Pope Leo gets rock star welcome at youth festival in Rome

Pope Leo received a rock star welcome over the weekend as he arrived by helicopter in a Rome suburb at what’s been dubbed the Catholic Coachella. 

More than 1 million teens and 20-somethings sang songs and danced beneath water misters and the hot Roman sun during the Jubilee of Youth — the biggest and youngest crowd of Leo’s papacy so far. 

But as a new generation from around the globe celebrated, the pope was quick to draw attention to their peers who could not.

“We are closer than ever to young people who suffer the most serious evils, which are caused by other human beings. We are with the young people of Gaza,” he said, interrupted by applause. “We are with the young people of Ukraine. With those of every land bloodied by war. My young brothers and sisters, you are the sign that a different world is possible, a world of fraternity and friendship, where conflicts are not resolved with weapons, but with dialogue.”

The American pope spoke in English, taking a rare break from Italian to use the global language to reach a global audience. 

“It’s just amazing to see just how big the world church is and how many people are here just believing in God and actually being on fire to see the pope, to just live in this community,” said Rita Piendi, a young pilgrim from Germany. 

Christofer Delano, who attended from New York, was stunned by the turnout. 

“I knew there was going to be a lot of people. I didn’t know it was going to be this many. So I’m just so happy to be here,” he said.

The gathering fell during the 2025 Year of Jubilee, a holy year marked by special events and appearances by the pope that happens only once every quarter century. 

This year, the Catholic Church is making a concerted effort to connect with the digital generation. Next month, it will canonize its first-ever millennial saint, Carlo Acutis, whose website devoted to miracles earned him the nickname God’s Influencer. He was 15 when he died of leukemia. 

Last week, Pope Leo invited influencers to the Vatican, who thronged to St. Peter’s to post selfies with the pontiff — images at odds with a church in decline in much of the world. In the U.S., just three in 10 Catholics attend Mass weekly, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Catholic Church has long been trying to win back young people, many of them disaffected by decades of scandal surrounding sexual abuse of minors by priests. According to a Pew report published earlier this year, 43% of people in the U.S. who were raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic.