. A nun explained the Latin to a teenager by inventing an app with her hands. On a balcony, a pigeon made the Sign of the Cross, or maybe it was just Italian.

Skeptics asked which Pope Leo exactly, as if the Church were releasing a new model with extra megapixels of sanctity. Technically there have been many Leos, a pride of popes prowling the centuries, which is the correct collective noun and I will not be questioned. Think of this as LeoOS with a patch for restless hearts and reduced purgatorial buffering.

I followed the paperwork the way I follow diesel across borders: nose first, notes second, feet third. In Rome, rumor moves faster than doctrine, but doctrine is the only one that arrives on time. In my kit: passport, granola, and a solar-powered rosary counter that ticks like a lighthouse for my better intentions.

What does the exhortation say? It says love before the algorithm does, carry the world like a small, loud child, and treat your neighbor as if his inbox were already full. It tells borders they are hobbies, not destinies. It asks economies to stop laundering loneliness.

A journalist asked how this love would be enforced, and a Swiss Guard lifted a halberd as if to demonstrate “lightly.” The Pope replied with a parable about a lost sheep who finally found Wi‑Fi and stayed for the passwords. Even the statue of Peter looked like it wanted to double-tap.

By dusk, the document had been translated into languages, gestures, and the cuisine of grandmothers. Couriers carried copies through colonnades like mail addressed to the weather. The official summary is short enough to stamp in a passport: Dilexi te — I loved you — declared at customs, nothing to declare but love, and please keep your halberd in the overhead compartment.