By Junno Arocho Esteves, Catholic News Service
[ROME – CNS] – Rome’s historic Risorgimento Square, built in the 19th century in honour of the unification of Italy, has always been a gateway to Vatican City with countless pilgrims, tourists, and locals passing through it on their way to St. Peter’s Basilica.
The famed square was transformed into an outdoor concert venue July 29, 2025 to host a festival marking the close of the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, which was part of the larger Jubilee of Youth taking place in Rome.
As the Jubilee’s opening Mass was concluding nearby in St. Peter’s Square, thousands of pilgrims awaited the start of the music festival with songs and dancing. One group of young people from Italy strummed their guitars and bongos while another group from Mexico performed an almost perfectly choreographed line dance.
“I was just talking to a friend and she said, ‘How wonderful it is to be young, how wonderful it is to be Catholic,'” said Teresita Gomez Moretto, a 24-year-old Argentine who hailed from Buenos Aires.
“I mean, it’s a celebration. It’s seeing the unity of the church, the power of the Spirit that is still alive and continues to move and inspire. It’s beautiful. It’s truly a luxury, an enormous gift,” Gomez Moretto told Catholic News Service.
The Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, which took place July 28-29, centred largely on the call to bear witness to the Gospel in the digital realm. For Moretto, sharing one’s faith with others in the digital landscape is both an “opportunity to reach out to others” and a challenge.
“Personally, I experience the challenge in this way: just as I share the things I like and want from my daily life on social media — like my friends, my family, places, music, art — I also share what interests me most, which is my spiritual life. I share the great love of my life, which is Christ. It seems to me that with great sensitivity and charity, it can be a gateway for others to come into contact with Christ,” she said.
For Legionnaire of Christ Brother Mario Ciaston, a 29-year-old Polish seminarian accompanying a group of 50 young people from Monterrey, Mexico, it’s important for Catholics, especially young people, to be “proactive missionaries of Christ’s love” both online and offline.
“Wherever you are, whether it’s on social media or in real life, you have to share that message of what you’ve experienced with Christ,” Ciaston told CNS. “Otherwise, it’s useless if it’s just for clicks or viws; it doesn’t help you at all, and it won’t help others either.”
Noting the theme of the Jubilee Year — “Pilgrims of Hope” — the young seminarian said hope was what the “world desperately needs today” and the sight of young people joyfully celebrating their faith at the festival was a “testimony of the hope we only find in Christ and in his love.”
“It’s wonderful to see so many young people with faith again, to see that this truly is the church, especially since I feel that the church is increasingly attacked by many outsiders who don’t understand its mission and message,” he said.
Reflecting on Pope Leo XIV’s call for digital missionaries and Catholic influencers to ensure that the digital culture “remains human,” Ciaston told CNS that being human “means being close to people and showing them love and charity.”
“I remember once asking a digital missionary about how he transmits the Gospel, and what resonated most with me was his answer: ultimately, the important thing is for you to be a witness to Christ’s love,” he said.
Among the many digital missionaries attending the festival was Pablo Licheri, an Argentine developer who created Catholic Mass Times, a free mobile app that helps Catholics find nearby churches and up-to-date Mass schedules. Launched in 2014, the app, which is available for iPhone and Android, surpassed 2 million downloads worldwide.
Licheri told CNS that the Jubilee celebration dedicated to missionaries and influencers in the digital space shows that the Catholic Church is not dismissive of the impact of social media and online content but rather “something that the church is taking very seriously.”
The success of the Catholic Mass Times app, he added, shows that there is a need, particularly among young Catholics, to use technology as a means of connecting with their faith.
Some young people he met during the Jubilee “have told me, ‘Oh, your app saved my life.’ They told me about places — sometimes the strangest places or the strangest situations — where they couldn’t find a church,” Licheri told CNS.
Nevertheless, the Argentine app developer said he took to heart Pope Leo’s reminder to digital missionaries and Catholic influencers “that it’s not about us, that we don’t have to be the stars, and to beware of the pride and vanity of being known, of seeking (fame) because it has nothing do with” faith.
“As Catholic influencers, we have to have a vision of transmitting Jesus and bringing people closer to Jesus,” Licheri said. “That’s a warning that truly must always be kept very present, because it’s the rectitude and intention of doing things to bring people closer to God, and not to make money or for vanity.”
-30-
© OSV News / Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2025 – from CNS Vatican bureau, used with permission.
Catholic Saskatoon News is supported by gifts to the Bishop’s Annual Appeal: dscf.ca/baa.
Pope Leo XIV greets visitors and pilgrims as he rides around St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican before his weekly general audience July 30, 2025. (Photo by Lola Gomez, CNS)
Learning to communicate with honesty, prudence can help heal world, says Pope Leo
By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service
[Vatican City – CNS] – The world — marked by a climate of violence and hatred — needs healing, Pope Leo XIV said.
“We live in a society that is becoming ill due to a kind of ‘bulimia’ of social media connections: we are hyperconnected, bombarded by images, sometimes even false or distorted,” he told thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his general audience July 30.
By learning to communicate with honesty and prudence, Christians can help avoid wounding others, and by sharing the Gospel, they can lead people to be healed by his word, he said.
It was his first public general audience since taking a brief summer break in July. Tens of thousands of people, many of them pilgrims in Rome for the July 28-Aug. 3 Jubilee of Youth, including many groups from the United States, and some traveling with their bishops.
Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia, for example, was traveling with a delegation of about 40 young people and youth ministers. He had a chance to greet the pope after his main talk, giving him a green ballcap of the Philadelphia Eagles football team.
Visitors in the square also gifted the pope several presents as he rode around in the open popemobile, such as two white cowboy hats and a small takeaway pizza box.
The Holy Father’s catechesis, dedicated to the Jubilee theme of “Jesus Christ our Hope,” was the last in a series of talks on Jesus’ public ministry. He focused on “the healing of a deaf man” in the Gospel of St. Mark (7:31-37).
“This time in which we live also needs healing. Our world is witnessing a climate of violence and hatred that demeans human dignity,” the pope said.
“We are overwhelmed by countless messages that stir within us a storm of contradictory emotions,” he said.
In fact, “it is possible that within us arises the desire to turn everything off. We may come to prefer not to feel anything anymore,” he said. “Even our words risk being misunderstood, and we may be tempted to close ourselves in silence, into a lack of communication where, despite our closeness, we are no longer able to say to one another the most simple and profound things.”
The Gospel account of the deaf man who had a speech impediment shows Jesus’ understanding of “what lies behind the silence and closure of this man, as if Jesus had perceived his need for intimacy and closeness.”
“Jesus offers him silent closeness,” touches him and says, “Ephphatha!” that is, “Be opened!”
“It is as if Jesus were saying to him, ‘Be opened to this world that frightens you! Be opened to the relationships that have disappointed you! Be opened to the life you have given up facing!’ Closing in on oneself, in fact, is never a solution,” he said.
“All of us experience what it means to be misunderstood, to feel that we are not truly heard,” he said. “All of us need to ask the Lord to heal our way of communicating, not only so that we may be more effective, but also so that we may avoid wounding others with our words.”
“Dear brothers and sisters, let us ask the Lord that we may learn to communicate with honesty and prudence,” he said.
“Let us pray for all those who have been wounded by the words of others,” he said. “Let us pray for the church, that she may never fail in her mission to lead people to Jesus, so that they may hear his Word, be healed by it, and in turn become bearers of his message of salvation.”
-30-
© OSV News / Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2025 – from CNS Vatican bureau, used with permission.
Catholic Saskatoon News is supported by gifts to the Bishop’s Annual Appeal: dscf.ca/baa.