‘Like Beyonce’: How ‘rock star’ Pope Leo XIV is energising Catholic youth
Por Alex Croft — – World RSS Feed
‘Like Beyonce’: How ‘rock star’ Pope Leo XIV is energising Catholic youth
Tickets for an 80,000-seater stadium event in France sold out in less than an hour, with young people among those hoping to catch a glimpse of a very modern pontiff
Alex Croft Saturday 26 September 2026 14:59 BST
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The Pope arrived in France to the kind of reception normally reserved for rock stars and boy bands.
An estimated 700,000 people gathered on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris on Saturday as Pope Leo arrived for the biggest event of his weekend visit to France.
Chants of “Leo, Leo” and “Long live the Pope” echoed down the tree-lined boulevard as the pope was driven by in an open-top popemobile. The vehicle paused frequently, with Leo blessing babies, children and people with disabilities passed forward by volunteers.
It’s just the latest indication of Leo XIV’s appeal, particularly among the young.
open image in galleryVast crowds steamed through Rome last September, to witness the historic canonization of the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint, 15-year-old Carlo Acutis.
Thousands of young people flocked to Vatican City to pay tribute to the British-Italian computer enthusiast, who used the internet to spread the word of Catholicism.
One year on, the canonization can be seen as a symbolic event, both of a church transitioning into a digital era and one that seeks to provide new role models for the young.
At the helm of this transition is Pope Leo XIV, who has received welcomes from large crowds of young people worldwide since his election in May 2025.
“At 70, Pope Leo is obviously not himself a young man,” Ruth Gledhill, assistant editor of Catholic international paper The Tablet, told The Independent.
“Yet he has an air of youthful vigour around him, he is sporty and fit. He also seems genuinely bereft of any ego.”
open image in galleryEarlier this month, tickets to see the US-born Pope in the 80,000-seat Stade de France near Paris this weekend sold out in less than an hour.
Among them was 21-year-old Allan, who had 10 members of his family on hand trying to secure a ticket online. It was much the same kind of approach many music fans take when trying to get into hugely popular festivals like Glastonbury.
“[It was] like it was Beyonce,” he told Le Parisien of the challenge in securing a spot at the forthcoming event.
And last August, Pope Leo brought a youth jubilee to a close by holding a mass for more than one million people. Dubbed the “Catholic Woodstock” by Italian media, the Vatican said it drew young attendees from 146 different countries.
open image in galleryPope Leo is regarded both as a product and a driver of the growing interest in Catholicism among young people, a candidate who was perfectly suited to the role of being a youth-facing pontiff as the amount of interest grew.
“For the first time we have a pope who personally used social media before being elected to the Chair of Peter,” says Alessandro Gisotti, deputy director of Vatican Media. “This is a major development in the Church’s communication.”
The Pope’s understanding of the importance of digital communications is “particularly appealing to younger generations, who see in Leo XIV a pope who is in tune with their way of communicating”, he adds.
Leo is also seen by many as having a common, down-to-earth approach that might appeal to the young.
In May, he went viral for using the “6-7” gesture while riding the popemobile in Madrid, and he appears to share many of the same interests of ordinary Catholics around the world, from apps to sports.
open image in galleryChristopher Lamb, CNN’s Vatican correspondent, writes in American Hope: “He’s a pope who understands the online world: he plays Wordle with his brother (and uses a different starter word each day), communicates with WhatsApp, and was even spotted using the Duolingo language app in the early hours of the morning.
“His love of sports, particularly baseball, helps him connect with people, whether he’s holding a tennis racquet with Jannik Sinner or sporting the cap of his beloved Chicago White Sox.
“When passing in his popemobile he was even heard shouting, ‘They lost!’ in response to someone who’d yelled, ‘Go Cubs!’, the White Sox rivals.”
Despite the apparent enthusiasm for Leo, the statistics will be of concern to the church. A a report published by the official statistics agency, INSEE, showed that only 25 percent of French 18-to-49-year-olds identified as Catholic, compared with 43 percent a decade earlier.
In a visit on Saturday with newly baptised Catholics at the Catholic University of Paris, Leo urged the French church not to be “naively optimistic” about the recent increase in adherents.
“We must recognise, welcome and protect the small flame that the Holy Spirit has kindled in the darkness of the night, the tiny seed that strives to grow even amid the thorns,” he said.
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