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Pope Leo XIV meets young adults from the Mediterranean Youth Council in the Hall of the Consistory in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace on Sept. 5, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media.

Vatican City, Sep 5, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

Real peace, often used as a slogan, begins in our own hearts and communities, Pope Leo XIV told a group of young adults from the Mediterranean region at the Vatican on Friday.

In a speech in both Italian and English Sept. 5, the pope called young people the “generation that envisions a better future and chooses to build it. You are the sign of a world that does not give in to indifference and complacency,” he added, “but rolls up its sleeves and works to transform evil into good.”

Leo met with around 50 members of the Mediterranean Youth Council, which was founded in 2022 and includes young adults from European and Middle Eastern countries bordered by the Mediterranean Sea.

“Peace is on the agenda of international leaders, it is the subject of global discussions, but sadly, it often gets reduced to a mere slogan,” the pontiff said. “What we need is to cultivate peace in our own hearts and in our relationships, to let it blossom in our daily actions, to work for reconciliation in our homes, our communities, our schools and workplaces, in the Church and among the Churches.”

Pope Leo tells young adults from the Mediterranean Youth Council at the Vatican on Sept. 5, 2025, “to cultivate prayer and spirituality, together with action, as sources of peace and points of encounter between traditions and cultures.”. Credit: Vatican Media.

Being a peacemaker is not easy, Leo said, and he denounced the use of religious traditions to justify violence, instead of bringing peace, fraternity, care for creation, and openness to others. 

“We need to reject these forms of blasphemy that dishonor God’s Holy Name, and to do so by the way we live our lives,” he underlined. “We are called to cultivate prayer and spirituality, together with action, as sources of peace and points of encounter between traditions and cultures.”

“For believers, the future is not one of walls and barbed wire, but one of mutual acceptance,” he added.

The pope encouraged the young people to not give up, even if someone does not understand them or what they are working for: “St. Charles de Foucauld said that God also uses headwinds to bring us to port.”

“Do not be afraid: Be seeds of peace where the seeds of hate and resentment grow; be weavers of unity where polarization and enmity prevail; be the voice of those who have no voice to ask for justice and dignity; be light and salt where the flame of faith and the taste for life are dying out,” he said.

Blessed Carlo Acutis (left) and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. / Credit: Diocese of Assisi/Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Vatican City, Sep 5, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

The Sept. 7 canonizations of Blesseds Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati will be a crucial step in a decades-long effort to attract people to the Catholic faith through young, holy patrons.

“Their canonization confirms that holiness is not an abstract ideal but can manifest itself in contemporary ways, close to the sensibilities of young people, in the present and now … through friendship, study, family, the challenges of today, and even through illness faced with Christian hope,” said Leticia Arráez, a communications researcher at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

According to Arráez, the last 40 years have seen youth become “major protagonists” in shaping the Church’s identity and spearheading its evangelical mission throughout the world.

During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, young people were given priority and a privileged place of recognition within the Church, especially after the pope publicly entrusted the Cross of the Jubilee Year of the Redemption to young people on Easter Sunday in 1984.

Before the close of the 1983-1984 jubilee, John Paul II expressed confidence in young people as credible leaders. During the gathering in Rome, he said they had a “right and duty” to respond to the challenges they see in the world.

“You have a sort of prophetic role: You can denounce today’s ills by speaking out, first and foremost, against that widespread ‘culture of death,’” John Paul told the gathering.

“​​It is up to you, with your innate sensitivity to the values ​​proclaimed by Christ, and your aversion to compromise, to work, together with your elders who have not resigned themselves to such compromises, to overcome persistent injustices and all their multifaceted manifestations, which, like the evils mentioned above, have their roots in the human heart,” he added.

Throughout the 1980s, youth issues gained international attention within the Church and across other international platforms. During the 1985 U.N. Year of Youth, Pope John Paul II addressed young people in Rome to mark the occasion and to announce the creation of World Youth Day (WYD).

According to Arráez, the pope’s decision to create an annual global gathering dedicated to youth changed the perception that young people are primarily “recipients” of the Catholic faith, emphasizing instead their role as “privileged interlocutors” capable of building up the universal Church.

Acutis and Frassati were selected as patrons of WYD and, through these annual gatherings, devotion to these two blesseds have spread far and wide, beyond Italy, to every continent among people inspired by their examples of holy living.

Devotion to Acutis, who died Oct. 12 on the feast day of Brazil’s patroness, Our Lady of Aparecida, reached international level during the 2013 WYD in Rio de Janeiro as young Catholics began to hear more about his story and the miraculous healing, attributed to his intercession, of a 4-year-old Brazilian boy, Matheus Vianna, who had a rare pancreatic condition.

Beatified in 1990 by Pope John Paul II, Frassati became known as the “Man of the Beatitudes” and was made an official WYD patron by the pope ahead of the 2002 WYD in Toronto. He has since remained a WYD patron and his remains have traveled twice outside of Italy for the 2008 WYD in Sydney and the 2016 WYD in Krakow, Poland.

During a time when religious belief and practice have been under pressure from rapid secularization as well as scandals of abuse and corruption in the Church, the Church has chosen two young holy patrons who, through their lives, have shown the attractiveness of being real and authentic in their love of God and other people.

“The Church intends to propose accessible and credible models of Christian life for our time,” Arráez said. “Frassati with his social commitment, his charity toward others, and his joyful spirituality lived in the world, [as did] Acutis with his innovative use of technology as a means of evangelization.” 

Arráez said the recent focus on young ordinary saints, who were neither martyrs nor mystics, is in keeping with Vatican II’s message on the “universal call to holiness” promulgated in Pope Paul VI’s Lumen Gentium, which teaches that “all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness.”

“Through [Acutis and Frassati] the Church demonstrates that holiness, living the meaning of life in the present, is possible at a young age and does not require extraordinary conditions or waiting to grow up or for ideal circumstances … but rather an authentic lifestyle, rooted in faith and in the message of Christ that the Gospel teaches us, lived today, in 2025,” Arráez said.

Viewers can tune in to “EWTN News Nightly” and “EWTN News In Depth” for an exclusive preview of the canonizations. “EWTN News Nightly” airs at 6 p.m. ET and 9 p.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 5; and “EWTN News In Depth” airs at 8 p.m. ET the same day.

Viewers can also follow here to watch the canonizations live on YouTube.

Sister Miranda Moltedo was the principal of Carlo’s elementary school when he was a student. / Credit: EWTN News

Rome Newsroom, Sep 4, 2025 / 13:57 pm (CNA).

Before he was known as a soon-to-be-saint, Carlo Acutis was simply a boy in a school uniform, lugging his backpack through the hallways of the Tommaseo Institute in Milan. His teachers remember him as joyful, a bit of a prankster, and passionate about his Catholic faith.

“He was certainly not a perfect student,” Sister Monica Ceroni, Acutis’ middle school religion teacher, recalled. He sometimes forgot his homework or showed up late. But he had a “healthy curiosity” and “and wanted to get to the bottom of things.”

“When he became passionate about something, he didn’t give up,” she told EWTN News.

Exterior shot of Carlo Acutis' elementary and middle school the Tommaseo Institute. Credit: Courtney Mares/EWTN

Acutis spent nearly eight years at the Tommaseo Institute, a Catholic elementary and middle school run by the Marcelline Sisters in central Milan. Located just across the street from his parish church of Santa Maria Segreta, the school became the setting for his daily routine of classes, soccer games with friends in the courtyard, and visits to the chapel to pray.  

“What is striking in his report cards … is that religion was the only subject he did well in,” Ceroni said. “He was someone who liked to be involved in the classroom conversations, especially in religion,” she added. 

“He was also a real joker,” she added, recalling some of the pranks he played with his classmates. 

The Acutis family hired a tutor named Elisa to help Carlo with his homework, and Carlo would sometimes invite Elisa her to come with him to Mass afterward. Elisa, like so many others in Carlo’s life, later said that she grew in her faith because of her relationship with Carlo. 

An interior of the Tommaseo Institute, Carlo Acutis’ elementary and middle school. Credit: Anthony Johnson/EWTN

His teachers also noticed that Carlo gravitated toward classmates who struggled or were left out.  

Sister Miranda Moltedo, who was the principal of Carlo’s elementary school when he was a student, recalled a boy in the class whose mother had abandoned him. “Carlo had taken him under his wing, protecting him,” she said. “We knew that he was a child who needed special attention, affection, and love, and Carlo cared about him.” 

Carlo also stood up to bullies. When a classmate with mental disabilities was being teased and bullied, Carlo defended him. A teacher observed that, as a result, sometimes that classmate could be overly clingy with Carlo. When she the teacher asked Carlo about it, he replied: “He is a great friend of mine, and I want to help him.” 

“I think this ability to be inclusive as an 11- or 12-year-old boy was extraordinary. … It was a natural gift of his,” Ceroni said. 

“My strongest memory of Carlo is of a cheerful, lively boy. He was a typical boy his age, with a great zest for life and many dreams,” she said. 

A photo of Carlo Acutis and some of his classmates at the Tommaseo Institute that was pinned to one of the bulletin boards outside of his classroom in the school when CNA's reporting team visited. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Tommaseo Institute

After graduating from the Tommaseo Institute, Carlo entered the Jesuit-run Leo XIII Institute in Milan. There, his faith stood out even more. “Carlo used to go to the chapel in the morning before entering the classroom and during breaks and would stop to pray. Nobody else did that,” said Father Roberto Gazzaniga, the school’s chaplain.

Classmates who testified in Carlo’s cause for canonization described him as respectful but unafraid to voice his convictions — on the Eucharist, baptism, pro-life issues, and the teachings of the Church. He also helped peers with homework, especially when computers were involved.

Carlo “never concealed his choice of faith,” Gazzaniga said. “Even in conversations and discussions with his classmates, he was respectful of the positions of others but without renouncing the clear vision of the principles that inspired his Christian life.”

Carlo Acutis' middle school diploma from the Tommaseo Institute in Milan. Credit: Anthony Johnson/EWTN

The chaplain described Carlo as having had a “a transparent and joyous interior life that united love for God and people in a joyful and true harmony.”

“One could point to him and say: Here is a happy and authentic young man and Christian,” he said. 

Unlike many at the private Jesuit school, Carlo paid little attention to what was trendy or popular. When his mother bought him new sneakers, he asked her to return them so they could give the money to the poor instead.

Acutis also asked a cloistered religious order to join him in praying for his high school classmates who partied in clubs and used drugs and spoke to his friends about the importance of chastity.

Carlo’s high school years were cut short when he was diagnosed with leukemia at age 15. He died in October 2006, just as his second year of studies was beginning, offering up his suffering from cancer for the pope and the good of the Catholic Church.

Sister Monica Ceroni, Carlo Acutis’ middle school religion teacher, recalled that sometimes Carlo forgot his homework or showed up late. But he had a “healthy curiosity” and “and wanted to get to the bottom of things.” Credit: Credit: Anthony Johnson/EWTN

Sister Monica remembered vividly the last time she saw him a few weeks before he died. “We met right in front of the parish church,” she said. “We were going in and he was coming out of the church … He was happy to be back at school. He said he wanted to focus on computer science. I will always remember him this way.”

She returned to the parish for Carlo’s funeral not long after. “Carlo’s funeral ceremony was extraordinary. There were a lot of people, also poor people,” Ceroni said.

Today, both Sister Monica and Sister Miranda tell Carlo’s story to inspire their young students in the same classrooms where he once studied. “Carlo is presented as a child who was a friend of Jesus and found joy, because Christianity is joy,” Moltedo said. 

Veronica Giacometti from ACI Stampa, CNA’s Italian-language news partner, contributed to this report.

Pope Leo XIV meets with Israel President Isaac Herzog in a private audience at the Vatican on Sept. 4, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Sep 4, 2025 / 12:14 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV discussed the conflict in Gaza, including a two-state solution, with Israel President Isaac Herzog in a private audience at the Vatican on Thursday morning. 

According to a Vatican statement after the meeting, the talks focused on the political and social situation in the Middle East and the need to guarantee “a future for the Palestinian people and peace and stability in the region, with the Holy See reiterating the two-state solution as the only way out of the ongoing war.”

The Israeli president also met with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Vatican Secretary for Relations with States Archbishop Paul Gallagher.

The Sept. 4 Vatican audience was the first closed-door meeting between Leo and Herzog, 64, who has been Israel’s president since 2021.

Pope Leo XIV meets with Israel President Isaac Herzog in a private audience at the Vatican on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. The talks focused on the political and social situation in the Middle East and the need to guarantee “a future for the Palestinian people and peace and stability in the region, with the Holy See reiterating the two-state solution as the only way out of the ongoing war.” Credit: Vatican Media

In a post on X following the encounter, Herzog thanked Leo for a “warm welcome today at the Vatican” and said he looked forward to strengthening Israel’s cooperation with the Holy See “for a better future of justice and compassion.”

The Vatican communique on Leo’s meeting with Herzog — a longer and much more detailed statement than those usually issued after audiences with heads of state — repeated Pope Leo’s regular public pleas for a resumption of negotiations, a permanent ceasefire, the release of Israeli hostages, respect for humanitarian law, and the safe entry of aid into Gaza.

The Vatican said the hope was also expressed that the “legitimate aspirations” of both Israeli and Palestinian people can be guaranteed.

“Reference was also made to the situation in the West Bank and the important question of the city of Jerusalem” and to issues in the relations between Israeli state authorities and the local Church, the statement added.

In addition to a two-state solution for Palestine, Vatican diplomacy has called for an international status for the city of Jerusalem, where the Latin patriarch, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, is the Catholic leader of not only Israel but also the Palestinian Territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

During a visit to the town of Taybeh in the West Bank in July, Pizzaballa and other Church leaders said they hold Israeli authorities responsible for “facilitating and enabling” attacks on Palestinian Christians by Israeli settlers.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog meets with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Secretary for Relations with States Archbishop Paul Gallagher (in back) on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. Credit: Vatican Media

Thursday’s conversation between Leo and Herzog also touched on the importance of ensuring the continued presence of Christian communities throughout the Middle East, the Vatican said.

After the talks, a statement from Herzog said the pope’s reception of Israel’s president reflected “the great significance of the relationship between the Holy See and the State of Israel, and of course with the Jewish people, and the importance of the very sensitive issues and challenges we experience today.”

There was some tension surrounding the meeting due to a Sept. 2 statement from Herzog’s office stating that the president’s one-day visit to the Vatican came at the invitation of Pope Leo. The Vatican contradicted that claim hours later with a statement that “it is the Holy See’s practice to agree to requests for an audience with the pope from heads of state and government; it is not its practice to extend invitations to them.”

Vatican-Israel relations were marked by tension toward the end of the last pontificate owing to Pope Francis’ criticism of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which was sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli citizens and others by Hamas militants.

Pope Francis called Israel’s actions in Gaza “terrorism” and on two occasions said what was happening there might qualify as genocide.

Pope Leo has taken a more restrained approach, calling for ceasefires and the release of hostages and emphasizing the need for dignified humanitarian aid and respect for law.

Pope Leo XIV poses on a custom BMW R 18 papal motorcycle gifted to him by the Christian Jesus Bikers at the Vatican, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025 / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Sep 3, 2025 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

A group of black-clad bikers rumbled into St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday to present Pope Leo XIV with a custom cruiser motorcycle destined for charity.

The pope met members of the Christian Jesus Bikers at the end of his general audience at the Vatican on Sept. 3. The motorcycle club rolled into Rome for a Jubilee of Hope pilgrimage after a three-day day ride from Schaafheim, Germany.

Fr. Karl Wallner, OCist. stands next to Pope Leo XIV as he signs a custom-made BMW R 18 motorcycle after his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter's Square on Sept. 3, 2025. The cruiser will be sold at auction to raise funds for children in Madagascar. Credit: Rudolf Gehrig/EWTN News

The pope blessed and signed the white BMW R 18 motorcycle before briefly climbing onto the seat to the bikers’ applause.

The custom-designed papal motorcycle will be auctioned off in Munich on Oct. 18, and the funds will benefit children working in mica mines in Madagascar through Missio Austria.

The director of Missio Austria, Father Karl Wallner, OCist., told EWTN News on Wednesday that the point of the pilgrimage was “not just fun and coming to see the pope, but also to help the poorest of the poor” through the project for exploited children.

Wallner said Pope Leo appeared to like the motorcycle a lot. At the audience, “he told the CEO of BMW that he himself liked to drive the motorcycle. So I think we have the first motorcycling pope…”

The custom BMW R 18 papal motorcycle gifted to Pope Leo XIV by the Christian Jesus Bikers is seen at St. Magdalena Church, Altötting, Germany, Sunday, Aug. 31, 2025. Credit: Rudolf Gehrig/EWTN News

The two-cylinder boxer engine cruiser was given a papal redesign by the Witzel company in Germany, before taking to the road for the biker pilgrimage, which included daily Mass in churches along the way to Rome.

Around 30 members of the Jesus Bikers club also processed through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica before attending Mass together on Sept. 3.

One of the motorcyclists at the Sept. 3 audience, a Protestant from Berlin who goes by the name “Rocky,” told EWTN News he joined the Jesus Bikers after finding the club on the Internet.

Members of the Jesus Biker Club link arms in St. Peter's Square on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2025. Credit: Rudolf Gehrig/EWTN News

“The honesty and freedom attracted me,” Rocky said. “It’s not like other motorcycle clubs, where I have to prove myself for a year and perform certain rituals. I was accepted here, and a year later, I received my robe. You just have to be baptized, believe in Jesus Christ, and have a motorcycle. We want to pray, ride, and do good.”

Claus Dempewolf, who is responsible for those interested in joining the motorcycle club, expressed his satisfaction with the first leg of the ride in an interview with EWTN News earlier this week.

“The weather was perfect, the roads were good,” he said. 

When asked who ultimately decides whether or not someone can become a member of the Jesus Bikers, Dempewolf replied: “That’s decided by our president and our road captain; our president is Jesus Christ, our road captain is the Holy Spirit.”

Pope Francis was an honorary member of the Jesus Bikers, which have over 100 members worldwide. The Argentinian pope also received a white motorcycle from the group in 2019.

Pope Francis also received two Harley-Davidson motorcycles and a motorcycle jacket in 2013 from Harley owners who gathered at the Vatican during a Rome celebration of the 110th anniversary of the iconic American street bikes.

One of the Harley Davidsons, with papal autograph, and the leather jacket brought in more than $350,000 for a Rome charity at an auction in 2014.