Leo XIV closes his massive Jubilee of Youth: “Aspire to great things”

Rome.- Pope Leo XIV closed this Sunday the expected Youth Jubilee with a mass before more than a million faithful in the Roman esplanade of Tor Vergata, urging them to “aspire to great things”, defending that “another world is possible” and expressing his closeness to the young people of Gaza and Ukraine.

“Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are. Don’t settle for less,” he encouraged in his homily, delivered from the grand stage set up in Tor Vergata.

The event has been truly massive, the largest of the still brief pontificate of Leo XIV, exceeding one million participants according to local authorities. The mass had been awaited since the eve by hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the world who spent the night outdoors in the large Tor Vergata camp, equipped with blankets or sleeping bags or resting their heads on their own backpacks or suitcases. In his homily, he urged the boys not to settle or fall into a life dictated by mere consumerism. “Buying, accumulating, consuming is not enough. We need to look up,” he asserted in his speech, read in parts in Italian, English, and Spanish.

Pope Leo’s Mass Bath in Jubilee

This Eucharist, celebrated in the same place that John Paul II chose for his historic World Youth Day in 2000, has put the final touch to a week in which pilgrims from 146 countries have taken Rome (the 27,000 Spaniards were the second largest group, after the hosts, the Italians).

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Another highlight of the event occurred on Friday, when the Circus Maximus, an ancient Roman imperial stadium, was transformed into a giant open-air confessional. But the demonstration of the new pope’s power of convocation was especially evident from Saturday afternoon, when the events moved to Tor Vergata, on the outskirts of Rome, flooded by a sea of more than a million pilgrims. Although three of the boys were missing, as a saddened pope took care to recall: a Spaniard, Maria Cobo, 20 years old, who had died days before; and an Egyptian, Pascale Rafic, as well as another Spaniard, Ignacio González, hospitalized in Rome. “Let us pray for them,” he urged a crowd that was already listening to him at night, during the vigil on the Roman outskirts.

Words of Peace

Over the weekend, Leo XIV has given numerous pieces of advice to the youngest, such as distrusting the “commercial logics” of social networks or building sincere relationships. But he has also urged them to be “missionaries of peace” in pursuit of “a more humane world”. However, the most passionate and political appeal came on Sunday just before the Angelus prayer, when he remembered the boys and girls suffering from the war. “We stand with the young people of Gaza and with the young people of Ukraine! With all those lands bloodied by war,” he proclaimed from Tor Vergata, eliciting applause from the crowd. To later remind the guys that they are “the sign that a different world is possible”, in which “conflicts are not resolved with weapons but with dialogue”, he augured.

A huge camping

Since Saturday afternoon, thousands of young people began arriving on foot at Tor Vergata, with backpacks, sleeping bags, portable batteries to charge their phones to participate in this two-day meeting with the Pope. The temperatures at night were mild, although in the early morning a light rain surprised many, forcing them to improvise shelters. “We brought little, but we found some friends who helped us and gave us a place to sleep. The rain woke us up,” José, a Honduran pilgrim, told EFE. Many woke up to the roar of the helicopter with which the Pope landed again this Sunday in Tor Vergata to close this youth festival.

The Legacy of Francisco

This Holy Year 2025, which the Church celebrates in its ordinary form every quarter of a century, was inaugurated by the late Pope Francis but it has been his successor who has been in charge of continuing it. Many of the young people actually hoped to meet again in Rome with Bergoglio, much loved by the youth, but his memory hovered over the celebrations. Leo XIV, aware of this, paid tribute to Francis in his homily by quoting one of his phrases that served as the final message: “Let us not be alarmed if we feel thirsty, restless, incomplete, longing for meaning. We are not sick, we are alive!” Then he returned to the Vatican, ending these days in which he has been able to greet young Catholics, touring Tor Vergata in the popemobile or speaking to them from the stage, not without first citing them at the next World Youth Day, in Seoul in 2027.