Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass on Thursday for thousands of young people from across Europe gathered in Assisi for Go!, the 2026 Franciscan Youth Meeting. At Mass in the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels, the Pope urged his young listeners to go “to the margins” of society, “where the injustice and arrogance of a few deny the dignity and dreams of many.”“We are called to read the Scriptures with the Master,” Pope Leo said, “to interpret our times, and to make decisions as we walk in His footsteps.
We are here to overcome resignation and fear, to untangle the doubts that hold us back just as they held back the apostles. Jesus calls us into a dialogue with His story so that we may write new pages of history.”He reminded them that Assisi is a place where “everything whispers that our lives can be transformed, unleash light, and repair the world.” It was here, he said, that “the transfiguration of Francis, of Clare, and then of thousands of other young people” first began.
Beginning with the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, the Pope reflected on how Jesus was “transfigured precisely in conversation with the Father, with those who preceded him — Moses and Elijah — and with his contemporaries, the disciples.”“The Church exists to draw us into this dynamic of listening and deciding, helping us understand for whom to live and how to live,” he said. The Church, he stressed, is “the community where we learn to distinguish the voice of God and to dare that obedience to the Holy Spirit that made bold and creative all those who agreed to follow Jesus.”
While Saint Francis’ choice to turn away from the world was revolutionary, Pope Leo noted that Saint Clare’s was “even more striking.” Like Francis, Clare “wanted to live… in true freedom.” This, he said, is the “energy” of Christianity — “that of beginnings and many fresh starts.”“And so, dear young people, today Europe and the whole world are looking to you for new saints: dare to believe in the word of the Gospel, become fully human with the freedom of Jesus Christ, and embrace Sister Poverty!” The title of the gathering — Go! — he added, is “a mission, a sending out onto roads for which we have no maps, because they open up as we listen to the heart, obey the Spirit, and follow the Risen Lord where He has chosen to go before us.”Quoting Pope Francis’ Evangelii gaudium, Leo XIV warned against keeping our distance “from the wounds of the Lord.” “Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He expects us to stop looking for those personal or communal niches that allow us to keep our distance from the heart of human suffering.”
Even if his listeners “might not be understood, even by those in your own home — just as happened to Saint Francis,” the Pope said, “stepping away from the culture of power and tearing down the walls that divide human beings is never a betrayal of family, city, or tradition.”Rather, he explained, it frees us “from their ghosts, from enemies invented out of fear and ignorance, and from the violence that seeks to impose its own neat little order on a reality that vastly exceeds us on every side.”“To trust in God is to discover, like Francis and Clare, a world of brothers and sisters to be appreciated and served, not exploited and dominated,” the Pope concluded. “Not a world to be defended, but one to be embraced.”