Pope Francis: filling young people with ‘the joy of the Gospel’

By Emily Chaffins -

 

MIAMI | Dylan Francisco was initially “nervous” to be a master of ceremony of the “Rise Up Encounters” catechesis at the 2023 World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal. However, Pope Francis and the whole World Youth Day experience transformed the way he saw himself in the Church.

At that time a student at St. Thomas University (STU) in Miami Gardens and a campus ministry leader, Francisco belonged to a delegation from the university tasked with providing catechesis to English-speaking pilgrims from around the world.

“Seeing Pope Francis and all the excitement people had to see him, and the Church in general, made me feel like not only the Church matters, but that it’s the thing that matters,” he said.

For his dedication to campus ministry in Lisbon and at home Francisco earned STU’s St. Anthony Campus Ministry Award.

For Ilen Perez-Valdes, Pope Francis’ example has been a motivation in her own mission. The sophomore at the University of Miami, UM, started her nonprofit, Tata’s Legacy, in 11th grade to serve the elderly at the Coral Gables Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, bringing high school and college students to them.

Perez-Valdes, hospitality chair for UCatholic campus ministry, quoted Pope Francis’ statement as one of her guiding principles: “Where there is no honor for the elderly, there is no future for the young.”

“The pope was calling young people… to missionary discipleship,” said Father Rafael Capó, reminiscing on the transformation he witnessed during the 2013 World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Currently STU’s vice president for mission and ministry, Father Capó was director for Hispanic ministry at U.S. Catholic Bishops Southeast Regional Office for Hispanic Ministry, SEPI, when Pope Francis’ papacy began. At World Youth Day in Brazil, the group of young people from SEPI felt a “special connection” to the message of the first Latin American pope.

In Rio, Pope Francis promoted YOUCAT (Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church), a catechism developed during Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy. The youth at SEPI spread YOUCAT to “dozens of dioceses in the Southeast,” according to Father Capó.

In 2016, Pope Francis distributed DOCAT, a catechism building upon YOUCAT to explain Catholic social teaching. SEPI youth created a “DOCAT: The Social Teaching of the Church Study Guide,” written in English and Spanish and tailored to Hispanic youth. During the Jubilee of Mercy in 2016, Father Capó personally presented the study guide to Pope Francis, remembering the experience as “a very big blessing.”

Soon after, members of SEPI were designated ambassadors of DOCAT for the 2019 World Youth Day in Panama City.

 

REACHING OUT THROUGH SYNODALITY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Pope Francis emphasized “synodality” throughout his papacy to foster dialogue, hearing others’ needs and perspectives in order to better serve one another.

Claudia Danger, another STU Lisbon leader who graduated in 2024, was able to see the process up close at the 2024 Catholic Partnership Summit in Arlington, Virginia. The Leadership Roundtable Catholic nonprofit gathered young adult ministry leaders for a synodal summit Feb. 28-March 1. Danger attended with Father Capó and Isabelle Seiglie, currently director of ministry programs at STU.

The event was about “having an encounter with young adults, religious, priests and bishops to see the state of young adulthood within the Church, our feelings, our struggles, the hurts we were going through,” Danger explained.

Based on the summit discussions, the document “By, With, and For: Leadership of Young Adults in a Co-Responsible Catholic Church” was released, “with advice and practical implementations the bishops could use for their diocese” and “topics ranging from mental health [to]… integrat[ing] the young person within the local church, diocesan church, and the church as a whole,” said Danger, actual youth director at Christ the King Catholic Church in Jacksonville.

Father Capó can testify to Pope Francis’ attitude of “accompaniment,” evident even in the way he treated the Swiss Guards at the Vatican. “He accompanied them as young people, as young adults. He would listen to their personal stories, sitting with them to help them in vocation discernment. It led to young Swiss Guards entering the seminary.”

Daniel Oliva, a recent graduate from Florida International University, FIU, and a leader in both FIU and UM campus ministry, recognized Pope Francis’ attentiveness to young adults in the way he used social media.

“He would post on Instagram and would translate it into a bunch of languages,” said Oliva. “To me, that shows that he wanted to reach young people, because if you look at the demographics of Instagram, you see a younger crowd.”

Although Pope Benedict XVI was the first pope to adopt social media, Pope Francis was very active on social media platforms while also outspoken about its potential for harm.

Danger calls social media “the modern version of the letters of St. Paul,” admiring Catholic social media users’ capabilities for ministering to the homebound and to people across the world.

Father Capó, himself a social media influencer, noted that Pope Francis embraced the digital era. “Pope Benedict had called it the ‘digital continent,’ but Pope Francis jumped into that digital continent,” he said. “It was a confirmation how [some of his] last public words were delivered in that last tweet on Easter Sunday: ‘Christ is risen. These words capture the entire meaning of our existence, for we were not made for death, but for life.’”

According to Father Capó, Pope Francis exemplified “the joy of the Gospel” and “lived it out in a special calling to young people.”

“He always had a smile on his face,” he said. “Every time I met him, he would be cracking jokes, lifting people up, encouraging young people, laughing with them.”