Pope Leo XIV listened to deeply personal testimonies from young people grappling with depression, family trauma and questions of faith on his first day in Barcelona at Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium, telling a crowd of tens of thousands that God does not abandon those who suffer, even when his presence feels most distant.
In one of the evening’s most poignant moments, a young woman named Carmina described her yearslong struggle with depression and a suicide attempt, asking the pope where God could be found “when the darkness is absolute and we cannot take it anymore.”
Pope Leo gave her a hug after his response in which he called her presence at the event “a remarkable miracle.””I am moved,” he said, “that you are here among us and that you have found the strength to embrace this second chance that the Lord has given you.”
In his closing speech, the pope reflected that “we are called to engage with the shadows of our own human condition: We lack the full truth; we do not fully fathom the mystery of ourselves or the true identity of others; we do not always succeed in understanding the hidden truth of the reality that surrounds us and the events unfolding before our eyes.
We seek a light to illuminate the path.” The evening opened with a performance of the castell, the centuries-old Catalan tradition of building human towers, by a group from Vilafranca del Penedès.
