Pope Leo XIV closed this Sunday the jubilee of youth with a mass before more than one million faithful in the Roman esplanade of Tor Vergata, from where he called “aspiring to big things” and defended the idea that “another world is possible.”
“Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever they are. They do not meet less,” he encouraged in his homily, pronounced from the great stage. The event has been massive, the oldest of the still brief pontificate of Leo XIV, exceeding one million participants, according to local authorities.
From the eve, one hundred thousand young people from around the world spent the night in Raso at the Great Camp of Tor Vergata, equipped with blankets or sleeping bags or resting their heads in their own backpacks or suitcases, waiting for the Mass.
Temperatures at night were peaceful, although at dawn a slight rain surprised many, forcing them to improvise shelters. Many woke up with the helicopter rumble with which the Pope landed in Tor Vergata to close the youth party, he points out EFE.
“Buy, accumulate, consume is not enough”
This Eucharist, held in the same place as John Paul II chose for his historic World Youth Day of 2000, has put the final touch to a week in which pilgrims from 146 countries arrived in Rome.
Another peak of the event occurred on Friday, when the Roman Maximum Circus, ancient Imperial Stadium, became a gigantic outdoor confessional.
But, according to the EFE report, the demonstration of the power of the new Pope’s call was demonstrated especially from Saturday afternoon, when the events moved to Tor Vergata, in the Roman periphery, flooded by a sea of more than one million pilgrims.
In his homily, the Pope urged the boys not to settle or fall into a life dictated by mere consumerism. “Buying, accumulating, consuming is not enough. We need to raise our eyes,” he said in his speech, read by parts in Italian, English and Spanish.
Pope advice
Leo XIV left numerous tips to the youngest this weekend, such as distrusting the “commercial logic” of social networks or building sincere relationships.
They have also placed them to be “peace missionaries” in pursuit of “a more human world.”
However, the best and political call came on Sunday just before the Angelus prayer, when he remembered the boys and girls suffering from war.
“We are with the young people of Gaza and with the youth of Ukraine! With all those bloody lands by war,” he proclaimed from Tor Vergata, raising the applause of the crowd.
And then remind the boys who are “the sign that a different world is possible”, in which “conflicts are not resolved with weapons but with dialogue,” he predicted.
MEMORY FROM FRANCISCO
This Holy Year 2025, which the Church celebrates in its ordinary modality every century, was inaugurated by the late Pope Francis, but his successor has been in charge of continuing it.
Many of the young people in fact hoped to meet again in Rome with Bergoglio, very dear to youth, but their memory survived the celebrations.
“Enough of hostility!” Leo XIV cries before Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Leo XIV paid tribute to Francisco in his homily citing one of his phrases that served as a final message: “We do not be alarmed if we feel thirsty, restless, incomplete, desires of meaning. We are not sick, we are alive!”
Then he returned to the Vatican, ending these days when he has been able to greet the young Catholics, touring Tor Vergata in Papamóvil or speaking from the stage, but not before citing them in the next World Youth Day, in Seul in 2027, the Spanish agency points out.
