In emotional meeting, Pope gives young people a mission – Aleteia

Some 600,000 young people packed into Madrid’s Plaza de Lima, going from exuberant chants in welcoming Pope Leo, to complete silence in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. The evening progressed from cheers and chants, to a dialogue about saints, worries, and the future, to the culminating moment of Eucharistic Adoration and benediction imparted upon some 600,000 young people by Pope Leo XIV. After the Jubilee of Youth in Rome last summer and in the lead up to World Youth Day in Seoul next year, this evening’s meeting with the young people of Spain in Madrid showed the Holy Father at home among the youth, with their popular chant that affirms, “these are the young people of the Pope!” The cardinal-archbishop began the evening recognizing: These are the youth of Jesus, these are the youth of the Church, and the youth of the Pope. The hundreds of thousands had been gathered in the park most of the day, where they shared a festival of music and testimony as well as the Luminous mysteries of the Rosary. A survey published this year by a foundation close to the Church indicated that 45% of young Spaniards aged 15 to 29 identify as Catholic today, compared
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