Thousands of young Catholics from around the world began on Saturday to come together to participate in Rome in a gigantic prayer vigil with Léon XIV, highlight of the jubilee, “holy year” of the Catholic Church.
KEYSTONE
A crowd of pilgrims was gathered in the morning on the vast open space in the Tor Vergata district, east of Rome, where the pope will lead the vigil, the ground being already dotted with covers and mattresses.
Pilgrims aged 18 to 35, from 146 countries, will flock all day to Tor Vergata before the launch of the vigil at 8:30 p.m. Nearly a million people are expected.
They will then spend the night on this esplanade of a hundred hectares, where giant screens were installed, to the large fence mass chaired by the American Pope on Sunday morning.
The chief of the 1.4 billion Catholics, already welcomed in Rock Star Monday evening under the Vivats and the flashes of smartphones Place Saint-Pierre, must arrive by helicopter in Tor Vergata and should offer a new crowd in “papamobile”.
He will then be expressed from an imposing wooden altar of 1400 square meters installed for the occasion, alongside thousands of priests, bishops and religious.
The organization of the event was an extraordinary logistical challenge for the authorities, with some 10,000 people deployed, including police officers and civil protection agents, and health measures-distribution of water and misty bottles-to help participants overcome Roman summer heat.
Giant confessional
From the Colosseum on the outskirts of the Vatican via the place of Spain, from the waves of pilgrims, exhibiting the flags of their countries, flooded the transport and the arteries of the eternal city all week in a festive atmosphere, between concerts, conferences and prayers.
Friday, the famous Circus Maximus, the racetrack where the tank races took place in ancient Rome at the foot of Mount Palatine, turned into a large open -air confessional: a thousand priests heard tens of thousands of young people in ten different languages under white tents.
Unprecedented in the history twice millennia of the Catholic Church, this jubilee has seen events devoted to influencers, a sign of the growing importance given by the Vatican to evangelization on social networks.
It is also the first major meeting of the Catholic youth with Robert Francis Prevost, 69, who succeeded on May 8 at the very popular Pope Francis, who died at 88 years after 12 years of pontificate.
This international rally is presented as the highlight of the jubilee, “holy year” celebrated every 25 years by the Catholic Church, during which pilgrims can receive the “plenary indulgence”, the forgiveness of sins according to tradition.
During the 2000 jubilee, more than two million young people participated in Rome in the World Youth Days at the call of Pope John Paul II.
