Pope Leo XIV urged hundreds of thousands of young people on Saturday, August 2, to have the courage to make radical choices to do good, as he presided over his first big encounter with the next generation of Catholics during the highlight of the Vatican’s 2025 Holy Year.
Leo encountered a sea of people as he arrived by helicopter at the Tor Vergata field on Rome’s outskirts for a vigil service of the Jubilee of Youth. Hailing from nearly 150 countries, the pilgrims had set up campsites on the field for the night, as misting trucks and water cannons spritzed them to cool them down from the 30º C temperatures.
Leo displayed his fluency in speaking to the kids in Spanish, Italian and English about the dangers of social media, the value of true friendship and the need to have courage to make radical choices like marriage or religious vows. “Friendship can really change the world. Friendship is a path to peace,” he said. “How much the world needs missionaries of the Gospel who are witnesses of justice and peace!”
But history’s first American pope also alerted them to some tragic news: Two young people who had made the pilgrimage to Rome had died, one reportedly of cardiac arrest, while a third was hospitalized, Leo told the crowd during the vigil service. Leo was to return to the field for an early morning Mass on Sunday morning to close out the celebration.
Rome welcomes the throngs
For the past week, these bands of young Catholics from around the world have poured into Rome for their special Jubilee celebration, in a Holy Year in which 32 million people are expected to descend on the Vatican to participate in a centuries-old pilgrimage to the seat of Catholicism.
The young people have been traipsing down cobblestoned streets in color-coordinated T-shirts, praying the Rosary and singing hymns with guitars, bongo drums and tambourines shimmying alongside. Using their flags as tarps to shield them from the sun, they have taken over entire piazzas for Christian rock concerts and inspirational talks, and stood for hours at the Circus Maximus to confess their sins to 1,000 priests offering the sacrament in a dozen different languages.
A mini World Youth Day, 25 years later
It all has the vibe of a World Youth Day, the Catholic Woodstock festival that St. John Paul II inaugurated and made famous in Rome in 2000 at the very same Tor Vergata field. Back then, before an estimated two million people, John Paul told the young pilgrims they were the “sentinels of the morning” at the dawn of the third millennium.
Officials had initially expected 500,000 young people this weekend, but Leo and organizers from the stage said the number could reach one million. The Vatican didn’t immediately provide a final estimate.
Romans inconvenienced, but tolerant
Those Romans who didn’t flee the onslaught have been inconvenienced by the additional strain on the city’s notoriously insufficient public transport system. Residents are sharing social media posts of outbursts by Romans at kids flooding subway platforms and crowding bus stops that have delayed and complicated their commutes to work.
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But other Romans have welcomed the enthusiasm the youngsters have brought. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offered a video welcome, marveling at the “extraordinary festival of faith, joy and hope” that the young people had created.
