Pope Leo tells Argentine youth: Stand firm, become saints, 'go and proclaim'

Nearly four decades after young Argentines filled the streets of Buenos Aires for a historic World Youth Day with St. John Paul II, over 1 million gathered in the same city Nov. 10 for an outdoor prayer vigil with Pope Leo XIV.

The atmosphere recalled that 1987 gathering: a celebration of faith drawing young people who came with Catholic movements, parishes and families, while others arrived alone. Some carried flags or wore matching shirts identifying their communities; others brought little more than backpacks, water and the determination to secure a place near the evening's centerpiece, the Monumento de los Españoles.

The energy as they waited for Pope Leo could only be described as electrifying, and once the popemobile tour began, dozens of babies got their parents' wish: a papal blessing from a man who was visibly enjoying the evening despite the marathonic day he had.

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Some pilgrims began arriving around midnight Nov. 9, although access to the avenue surrounding the monument did not open until noon the following day. At that hour, Pope Leo was still some 430 miles away in Córdoba, where he celebrated Mass before approximately 650,000 people, according to local authorities.

Before delivering his prepared reflection, Pope Leo listened to two young Argentines describe very different experiences of falling, searching and beginning again. A 25-year-old recovering addict recounted how bullying, loneliness and cocaine use beginning at 15 eventually left him homeless. He said an Hogar de Cristo community welcomed him with food, a bed and an embrace; after relapses and a difficult recovery, he now accompanies other young people struggling with addiction.

A 31-year-old postulant to religious life described resisting a vocation she had sensed since childhood until a spiritual director asked her, "Who told you it was too late?" She said the question restored her hope and helped her recognize "a God who knows how to wait."

Pope Leo then answered two questions. A teacher who has volunteered in disadvantaged neighborhoods since she was 16 asked how Christians can persevere when their efforts to accompany people on society's margins seem insufficient. A sports journalist, catechist and volunteer asked how to integrate faith with work and everyday responsibilities. Pope Leo urged them not to lose hope when their strength reaches its limits, and he said Christians should not live "two separate lives, one for God and another for our daily occupations." Work, study and friendships, he said, can become prayer and "a path to holiness" when lived with love and offered to God.

The Buenos Aires vigil was held at the site where, one day earlier, Pope Leo had celebrated Mass for approximately 2.5 million people -- the largest gathering of his pontificate.

Lucía Sánchez, 22, told OSV News that she had not initially intended to attend either event.

"I hadn't really planned on coming, as crowds are not necessarily my thing," she said. "Yet, after following the Mass online on Monday, I knew I had to come. Call it fear of missing out."

Lucas Baraldi, 29, said his decision to attend reflected a more personal return to the Church.

Baraldi described himself as a "lapsed Catholic" until earlier this year. When Pope Leo's trip was announced, he said, he immediately thought of his mother, who died last year and "would have dragged me to every event."

"In the past months, I have reconnected with my faith, and during yesterday's Mass I went to confession for the first time in over a decade," he said.

"I grew up Catholic, going to Mass on Sundays because that's what you did," Baraldi said. "But today, I can't avoid thinking I'm choosing to embrace the faith."

Pope Leo's remarks during the Nov. 9 Mass about parents transmitting the faith brought memories of his mother to the surface.

"I couldn't help but think of my mother, who prayed with us every night," Baraldi said. "How I wish I had treasured those moments more."

Argentina had not welcomed a pope since St. John Paul's 1987 visit, which culminated with the second World Youth Day and drew some 900,000 young people to Buenos Aires. St. John Paul had inaugurated the worldwide gatherings in Rome in 1986, with Argentine Cardinal Eduardo Francisco Pironio playing a decisive role in their creation and development.

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Cardinal Pironio, then president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, became one of the principal architects of the World Youth Days and accompanied St. John Paul to their international celebrations. Pope Leo remembered the cardinal -- beatified in 2023 -- during his Mass in Córdoba earlier Nov. 10.

During Tuesday's prayer vigil, tens of thousands of candles handed out by organizers brought back that 1987 feel, with all screens off and the Avenida del Libertador, one of the city's principal thoroughfares, still lit up.

At the Buenos Aires vigil, Pope Leo used the biblical account of the three young men cast into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship King Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue to challenge young people to resist contemporary forms of idolatry.

"Today, too, idols arise and demand our worship: success at any cost, money, an obsession with appearance, popularity or the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure," he said.

The pope warned that seeking approval can lead people to "lie, betray or humiliate someone on social media," while pornography and addictive substances promise pleasure but ultimately enslave.

"You, too, are called to stand firm before the idols of our time," he said. "Do not bow down before anything that cannot give you life. And if you have ever fallen, get back up."Drawing upon Pope Francis' repeated invitation at World Youth Day in Lisbon -- "Everyone, everyone, everyone!" -- Pope Leo organized his message around three phrases: "Everyone toward Christ, everyone with Christ, everyone like Christ."

He addressed young people who had grown up close to the Church, those only beginning to seek Christ, and those who had stopped praying, drifted away or been wounded by people who should have accompanied them.

"To each of you I would like to say that there is a place for you in the Church, with your questions, your wounds and your story," Pope Leo said. "This is your home, too."

The pope urged those who thought it was too late to return not to wait until they had put their lives in order.

"Whoever you are and whatever you may have done, Jesus Christ knows you, loves you and wants you to be close to him," he said. "No one has fallen so low that Christ cannot raise them up."

Pope Leo also spoke directly about conversion and the sacrament Baraldi had rediscovered the previous day.

"Christ loves us as we are, but his love is too great to leave us prisoners of sin, of what destroys us," the pope said. "Do not be afraid to approach the sacrament of reconciliation."

He then issued the evening's central challenge: "Become saints."

That holiness, he said, should become visible through service -- sharing bread with the hungry, welcoming those without homes, visiting people who are sick or forgotten, and responding to less visible forms of suffering.

"May your lives become pages of the Gospel, written in the ink of mercy," Pope Leo said.

Before blessing a cross that will travel among Argentina's Catholic communities, the pope entrusted the young people with the second part of the Argentine visit's motto: "Go and proclaim!"

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"Go to your cities and towns, to every corner and every periphery," he said. "May those who feel far from God discover through you that Christ is seeking them."

(Inés San Martín writes for OSV News from Argentina. She is the editor of MISSION Magazine and co-host of the Spanish podcast "Descifrando a León." )