ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 19, 2025 /
07:00 am
Two weeks ago, 1 million young people returned to their countries after participating in the Jubilee of Youth, an experience that undoubtedly left a profound mark on their lives of faith. Now, beyond what they experienced in Rome, they have a mission: to take that message and testimony home.
In the days leading up to the long-awaited event, Pope Leo XIV exhorted a group of young Peruvian pilgrims to “keep everything you live in these days in your heart, but not to conserve it only for yourselves. This is very important: Let what you will experience here be not only for yourselves. We must learn how to share.”
Being an example of the love of Jesus Christ
Marta Zambrano, a 25-year-old Spaniard who participated as a volunteer in the jubilee, reflected on this calling. Speaking to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, she noted that those of us “who have been fortunate enough to experience the jubilee have a very important mission.”
The young woman from Cádiz is clear about that mission: “To be witnesses of the faith and pass on the teachings of everything we have learned from the testimonies, catechesis, homilies of the Holy Father… even from our own experience or encounter with Jesus Christ.”
For the young Spaniard, the best way to share everything she experienced is “by setting an example with our attitude and reflecting the love that Jesus Christ poured out on us.”
In particular, she emphasized the need for others “to see in us that joy and that we know we are loved by Christ, which makes us different from the rest of the people in this world” that tries to pull people in the wrong direction.
Zambrano said she hopes that by exuding that light and joy, the people around her can say: “I want that in my life too.”
She explained that people will thus be able to “bring the world closer to the path of truth and life, of fulfillment and true happiness and peace of heart, which is Jesus Christ.”
A clearer and more hopeful outlook
Claudia Arrieta, 29, from Madrid, said the best way to bear witness is by example: “changing our way of thinking, speaking, interacting, working, and relating to others in our daily lives. That those around us see a change in us, that they ask themselves why we have this way of being with others.”
“The best way to tell the world about what we experienced in Rome this summer is for each of the pilgrims who attended the gathering with the pope to return to our lives with a clearer and more hopeful outlook,” she added.
She also told ACI Prensa her hope that the words Pope Leo XIV addressed to young people inviting them to seek holiness would be “a message that comes directly from God for mankind.”
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“The pope,” the young Spaniard added, “is an instrument that God uses to tell us all to be holy in our relationships.”
She said one of the gifts given in the pilgrim’s “kit” was a rosary and that “since I returned, I see people with the jubilee rosary on the street, in a restaurant, at the supermarket, at Mass,” she said.
Prayer and discernment to take in what they experienced
María Fernanda de Luna Martínez, a 34-year-old Mexican, traveled to Rome with 48 young people from different parts of her country. For her, sharing what she experienced in Rome “is a very great responsibility and duty.”
De Luna, who works in the social communications department of the Salesians in Mexico, said she believes an experience like this generates “many emotions and feelings that take time to settle in.”
When young people return home, she noted, they sometimes “arrive all revved up and eager to take on the world.” She therefore advised “discernment, prayer, accompaniment, and community” so that they don’t quickly forget what they’ve experienced and avoid becoming discouraged.
In this context, she specified that it’s important to ask three questions: “What moved me during the jubilee? What impacted me the most? What does God want from me with this?”
The answers, she said, “can shed light on where to begin,” and it should begin at home, with friends and the community. “Let our commitment be to bring someone else to an upcoming event, like World Youth Day in Seoul in 2027, so that that person may also bear witness that the Church is alive and that there are indeed young people in it, in love with Jesus.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Almudena Martínez-Bordiú is Rome correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN.
