Speaking in a cathedral designed in the mid-1800s to protect Catholics from anti-Catholic mobs, Pope Francis declared “the history of the Church in this city and state is really a story not about building walls, but about breaking them down.” His homily at Mass on Saturday morning at Philadelphia’s Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul was Francis’s first official act on the final leg of his trip to Cuba and America. He spoke in Spanish.

The pope told the story of St. Katharine Drexel, a wealthy Philadelphia native whose life was changed when she told Pope Leo XIII about the needs of the Indian missions she supported and in response he asked her, “What about you? What are you going to do?” The challenge changed her life. In 1891 she gave up her wealth and independence to became a nun and found an order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, to live among black and Native American communities. In just a few years, the order had built and staffed over sixty missions and schools and created Xavier University in New Orleans, the only black Catholic college in the country.

Many young people “have the same high ideals, generosity of spirit, and love for Christ and the Church” as she did, Francis said, calling the Church both to challenge them and to help them in their apostolic work. He didn’t just challenge young people, however. He called every Catholic — and every Christian — to take personal responsibility for the Church’s mission and to live as “missionary disciples, as a leaven of the Gospel in our world.”

This call has importance for the future of the Church. For the faithful to live as missionary disciples “will require creativity in adapting to changed situations, carrying forward the legacy of the past not primarily by maintaining our structures and institutions, which have served us well, but above all by being open to the possibilities which the Spirit opens up to us and communicating the joy of the Gospel, daily and in every season of our life.”

The future of the Church also requires encouraging “a sense of collaboration and shared responsibility in planning for the future of our parishes and institutions. This does not mean relinquishing the spiritual authority with which we have been entrusted; rather, it means discerning and employing wisely the manifold gifts which the Spirit pours out upon the Church.” Having noted that Leo had offered his challenge to a laywoman, Francis added: “In a particular way, it means valuing the immense contribution which women, lay and religious, have made and continue to make, to the life of our communities.”

Illustrating the press’s tendency to read between Francis’s lines, at least one major news source, the Religion News Service, thought this part of the sermon an indirect reference to the ordination of women. That reading seems strained, especially since it directly contradicts what Francis has written elsewhere. In his 2013 apostolic letter Evangelii Gaudium, he wrote that “The reservation of the priesthood to males … is not a question open to discussion.”

At the end of the short homily, Francis asked the congregation to reflect on the  Church’s ministry to families and to pray for them and for the upcoming Synod on the Family. He closed the homily with a traditional appeal (one no mainline news report on the homily mentioned), one clearly marking Francis’s traditional Catholic piety:

Now, with gratitude for all we have received, and with confident assurance in all our needs, let us turn to Mary, our Blessed Mother. With a mother’s love, may she intercede for the growth of the Church in America in prophetic witness to the power of her Son’s Cross to bring joy, hope and strength into our world. I pray for each of you, and I ask you, please, to pray for me.