Pope Leo XIV says The Future "For Christians - means "walking the road" with Jesus: to become, at every age, more and more fully His disciples" in the 'Land of Fires'

Pope Leo XIV spoke to mayors and local residents of Acerra during his May 23 pastoral visit on Saturday to the southern Italian town in the “Land of Fires.” The southern Italian Campania region, devastated by environmental degradation due to illegal rubbish dumping and the unchecked burning of toxic waste. The town of 65,000 residents is at the heart of the so-called “Terra dei Fuochi”. or 'Land of Fires', a territory also known as "The Triangle of Death", which for the past 20 years has been suffocated by toxic fires burning the contaminated land. This has given rise to a health crisis in which hundreds of people, including many children, have developed rare forms of cancer.

ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER
in the Piazza Calipari (Acerra) on Saturday, May 23, 2026
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Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and thank you for your welcome!
I greet the authorities and thank everyone who worked to prepare today's meeting. Thank you all for being here!

I am pleased to spend this Saturday morning with you, to revisit a region whose beauty no injustice can erase. In life, we understand that the more fragile a beauty is, the more it demands care and responsibility. This, dearest ones, is the primary meaning of my presence today in Acerra: to confirm and encourage that surge of dignity and responsibility that every honest heart feels when life springs forth and is suddenly threatened by death. Those who have the gift of faith will understand that this surge comes from God the Creator, who seeks in every man and woman collaborators in his life's plans.

A short while ago, in the Cathedral, I met with some relatives of the victims of the pollution that, in recent decades, has sadly made this area known as the "Land of Fires": a term that doesn't do justice to the good that exists and endures, but it has certainly fostered widespread awareness of the gravity of the corruption and indifference that has allowed crimes to occur. I wanted to thank the bishops, priests, deacons, men and women religious, and lay people who readily embraced the message of the Encyclical Laudato Si' and Pope Francis 's constant invitation to be an outgoing, missionary, and synodal Church. Walking together, overcoming self-absorption, daring to prophesy despite resistance and threats: this is what the Lord asks of us and what his Spirit inspires.

In this land, in fact, life exists and opposes death; justice exists and will assert itself. Of course, we must choose life and free ourselves from the bonds of death. There is always a subtle advantage in resignation, in compromise, in postponing necessary and courageous decisions. Fatalism, complaint, and the shifting of blame onto others are the breeding ground for lawlessness and a source of desertification of consciences. Therefore, I would like to say to all of you: let us each assume our own responsibilities, let us choose justice, let us serve life! The common good comes before the concerns of a few, before vested interests, whether small or large.

This land has paid a heavy price, it has buried so many of its children, it has witnessed the suffering of children and innocents. The value and weight of that pain require us to strive together to be witnesses of a new pact. You are journeying towards a time of rebirth, which is not a time of forgetting, but of ethical action and active memory. It is a time for a contemplative gaze, the one to which the Encyclical Laudato si' called upon all human beings, each starting from his or her responsibilities. "Ecological culture," wrote Pope Francis , "cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the emerging problems of environmental degradation, the depletion of natural resources, and pollution. It needs a distinctive outlook, a way of thinking, a policy, an educational program, a lifestyle, and a spirituality that can forge resistance to the advance of the technocratic paradigm" ( Laudato si ' , 111). Sisters, brothers, that paradigm still presents itself as a winning one today: it is at the root of the proliferation of conflicts, behind which lies the race for the hoarding of resources; we see it resisting every time those in political and institutional positions are too weak towards the strong; we find it active in a technological development that aims at the dizzying profits of a few and is blind to people, their work, and their future. Therefore, if we are called to change, it must begin with our own perspective.

Some say leaving a better world to our children has become a lofty ambition. However, it shouldn't be the mission of leaving the world better sons and daughters. Our commitment to education is within our reach and a priority. Education of young people, of course, but also of adults; of children, but also of the elderly; of citizens and their leaders; of workers and employers; of the faithful and pastors: we all still have much to learn. Everyone has something to give, but first they must learn to receive. It's not easy to admit it, yet this is the beginning of the future: it's like a door that opens onto what until now we haven't thought about, believed in, or loved enough. Learning further: this is what makes us a community. For Christians, it means "walking the road" with Jesus: becoming, at every age, more and more fully His disciples.

Dearest ones, it will be a true shift in economic, civil, and even religious mentality that will build the good that will heal this earth and the entire planet. Among people, institutions, and public and private organizations, we must consolidate and expand the pact that is already bearing its first fruits on the educational and social levels. This pact will not only counter and dismantle criminal alliances, but will positively connect and multiply the best forces and great ideas already present in your hearts. Here I would like to thank those "pioneers" who, with their courageous commitment, were the first to denounce the evils of this earth and drew attention to the obscured and denied reality of its poisoning: I am thinking in particular of the members of environmental associations. Now we all know that we must watch over the health of creation as we watch over our own front door, rejecting temptations to power and enrichment linked to practices that pollute the land, water, air, and coexistence. We will create, step by step, but quickly, a less individualistic economy, a less consumerist system. How much waste, how much waste, how much poison has come from a growth model that has bewitched us, leaving us sicker and poorer. Let us learn to be rich in a different way: more attentive to relationships, more focused on promoting the common good, more attached to the local area, more grateful in welcoming and integrating those who come to live with us.

It is from this conversion that we can build good community practices: through people and businesses that cultivate a sense of limits, not that of irresponsible violation; that have a taste for recovery, not the logic of invasion; a hunger and thirst for justice rather than for possession. In particular, being close to the human heart, and therefore closer to God who created it, means desiring a more inclusive, more united community, less affected by marginalization and polarization. But the path to follow is narrow, because it starts with us, from where we find ourselves. Being able to correct course, acting every day on the habits and prejudices we have settled into, seeing beyond our fences means truly meeting each other. It is sometimes an uphill and poorly marked path. A concrete example: the name "land of fires" refers to the fires lit on the outskirts of cities, sometimes by rejected and marginalized minorities of brothers and sisters whom few know and respect. Marginalization always breeds insecurity: the way forward is to fight marginalization, not the marginalized; it's to break the entire chain, not just attack the last link. You know this well!

In this Jubilee Year of Saint Francis , Patron Saint of Italy, the Poverello of Assisi reminds us that peace is founded on caring for others, on fraternity: we have been placed in a common home to learn to live together. The problems of this home are our problems; its beauty is our beauty. We have the task of keeping watch like sentinels in the night. We can be among those who will observe the new dawn.

Sisters and brothers, thank you so much: this visit is so precious to the Pope! I keep you in my prayers, entrusting each of you, your families, and the present and future of your communities to our Mother Mary, the Morning Star. Thank you!

Translation from https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2026/05/23/0431/00841.html