Organizers hope for ‘authentic dialogue’ between pope and youth at ‘Pope Leo LIVE’
Description
The next week is a big one for Indianapolis. The 8-2 Colts will be defending their record, and Jerry Seinfeld will be coming to town.
But the biggest ticket in Indy next week might be something altogether different: a planned digital encounter between the Holy Father and the expected 15,000 young adults attending the 2025 National Catholic Youth Conference.
Held at Lucas Oil Stadium, NCYC is an annual three-day conference for high school students hosted by the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry.
“The questions reflect what the young people are thinking. We are hoping that it becomes an authentic, true dialogue reflecting our Holy Father from a very personable perspective,” Christina Lamas, executive director of the NFCYM, told The Pillar.
The theme for NCYC this year is sacraments. While the organizers were not originally planning for the pope’s address, they believe it will amplify both the theme and conference experience.
“I don’t want to say Pope Leo is part of the programming because you can’t fit the pope into a box,” Lamas said. “We are going to be talking about confirmation during the session before he’s coming in, so we want to talk to him about ‘how do you take that sacrament to another level?’ And he knows about that.”
“It is about interweaving all of that … allowing him to amplify the theme of NCYC,” Lamas said.
Archbishop Nelson Perez, NCYC’s episcopal advisor, called the dialogue a “historic event.”
“In many ways, it is the Holy Father’s first visit to the United States, even if it is digitally, because this new world that we all now experience is digital,” Perez told The Pillar.
During his pontificate, Pope Francis shared a video message and a letter with conference attendees. Because of that, when Lamas first had the idea to invite Pope Leo to address the youth conference, she expected a similar brief message.
The pope responded that he would like a conversation, and that he would like it to be 45 minutes.
“At the very least, I thought, maybe he will do a video message,” Perez said. “This reality is very generous on his part, he wants to hear from our youth in the United States and the world.”
Perez reached out to Montse Alvarado, president of EWTN News, to see whether the EWTN media network would help. Alvarado agreed — EWTN will broadcast the event across its platforms, and help coordinate technology between the Vatican and Lucas Oil Stadium.
“The Church needs to be dedicated to really listen to young people,” Alvarado said in a press conference last week. “Over the last three years, EWTN has been looking for new opportunities to encounter young people in our initiative to change the digital face of EWTN with new apps and opportunities. This is another one of those places where we are walking with the Church to show her who these young people are, who are capable of sharing Jesus Christ with the world.”
Organizers and EWTN announced the event August 15th. That day, Perez and Lamas reached out to Katie Prejean McGrady, a popular Catholic radio host and author, to invite her to moderate the dialogue.
Then, Lamas and her team began looking for the students who would speak with the pope. They chose individuals from groups already registered to attend NCYC. They knew they wanted a diverse group that could speak about a variety of experiences.
“These young people were brought forward by their youth ministers and their diocesan directors. They’re very involved in their parishes. They’ve got great resumes,” McGrady told The Pillar. “We’ve spent time talking to these teenagers and learning a little bit of their heart and picking the young people that we felt would best represent their peers.”
“When we started the process, we wanted to ensure that there was a good balance across the country, a representation of diversity,” Lamas added.
The group selected around 30 young people to help develop the questions. The team of adults and young people worked together to formulate the questions, which were sent to the Holy Father ahead of the event.
Lamas wanted the teenagers to develop questions from their lived experiences and asked them to consider questions that could not be answered with an internet search.
“They will be talking about everything,” Lamas said. “They are not looking for answers they can Google. There is a lot of curiosity about our Holy Father and how does our Holy Father respond to certain themes…There’s a deep curiosity of what our Holy Father thinks and what’s moving him to help the teens understand their own spiritual life.”
Through a series of conversations, organizers helped the teenagers develop questions, based on recurring themes and common struggles that were raised.
“We’ve compiled a lot of data from just discussing with young people what’s going on in their world, what’s going on in their hearts, what they’re worried about, what they’re excited about, what they’re just genuinely curious about,” McGrady said.
“Young person A is not just going to walk up there and ask him what his opening Wordle word is,” she added. “But I can tell you that we’ve developed this conversation and the flow of the conversation based off of hours of discussion with young people from across the country.”
From the group of young people on the team, five — Mia Smothers, Elise Wing, Christopher Pantelakis, Micah Alcisto, and Ezequiel Ponce — were chosen to ask their questions to the pope.
Organizers do not expect the event to simply be teens asking the Holy Father questions — rather, they are hoping to foster true dialogue, with the pope asking the young people questions, prompting a response. In addition to the prepared questions, they said they expect “live, unexpected and unscripted moments.”
“It will be the pope’s moment to share with the youth, but also our youth will have their moment to share with the Holy Father their concerns and the things that weigh heavy in their hearts, their joys, their challenges,” Perez said. “It will be a moment of blessing.”
With the event less than a week away, excitement — and a few nerves — are building among the teenagers. Organizers keep reminding them to simply focus on the pope.
“We keep trying to remind them that yes, there will be thousands of people watching, but in that moment, you are talking to the pope, so focus on him and he will be focusing on you. Let everything else kind of fade away,” McGrady said. “They seem to be absolutely thrilled and very, very humbled by the opportunity.”
Following the event, a number of bishops will gather with young people over lunch to learn about their lived experiences and how the Church can best serve them, in an attempt to continue to foster dialogue.
“Between the dialogue with Pope Leo and the lunch, it’s going to be this experience of exchange of hearts,” McGrady said. “I hope
United States
