The Beauty of Youth

The Pope Calls for Helping Young People Find a New Way to Live in the World

“Courage springs from a pact of trust: from the experience of someone who believes in you even before you believe in yourself,” the Pope said on Thursday. To offer young people “a home” that will enable them to emerge from any situations of existential distress and become seekers of the truth, while avoiding false teachers and misleading messages.

In a world where so many young people are“paralyzed by the fear of making mistakes or of not measuring up,”pastoral ministry in schools and universities can help them find the courage to“be agents of a new way of living in the world, builders of fraternity and a more just society.”

Courage, the Pope explains,“stems from a pact of trust,” from the experience of someone“who believes in you even before you believe in yourself.” Beneath the “shellthat so many teenagers build around themselves to avoid suffering,” he reminds us,“lies the desire to love and be loved.” That is why Leo XIV calls on school and university pastoral ministries to focus “on the education of the heart.”

“To educate the heart in compassion, gratitude, and the ability to be moved by the suffering of others; to educate it in praise and the longing for God. Service to the poor, volunteer work, and the care of creation are not merely incidental activities, but opportunities for the heart to learn to open itself. Let us not forget: charity and prayer are inseparable.”

Leo XIV notes that the young people to whom this special pastoral letter is addressed“are distinguished by their enthusiasm, generosity, and spirit of service,” but that many students“also experience existential distress”dueto “broken families, digital loneliness, a sense of inadequacy, or fear of a future that seems uncertain.” And in our schools and universities, perhaps“they feel anonymous.”

How important it is for Catholic schools and universities to be, above all, a“home”—a family-like place where you are welcomed. The first proclamation often comes through a welcoming attitude: someone who looks you in the eye, remembers your name, notices when you’re absent, and is glad to see you return.

For the Pope, in a welcoming environment, students“can express their deep desire to understand and make sense of reality.” For “the shared search for truth” is the very purpose of schools and universities.

The call of this particular pastoral ministry, Pope Leo continues, consists in “accompanying the slow germination of thought, teaching how to discern, and seeking with perseverance.” As he wrote in the encyclical *Magnifica humanitas*, he emphasizes that we must“protect our young people from that subtle seduction that makes human thought seem useless precisely when it is most necessary.” Unfortunately, he reiterates, many young people fear “being misunderstood or failing to live up to expectations.”

The Supreme Pontiff concluded by warning against“false teachers and misleading messages that promise to ‘quickly answer young people’s questions.’” Those involved in school and university ministry, on the other hand, have chosen “to do something greater: to walk with them along the way, until they discover the gifts that God has already placed within them—just as the Risen Christ did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.”