Jubilee of young people: greeting of Pope Leo XIV to the influencers and digital missionaries

Pope Leo XIV directed a greeting on July 29 influencers and digital missionaries at the end of the Mass that Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle celebrated in the Basilica of San Pedro.

In his message, the Pontiff encouraged the pilgrims who arrived in Rome for the jubilee of young people to ensure that current culture, characterized and formed by technology, remains human.

Next, the words pronounced by Pope Leo XIV:

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Peace is with you.

Dear brothers and sisters, we have begun with this greeting: peace is with you.

And how much we need peace in our time, torn by enmity and wars. And how much today calls us to testimony the greeting of the resurrected: “Peace is with you” (Jn 20,19). Peace is with all of us. In our hearts and in our actions.

This is the mission of the Church: announce peace to the world. The peace that comes from the Lord, who defeated death, which brings us the forgiveness of God, which gives us the life of the Father, which indicates the path of love.

1. It is the mission that the Church also entrusts you with today, who are here in Rome for your jubilee, who have come to renew the commitment to feed with Christian hope social networks and digital environments. Peace needs to be sought, announced, shared in all places; both in the dramatic stages of war, and in the empty hearts of those who have lost the meaning of existence and taste for interiority, the taste for spiritual life. And today, perhaps more than ever, we need missionary disciples who lead the gift of the resurrected; That they give voice to the hope that Jesus gives us alive, to the confines of the earth (cf. Hch 1.3-8); That they get wherever there is a heart that awaits, a heart that seeks, a heart that needs. Yes, even the confines of the earth, to the existential confines where there is no hope.

2. There is a second challenge in this mission: Always seek the “suffering flesh of Christ” in every brother and sister with whom we find ourselves on the Internet. Today we are in a new culture, deeply characterized and formed by technology. It depends on us, it depends on each of you, to ensure that this culture remains human.

Science and technology influence the way we live in the world, even affecting the way of understanding ourselves, of relating to God and each other. But nothing that comes from man and his creativity must be used to undermine the dignity of others. Our mission, your mission, is to nurture a culture of Christian humanism, and do it together. This is the beauty of the “network” for all of us.

Faced with cultural changes throughout history, the Church has never remained passive; He has always tried to illuminate each era with the light and hope of Christ, discerning the good of evil and what was good of what should be changed, transforming and purifying.

Today we are in a culture in which the technological dimension is present in almost everything, especially now that the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence will mark a new era in the lives of people and society as a whole. This is a challenge that we must face: reflect on the authenticity of our testimony, about our ability to listen and speak, and about our ability to understand and be understood. We have the duty to work together to develop a way of thinking and a language of our time that gives voice to love.

It is not simply to generate content, but to create a encounter between hearts. This will involve looking for those who suffer, who need to know the Lord, so that they can heal their wounds, get up again and find meaning to their lives. This process begins, first of all, with the acceptance of our own poverty, leaving aside all claim and recognizing our innate need for the Gospel. And this process is a community challenge.

3. And this leads us to a third call and that’s why I call all of you: “That you are going to repair the networks.” Jesus called his first apostles while repairing their fishermen networks (cf. Mt 4.21-22). He also asks us, more, asks us today to build other networks: relationships of relationships, love networks, free exchange networks, in which friendship is authentic and deep. Networks where you can repair what has been broken, where you can remedy loneliness, regardless of the number of followers – the follower-, but experiencing in each encounter the infinite greatness of love. Networks that open space to the other, more than themselves, where no “filter bubble” can turn off the voice of the weakest. Networks that release, networks that save. Networks that make us rediscover the beauty of looking into our eyes. Real networks. In this way, each History of good shared will be the knot of a single and immense network: the network of networks, the network of God.

Then you communion agents, capable of breaking the logic of division and polarization; of individualism and egocentrism. Centre yourself in Christ, to overcome the logic of the world, of the fake news and of frivolity, with the beauty and light of truth (cf. Jn 8,31-32).

And now, before saying goodbye with the blessing, entrusting to the Lord the testimony of all of you, I want to thank you for all the good they have done and do in their lives, for the dreams they pursue, for their love to the Lord Jesus, for their love to the Church, for the help they give to those who suffer and on their way to the digital roads.