World Youth Day: Pope Francis arrives in Portugal

Pope Francis has arrived in Portugal to open the first post-pandemic edition of World Youth Day (WYD), hoping to inspire the next generation of Catholics to work together to combat conflicts, climate change and other problems facing the world.

Francis is spending five days in Lisbon, blending a state visit and pilgrimage to the Catholic shrine at Fatima with the raucous trappings of World Youth Day, the Catholic jamboree that aims to rally young Catholics in their faith.

His first stop will be a welcoming ceremony hosted by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at the presidential Belem Palace.

More than 1 million young people from around the world were expected to attend the gathering, which culminates with a papal Mass on Sunday.

Busloads of pilgrims started arriving before Tuesday despite temperatures forecast to hit 35 degrees Celsius by the weekend’s final papal Mass.

Cardinal-elect Americo Aguiar, a Lisbon bishop who is organising the festival, said two years of COVID-19 lockdowns made this year’s edition of World Youth Day unique. He said it was an important encounter for Catholic youths, especially with war raging now in Europe and economic uncertainties around the globe.

Francis is scheduled to spend the morning meeting with Portuguese officials at the Belem National Palace, the official presidential residence west of Lisbon, from where Portugal’s maritime explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries set sail.

As he was traveling to Lisbon, Francis vowed to continue urging young people to “make a mess” – a reference to his now-famous exhortation at his first World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013. It was a call for young people to shake things up in their parishes, and has come to symbolize Francis’ own revolutionary reforms that have shaken up the church at large.

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“We are sailing amid storms on the ocean of history, and we sense the need for courageous courses of peace,” he said. “It is my hope that World Youth Day will be, for the ‘Old Continent,’ the aged continent, an impulse towards universal openness.”

In the afternoon, Francis makes his way to the 16th-century Jeronimos Monastery and church, arguably Portugal’s greatest monument. There, he is set to meet with the Portuguese Catholic hierarchy.

Citing Russia’s war in Ukraine, global warming and Europe’s demographic decline, he urged young people in particular to take up the mantle to build a future together.

“I dream of a Europe, the heart of the West, which employs its immense talents to settling conflicts and lighting lamps of hope,” Francis said.

“A Europe capable of recovering its youthful heart, looking to the greatness of the whole and beyond its immediate needs. A Europe inclusive of peoples and persons, without chasing after ideologies.”