In his weekly audience, Pope Francis shares his experiences at World Youth Day in Portugal and what they reveal about today’s young people.

“I’m an African American woman in a space that is doing the kind of work that…Christ is calling us to do,” Cynthia Bailey Manns, who will participate in the Synod on Synodality as a voting member in October, said in an interview.

Signaling the Vatican’s growing engagement in efforts to ensure the ethical development of new technologies, the Vatican has announced that “Artificial Intelligence and Peace” will be the theme for the next World Day of Peace.

“I think that there we have a piece of information that is beautiful and a girl who has recovered her sight,” Cardinal Omella said. “Doctors will now have to assess whether or not it was incurable,” the first step in the official declaration of a miracle.

“I have had two [face-to-face] meetings with Pope Francis, and other members of the government have met him, too,” Ukraine’s President Zelensky said in an interview. “I am most grateful to him for these encounters. He is helping us!”

Nearly everything Pope Benedict ever wrote or said in public was visibly animated by a concern to encourage—and to answer—the honest existential questions that young people are brave enough to raise.

After a five-day trip to Portugal, which recently came to terms with its own clerical sex abuse crisis, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church must abandon its practice of covering up abuse and instead be "very open" about how it is confronting the crime.

In his homily for the closing Mass at World Youth Day, Pope Francis preached on The Transfiguration and its lessons for young people. He also announced that there will be a Jubilee for young people in Rome in 2025 and that the next World Youth Day will be held in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, in 2027.

Though he did not mention Ukraine specifically, Pope Francis used his visit today to the Fátima shrine in Portugal to pray for peace.

Pope Francis preaches on Jesus’ love and desires for us at the Way of the Cross at World Youth Day.