Pope Francis has told young people that the Catholic Church needs them and urged them to follow their dreams as he wrapped up World Youth Day in Portugal with a massive open-air Mass for an estimated 1.5 million people.
“Do not be afraid,” he told the vast crowd of pilgrims, many of whom camped out overnight on the Lisbon field so they could be in place for the grand finale of the Catholic festival. The Vatican said that the estimated 1.5 million pilgrims were joined by 700 bishops and some 10,000 priests.
During the event, the pope announced that the next World Youth Day, a major Catholic festival, would be held in Seoul, South Korea in 2027. It will be the first time the festival has taken place in Asia since 1995, when millions turned out for one of St John Paul II’s biggest events in Manila in the Philippines.
Francis largely stuck to script on Sunday but again skipped much of his prepared homily, continuing the improvisation that has characterised his five-day trip to Portugal.
Early on in his 10-year papacy, Francis would frequently go rogue and ignore his pre-planned speeches, seemingly moved by the moment to engage directly with even huge crowds of people.
In more recent years, he largely stuck to script especially when visiting places where Christians are a minority or where his audiences might not appreciate his informal style.
But in Lisbon, he has been back on comfortable turf, with many people who can easily follow his native Spanish and seem to appreciate his conversational way of communicating.
“I never thought that so many people would come,” said Ana Garcia Prat, a 23-year-old Spanish pilgrim. “In my head, I never pictured a Mass with so many people from so many different countries.”
Francis urged the young people to follow their dreams and not be afraid of failing, reprising a theme that St John Paul II frequently repeated during his quarter-century of World Youth Days.
“As young people, you want to change the world and it is good that you want to change the world and work for justice and peace,” Francis said. “You devote all your energy and creativity to this, yet it still seems insufficient. The Church and the world need you, the young, as much as the Earth needs rain.”
Over the last few days, Francis has ditched speeches in favour of off-the-cuff conversations with young people and substituted a formal prayer for peace in Ukraine at the Fatima shrine, long associated with exhortations of peace and conversion in Russia. The Vatican later published part of the prayer on Twitter.
Responding to questions about whether the pope’s health is the reason behind his ignored speeches, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis is in good shape and is not suffering any eyesight problems that would make reading his remarks difficult.
The young attendees woke on Sunday as the sun rose over the River Tagus. Many had slept on mats, cots and the bare ground to be in place for Francis’s Mass, scheduled for the early morning to avoid midday temperatures that were expected to hit 40 degrees.
Starting at dawn, a priest-DJ started spinning thumping reggae and Christian hymns from the sound system.
Francis’s message this week has been one of inclusivity, insisting that “everyone, everyone, everyone” has a place in the church. That is consistent with his message that the church is not a place of rigid rules where only the perfect can be let in, but rather a “field hospital” for wounded souls, where all are welcome.
Lisbon Cardinal Manuel Clemente said the pope wanted the event to be “open… to everyone, showing the breadth of the gospel, which excludes no-one and is open to all”. - AP