Pope Leo XIV excites hundreds of thousands of young Catholics at the Holy Year Youth Festival

Hundreds of thousands of young Catholics reached a vast field on the outskirts of Rome on Saturday for the culminating point of the Holy Weekend of the Vatican: a night vigil, outdoor sleeping party and morning mass held by Papa Leo XIV That marks its first great encounter with the next generation of Catholics.

Leo arrived by helicopter when the sun put on the field of Tor Vergata and immediately approached his open popemobile for long loops through the pilgrims who stir the flag. They had already been celebrating there for hours, establishing camps to spend the night while the Neblin trucks and water cannons sprinkle them to cool them from 85F temperatures.

“It is something spiritual, which you can only experiment every 25 years,” said Francisco Michel, a pilgrim from Mexico. “As a young person, having the opportunity to live this meeting with the Pope, I feel that it is a spiritual growth.”

During the past week, these bands of young Catholics from around the world have become Rome for their special celebration of the jubilee, in a holy year in which 32 million people are expected to descend to the Vatican to participate in a centenary pilgrimage at the headquarters of Catholicism.

Young people have been touring cobbled streets in coordinated color t -shirts, praying the rosary and singing hymns with guitars, bongo drums and tambourines that are shooting. Using their flags as canvases to protect them from the sun, they have taken care of the entire piazzas for Christian rock concerts and inspiring conversations, and they remained for hours at the Maximus Circus to confess their sins to 1,000 priests that offer the sacrament in a dozen different languages.

The first American Pope in history presided over the vigil on Saturday night. Then he returned to the Vatican at night and returned for another game and Mass of Popemobile on Sunday morning.

A mini world youth day, 25 years later

Everything has the atmosphere of a World Youth Day, the Woodstock Catholic Festival that San Juan Pablo II opened and became famous in Rome in 2000 in the same Tor Vergata field. Then, before approximately 2 million people, John Paul told the young pilgrims that they were the “morning sentries” at dawn of the third millennium.

Initially, officials were waiting for 500,000 young people this weekend, but Leo hinted that the number could reach 1 million.

“He is a bit messy, but this is the good thing about the jubilee,” said Chloe Jobbour, a 19 -year -old Lebanese Catholic who was in Rome with a group of more than 200 young members of the Blessed community, a charismatic group based in France.

She said, for example, that it had taken two hours to dinner at an overwhelmed KFC on orders Friday night. The Salesian school that offered his group home is one hour by bus. But Jobbour, like many in Rome this week, did not care about discomfort: everything is part of the experience.

“I don’t hope it is better than that. I expected this way,” he said, while the members of his group gathered in the steps of the Church near the Vatican to sing and pray on Saturday morning before going out to Tor Vergata.

There was a tragedy before the vigil began. The Vatican confirmed that an 18 -year -old Egyptian woman, identified as Pascale Rafic, died during the pilgrimage, according to cardiac arrest reports. Leo met on Saturday with his group and extended his condolences to his family.

Romans uncomfortable, but tolerant

Those Romans who did not run away from the attack have been upset by the additional tension in the publicly insufficient public transport system of the city. Residents share publications in social networks of Roman outbreaks in children who flood metro platforms and bus stops, which have delayed and complicated their trips to work.

But other Romans have welcomed the enthusiasm that young people have brought. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offered a video welcome, amazed by the “extraordinary festival of Fe, Alegría y Esperanza” that young people had created.

“I think it’s wonderful,” said the hairdresser of Rome, Rina Verdone, who lives near the Tor Vergata field and woke up on Saturday to find a police group outside his home as part of the huge operation of 4,000 people mounted to maintain peace. “You think faith, religion, is in difficulty, but this is proof that it is not so.”

Verdone had already made plans to take an alternative route home on Saturday afternoon, which would require an additional half -mile walk, because he feared that the “invasion” of the children in his neighborhood interrupted his usual bus route. But she said she was more than happy to make the sacrifice.

“You think about invasion as something negative. But this is a positive invasion,” he said.

• Italy
• Papa Leo XIV
• Catholic church