Meet the director behind France’s stunning youth vigil with Leo
About 80,000 young people gathered with Pope Leo XIV at the Stade de France on September 25 for a vigil celebrating French saints and Christian heritage. Artistic director Jean-Baptiste Darantière conceived the stadium as an “open-air cathedral,” drawing inspiration from Notre-Dame de Paris’s rose window. Using participants’ mobile phones, the staging created a living stained-glass effect, with young people forming colorful fragments of a shared artwork.
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At a September 25 vigil at the Stade de France, artistic director Jean-Baptiste Darantière helped transform the stadium into a prayer space for about 80,000 young people gathered with Pope Leo XIV. The event combined a visual concept inspired by Notre-Dame’s rose window, a chronological portrayal of French saints, and the veneration of a relic of Christ.
Darantière, 33, said he began by asking how to make the stadium conducive to prayer. Inspired by Notre-Dame’s rose window and a mobile-phone lighting technology he had encountered at an earlier event, he envisioned the young people on the field as pieces of a “living stained glass window.”
The event’s steering committee wanted the vigil to focus on French saints. Darantière said he chose a chronological structure so that a range of well-known and lesser-known saints could represent the history of the Church in France without one figure eclipsing the others. Their accounts of hardship, he said, could speak to challenges young people face today.
The saints’ procession also helped lead the gathering into prayer. Because Eucharistic adoration was not possible, the organizers sought another way to create a sacred moment of silence for the crowd. After considering the Holy Crown of Thorns, Darantière settled on the Holy Tunic, and arranged for the procession of saints to gather around the relic as the Pope prayed.
Preparations included just one day of rehearsal for the 450 people involved in running the show, as well as fitting 450 costumes that afternoon. The music was performed live, despite the orchestra and choir not having rehearsed together; Darantière said the performance went smoothly.
A last-minute change came when Vatican officials told the team that Leo wanted to greet the crowd from the central stage. In three or four minutes, technicians secured the area and moved barriers so he could reach the stage and greet the audience.
Darantière said he received hundreds of messages from participants in France and abroad. He attributed the response partly to interest in the figures who shaped Church history and in answers to questions facing young people, while describing his own role as one part of a larger effort.
Sacred art fosters communal faith among young Catholics
Sacred art can help young Catholics experience faith not merely as a private conviction but as a shared life. Images, music, architecture, and other Christian works make the mysteries of Christ perceptible, invite prayer, and help communicate the Gospel across differences in age and culture. The Church therefore regards sacred art as a means of evangelization and catechesis—not simply decoration.
Its communal force is strongest when art is connected to worship and the life of the Church. A church’s images and music can give a gathered community a common language for contemplating the faith; the Eucharist, in turn, draws worshippers into communion with Christ and with one another. For young people, participation in that Eucharistic community can strengthen Catholic identity and a sense of belonging.
Art does not produce faith automatically. Christian works are best understood in light of Scripture and the Church’s tradition, and communities can help young people learn how to read their symbols and stories. When that formation accompanies beauty, art can lead beyond an emotional response toward reflection, prayer, and a deeper encounter with Christ.
This also suggests a practical approach: involve young people in encountering, discussing, making, and celebrating art within parish life—not only viewing it in galleries. The aim is not to treat art as a substitute for Christian community, but as one way beauty can draw young people into shared faith and help them live it together.