Pope to young people: ‘The light of the Spirit enlightens and comforts'
Pope Leo XIV closed his first day in France with a prayer vigil attended by about 80,000 young people at the Stade de France. Responding to a young woman’s question about sharing faith across religions, he urged fraternity, care for vulnerable people, and persistent service in disadvantaged communities. He encouraged young people to commit themselves to the service of peace, turning fear into hope and complaints into responsible engagement. The Pope acknowledged young people’s anxieties about the future, relationships, social bonds, climate change, and the economic and international situation.
4 days ago
Pope Leo XIV concluded the first day of his visit to France with a prayer vigil at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, attended by about 80,000 young people. He urged them to seek holiness, peace and justice through a living relationship with Jesus, and said the Holy Spirit’s light “enlightens and comforts” amid forces that divide people. 2 3 5
Young people from urban and rural areas, including students, workers and young professionals, filled the stadium. Reports described a gathering that brought together Catholics from varied backgrounds and traditions, including groups from working-class suburbs and more traditional Catholic communities. 1 2
The evening featured songs, testimonies and a theatrical presentation about French saints, followed by fireworks. A choir of nearly 2,500 young people sang during the event, which also included performances by soprano Monroe and singer Natasha St-Pier. 2 3
Leo told the young people that true freedom comes from a living relationship with Jesus. He said faith should lead people from confusion toward truth and from indifference toward a commitment to justice. 3 5
Drawing on St. Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, he urged them to shun pride, vanity, violence and greed; pursue virtues such as justice, faith, charity, patience and gentleness; and “fight” to live according to the Gospel. He stressed that this struggle is not against other people and uses no weapons of violence or contempt: its “only weapon” is self-giving love. 2 5
The pope also said the good gives life and cares for others, and encouraged the young people to make choices that help them grow in holiness. He recalled Blessed Marcel Callo, a young French Catholic who died in a Nazi concentration camp, as an example of someone who maintained his interior freedom and continued striving toward the good. 3 5
Chloé, a student involved in work in disadvantaged neighborhoods, asked how she could share her faith among people of other religions. Leo encouraged her to continue serving there, saying that faith expressed in everyday life and difficulty can become a witness to hope; he also said that indifference to God is accompanied by a wider indifference to other people, especially the poor and vulnerable. 2
François, an agronomy student and scout leader, asked how to discern his vocation and commit himself to it. The pope urged him to serve peace, listen to the anxieties and uncertainties of young people, and keep his heart open to their suffering; he added that those who feel called to priesthood or consecrated life should not be afraid, because the Church in France needs them. 2
The vigil included a period of prayer and veneration of the Holy Tunic of Argenteuil and a cross. Leo described both as signs of Christ’s Passion, saying the cross, though an instrument of death, becomes a sign of hope, and connected the relics with the Church born from God’s life given to the world. 2 5
He told the gathering that young people are not alone on the path to holiness: they walk with one another and can look to the saints for support. He invited them to seek the saints’ intercession and example, particularly that of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, as they work to become peacemakers. 3 5
Some attendees described the event as a public expression of Catholic identity and community. One young volunteer said he hoped his generation would become less afraid to identify openly as Catholic, while another attendee saw the vigil as a possible first step toward a deeper encounter with faith for young people. 1
Christian freedom as the foundation for holiness, fraternity, and social responsibility
Christian freedom is not simply the ability to choose whatever one wants. It is freedom from sin and whatever enslaves us, and freedom for loving service of God and neighbor. In this sense, freedom is not opposed to holiness or responsibility: rightly lived, it makes both possible.
Sin narrows freedom by turning the person inward and weakening the capacity to love. Christ, through the Holy Spirit, restores the capacity to love God and remain in communion with him. Christian freedom therefore involves an ongoing struggle: liberation is real, but believers must persevere rather than return to what enslaves them.
Holiness is freedom brought to maturity—not merely avoiding wrongdoing, but becoming able to choose the good with love. Christian ethical reflection describes truly Christian action as flowing from the freedom of God’s children, while acknowledging that this freedom can involve difficult choices and sacrifice.
Freedom becomes fruitful in relationships. Pope Francis’s reflection on Galatians stresses that self-centered “freedom” leaves a person closed in on himself; freedom realized through charity leads instead to service.
Fraternity, then, is not automatic or merely a matter of good intentions. It is built as people accept the work of mutual commitment: bearing one another’s burdens, attending to others’ weaknesses, and sometimes giving of themselves. Christian community takes shape through this interior liberation from self-enclosure.
Christian freedom has social consequences because it opposes both personal enslavement and relationships structured by domination. It calls people to recognize how unjust or sinful social structures can constrain human dignity, and to serve their neighbors in love.
This responsibility is not reducible to private virtue, but neither can social change be separated from personal conversion. The International Theological Commission connects freedom with responsibility for the person and the common life; Fulton Sheen, writing in a different historical context, likewise argues that social reform requires moral renewal in those who seek it.
The connection is therefore integral: Christian freedom frees people from sin so they can grow in holiness, give themselves in fraternity, and act responsibly for the good of others. It is not freedom from every claim or obligation, but the grace-enabled capacity to choose love.