VIVI IN ROME

 

Our intern, Vivi , soon heads to Rome for a weeklong Jubilee celebration for young Catholics.

Half a million young people are expected to pour into Rome for the biggest event of the 2025 Holy Year.

Officials said  the highlight of the celebration is the Aug. 2-3 vigil service, outdoor overnight slumber party and morning Mass presided over by Pope Leo XIV, the first massive gathering for history’s first American pope. It’s being held on the same dusty field on the outskirts of Rome where St. John Paul II led the 2000 World Youth Day, an even larger gathering of some 2 million young Catholics in that millennial Jubilee year.

With temperatures next weekend expected between 90F to 93F, organizers have lined up five million bottles of water, 2,660 drinking water stations and 70 giant water cannons that are normally used for dust control during building demolitions to spritz the young pilgrims to try to keep them cool.

Bishop Robert Barron will deliver a keynote address to more than 3,500 young American pilgrims at a special event in Rome on July 30, part of the global Jubilee of Youth celebrations. There will be a procession with relics of 12 saints and blesseds significant to the American Church and Catholic youth. We know Vivi takes us with her in her heart, as she prays for family, friends and the Church militant.