Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday warned of a growing mental health and domestic violence crisis in the world and called for public health systems to address the “invisible and widespread malaise” of depression and mental health issues affecting societies “that consider themselves advanced.”
As part of his official visit to Spain, Pope Leo held a prayer vigil with 40,000 attendees at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium in Barcelona on the fourth day of his tour. The vigil, described by Spanish outlets as much different than the massive one held in Madrid on Sunday, saw the pope engage and offer comfort to three Spanish youth who shared their stories and struggles with depression and attempted suicide, abuse in their households, forgiveness, and crisis of one’s Catholic faith.
Pope Leo urged the faithful to not spiritualize pain, superficially attributing it to “God’s will” or to some mysterious plan, as this “risks minimizing that suffering, silencing it and hurting people.”
“God does not want suffering. He carries it with us and invites us to trust in him with perseverance,” Pope Leo said. “Let us remember what Pope Francis said: with God, life is always reborn.”
First, the pope heard a man named Ferrán, recently baptized into the Catholic faith this past Easter. The man asked Pope Leo for guidance on how to keep his gaze lifted to discover his own vocation “when society pressures us constantly to look at the ground or only at ourselves.”
Pope Leo noted that “many young people and adults are rediscovering the Christian faith, sometimes after having drifted away from God over a period of time.” He advised the young man that “our desire for truth and happiness requires a broader horizon. And this restlessness is a gift that God himself has given us: We are made for the infinite.”
“First, we must cultivate that healthy sense of restlessness. In our societies, the idolatry of profit and performance, the drive to always produce and win, as well as the cult of self-image, are nothing more than anesthetics designed to numb our conscience and mold it to a certain vision of society,” Pope Leo answered.
“When people learn to pause and value what is important, appreciate time in a new way and reflect on their own lives while allowing themselves to be enlightened by the Gospel, they also develop a critical perspective on a social system that does not put people first and creates situations of injustice and existential poverty at various levels,” he continued.
Pope Leo then heard the story of Carmina, a young woman who described depression to the pontiff as a “silent illness that affects many people, both young and old, and brings with it darkness, isolation and immeasurable pain.”
She recounted that she attempted to commit suicide, but that she was there thanks to God giving her a second chance, something that she said she will be “eternally grateful” for. Speaking on behalf of those who suffer from the same troubles, she asked Pope Leo, “Where can we see God when the darkness is absolute and we cannot take it anymore? How can we trust in God when it seems that nothing — not even our own life — is worth it?”
“It is important to recognize how mental health is increasingly threatened in the context of societies that consider themselves advanced. This is a sign that there is something deeply wrong with a certain notion of progress that subjects people to pressures, expectations, and tensions that compromise healthy balances,” Pope Leo responded.
“For this reason, we need a healthcare system that prioritizes this invisible and widespread malaise, which also affects young people,” he continued.
The pope also listened to the testimony of another young woman from a poor neighborhood in Barcelona named Cecilia whose father tried to kill her mother — saved only because a young man “stepped in and died instead.”
After her father went to prison and her mother turned to drugs, she was sent to a juvenile detention center. Although she was baptized at the center, she told Pope Leo that she “rebelled against God many times” during her teenage years. She asked the pontiff for advice on how to forgive her father and truly be reconciled with God.
Pope Leo told the young woman that many crime reports reflect a toxic climate in family relationships marked by abuse, oppression, and violence against women, leading to femicide. He emphasized, “We are all called to address this dramatic reality, which has anthropological and cultural roots, both personally and as a society, because we are responsible for confronting it in all its dimensions.”
“We cannot attribute to God what has been entrusted to our responsibility; we cannot imagine that God, from on high, will automatically respond to our needs or miraculously prevent evil from happening. He has endowed us with intelligence and will, given us a conscience, clothing us in dignity and freedom, and above all has come among us in his Son, Jesus Christ, showing us the path to follow so that our lives may be fully human and so that justice, peace, and fraternity may reign in our society,” Pope Leo told the young woman.
Towards the end of his homily, Pope Leo encouraged everyone to continue searching for God with openness and trust, confident that the light of the Gospel can lead them “from night into light.”
“Let us open ourselves to the gift of the Spirit, seeking the Lord like Nicodemus, and welcoming the light of his Gospel with the certainty that we will experience a new life within us, a presence that blesses, a gratuitous love that will help us pass from night into light,” he said. “For God does not want anything to be lost, and even now he desires to give us eternal life and lead us to a happiness that has no end.”
The event also saw musical and artistic performances celebrating Catalonian culture — including Castells, tall human towers performed in annual festivities across Catalonian towns and cities that are recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The Spanish public broadcaster RTVE noted that flags from Hispanic nations could be seen among the crowd alongside a majority of Spanish and Vatican flags.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
