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Over 5,000 pilgrims from the United States and Canada were welcomed in Rome by Pope Leo XIV on July 30, for their week long Jubilee. Each country had its separate events where the youth gathered in fellowship. The U.S. pilgrims visited St. Paul’s Outside the Walls for their National Jubilee Pilgrim Gathering July 30 as part of the Jubilee of Youth taking place July 28-Aug. 3.
The evening event, was sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the support of the Knights of Columbus. It involved prayer, music, testimonies, Eucharistic adoration and a solemn procession of the relics of a several saints and blesseds, including Blesseds Stanley Rother, soon to be Saints Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, and Sts. Paul, Kateri Tekakwitha and Elizabeth Ann Seton.
Following that, U.S. Cardinal James Harvey, archpriest of the basilica, welcomed the pilgrims, while Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, gave the keynote address.Bishop Barron said, “And that’s the adventure of the spiritual life, everybody. Don’t ever let them tell you that religious people are kind of dull, stay-at-home types,” said the bishop, who is also chairman of the USCCB committee of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and head of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.
He explained, “to be a person of faith is to accept that call and to place one’s will within the higher will of God.” He urged the youth not to “settle for the person I am, to accept things the way they are, to just listen to the voices of people around me,” Bishop Barron said, then “that is to live in this very narrow, cramped space.”
But Jesus called his disciples to “stop playing around in the shallow waters” of their own imaginations and to instead go “into the deep” or toward the great heights “of the person that God wants you to be,” he said.
“God has an idea of the saint you were meant to be,” he said, and “a person of faith is to open your heart trustingly to that call.”
In fact, the most spiritually important question and the greatest decision one can make, he said, is “Who will I be?”
In a similar vein, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops held a special gathering of young people from Canada in Rome on Tuesday, 29 July 2025 from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the church Santa Andrea dell Valle (Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 00186 Roma RM, Italy) during the Jubilee of Youth (28 July to 3 August 2025) organized as part of the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year celebrations.
The Jubilee of Youth has brought together thousands of young people from across the globe for a week of prayer, catechesis, cultural exchange, and joyful witness. This international pilgrimage invites young people to deepen their relationship with Christ and to be living signs of hope and communion in today’s world.
An estimated 1,000 young people from across Canada made the pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee of Youth. Many of these pilgrims, representing various dioceses and eparchies, as well as other national groups, movements and associations, will attend the special gathering of Canadian youth.
Several Bishops from Canada were present at the events, joined by priests, deacons, religious sisters and brothers, and lay leaders accompanying the youth pilgrims.
The two-hour Canadian program featured a youth-led welcome, a bilingual proclamation of Scripture, dynamic witness panels from youth and bishops, multicultural musical praise, small group faith sharing, and musical performances. The event will conclude with a commissioning prayer and symbolic sending forth, encouraging Canadian youth to continue their Jubilee pilgrimage with renewed purpose and joy.
The Catholic faithful across Canada are invited to pray for the young pilgrims, as they seek to deepen their relationship with Christ and with one another, offering a powerful witness to the Church’s life and vitality in Canada and across the world.
Sources: USCCB - https://www.cccb.ca/media-release/young-people-from-canada-to-gather-in-rome-for-the-jubilee-of-youth-2025/ - OSV
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