![\"Pope](\"http:\/\/ewtnvatican.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/VATICANO-thumbnails-3.jpg\")
<\/a>Pope Leo XIV greets young people at Madrid\u2019s Plaza de Lima, June 6, 2026. The Holy Father began his six-day apostolic visit to Spain meeting with the country\u2019s royalty and civil leaders along with hundreds of thousands of youth. | Credit: Daniel Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez\/EWTN News<\/p>\nThe pope was especially comfortable in Spanish, a language in which he spoke on several occasions. At one point he told the crowd of hundreds of thousands of youth: \u201cYou can change history, do it with love.\u201d<\/p>\n
At another time, he unambiguously encouraged young people not to fear vocational commitment: \u201cNever be afraid of having a vocation for priestly life or religious life.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he added: \u201cYou don\u02bct have to be afraid to get married and start a family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Addressing questions from young people, the pope said at one point: \u201cThe disciples of Jesus are always contemporaries, but never prisoners of the passing time. We are free in Christ!\u201d<\/p>\n
The pontiff stressed that Christ frees \u201cwith his love,\u201d a love that leaves the person \u201calways free in the face of all coercion and deception.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are free from fashions, because we are disciples of the truth; we are open to the future, because we know that death does not await us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Likewise, he entrusted young people with a great \u201cmission,\u201d namely: \u201cBe human! Men and women of flesh and blood. Not appearances, but reliable faces. People who seek justice because they are hungry for it, as for the daily bread.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are human as Christ is, the perfect man, the Risen One who shares history with us at all times. Cultivating this commitment, look at the Apostles, the first Christians, inhabitants of a pagan world,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Before his speech, the Pope heard several testimonies. Among them was that of Niurka, a young 33-year-old Cuban lawyer who arrived in Spain a little over a year ago, pushed by the serious economic and political crisis of her country. \u201cI was very scared. But the Church welcomed me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Khadry also spoke of his experience coming from Senegal. He arrived in Spain in 2020 after surviving the dangerous Atlantic route to the Canary Islands. In a gesture full of symbolism, he gave the pope his residence card, reflecting the importance of regularization in starting a new life.<\/p>\n
In his remarks, Leo XIV also issued a warning to Christians against the risk of being dragged by currents outside the Gospel.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that, frequently, Christians \u201callow themselves to be infected by attitudes marked by worldly ideologies or by political and economic positions that lead to unfair generalizations and misleading conclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that the exercise of charity is despised or ridiculed, as if it were the fixation of some and not the incandescent core of the ecclesial mission, makes me think that it is always necessary to read the Gospel again, so as not to run the risk of replacing it with the worldly mentality,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n
Follow the LIVE updates from EWTN News for Pope Leo\u2019s Trip in Spain.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was first published by ACI Prensa<\/a>, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pope spoke with hundreds of thousands of young people in Madrid on the first day of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17316,20,17577,17578,17579,82,3489,17580,9933,9506,17,17491,2282],"class_list":["post-36248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-christians","tag-culture","tag-gospel","tag-khadry","tag-love","tag-madrid","tag-marriage","tag-plaza-de-lima","tag-pope-leo","tag-senegal","tag-spain","tag-vocation","tag-young-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}