Pope Francis Announces an Apostolic Exhortation on Children Following Leaders' Summit on Children’s Rights


Words of the Holy Father at the Conclusion of the World Leaders Summit on Children’s Rights, 03.02.2025 - Pope Francis announced that he would be writing an Apostolic Exhortation dedicated to children following the summit.
It was at the first International Summit on Children’s Rights, where Pope Francis urges world leaders to listen to children suffering from war, poverty, and migration, and reiterates his condemnation of the “murderous” practice of abortion. He also decried the persistence of child slavery, forced labour, trafficking, abuse, and child marriages, citing the heartbreaking reality that 160 million children are victims of these injustices.


The summit called “Love Them and Protect Them,” from Feb. 3-4th, had panels on the child’s right to resources, to education, to food and health care, to family, to free time, and to live free from violence. Summit speakers include Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, president of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck.
The following are the words spoken by the Holy Father Francis at the end of the World Leaders Summit on Children’s Rights, entitled “Love them and protect them”, organized by the Pontifical Committee for World Children’s Day:
Words of the Holy Father
Dear friends,
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude at the end of this Meeting on children’s rights.
Thanks to you, today the halls of the Apostolic Palace have become an open “observatory” on the reality of childhood all over the world, a childhood that is often wounded, exploited, denied. Your presence, your experience and your compassion have brought to life an observatory and above all a “workshop”: in various thematic groups you have developed proposals for the protection of children’s rights, considering them not as numbers, but as faces.

All this renders glory to God, and we entrust it to Him, so that His Holy Spirit may make it productive and fruitful.

For my part, in order to provide continuity for this commitment and to promote it throughout the Church, I intend to prepare an apostolic Exhortation dedicated to children.

Thank you once again, to each and every one of you. May the Lord bless you!


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