At Europe\u2019s largest university, the pontiff denounced a culture that reduces people to numbers.<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV visited Rome\u2019s public La Sapienza University on Thursday, the largest university in Europe and one of Italy\u2019s most prestigious academic institutions, where he denounced the \u201cgreat lie\u201d he said is causing anxiety and depression among young people.<\/p>\n
Speaking in the university\u2019s Aula Magna after a brief moment of prayer in the \u201cDivina Sapienza\u201d chapel, the pope referred to the \u201cspiritual malaise\u201d affecting many university students and recalled that \u201cwe are not the sum of what we have, nor matter randomly assembled in a mute cosmos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a desire, not an algorithm!\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
Leo XIV strongly criticized \u201cthe pervasive lie of a distorted system that reduces people to numbers, heightens competitiveness, and abandons us to spirals of anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor everyone there are difficult seasons,\u201d he added. \u201cYet some may have the impression that they never end. Today this depends increasingly on the blackmail of expectations and the pressure to perform.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pope was welcomed upon his arrival by the university\u2019s rector, Professor Antonella Polimeni, who accompanied him through the campus and during his visit to the exhibition \u201cLa Sapienza and the Papacy,\u201d which explores the historical and cultural ties between the University of Rome and the Holy See.<\/p>\n
That bond has not been without tension. In 2008, the university\u2019s then-rector invited Pope Benedict XVI to inaugurate the academic year, but a heated controversy, driven by a small group of professors and students, ultimately derailed the visit. The German pope decided not to attend. The address he had prepared, published days later, argued that \u201cthe Christian message should always be an encouragement toward truth and thus a force against the pressure of power and interests.\u201d The following Sunday, some 200,000 people gathered in St. Peter\u2019s Square in a show of support.<\/p>\n
The atmosphere Thursday was radically different. Students waited for Leo XIV outside the building, greeting him with enthusiasm and joy while chanting \u201cLong live the pope.\u201d Because of the large turnout, many had to remain outside and follow his speech on screens set up for the occasion.<\/p>\n
Leo XIV did not mention the 2008 episode. In his address, he described a world \u201cdistorted by wars and by words of war,\u201d warning against \u201ca contamination of reason that, from the geopolitical level, invades every social relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Correcting the simplification that creates enemies<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a contamination of reason that, from the geopolitical level, invades every social relationship. The simplification that creates enemies must be corrected, especially in the university, through care for complexity and the wise exercise of memory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cry of \u2018never again war!\u2019 of my predecessors, so in tune with the rejection of war enshrined in the Italian Constitution, urges us toward a spiritual alliance with the sense of justice that dwells in the hearts of young people, with their vocation not to close themselves off within ideologies or national borders,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In that context, the pope criticized the rise in military spending, particularly in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet us not call defense a rearmament that increases tensions and insecurity, impoverishes investments in education and health care, contradicts trust in diplomacy, and enriches elites that care nothing for the common good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military spending rose for the 11th consecutive year in 2025, reaching a record $2.887 trillion. Europe accounted for a large share of that increase, with a 14% rise in arms investment, reaching $864 billion.<\/p>\n
The Holy Father also warned about the risks of the use of artificial intelligence, both in military and civilian contexts, and urged vigilance so that its development does not \u201crelieve human decisions of responsibility or worsen the tragedy of conflicts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon, in Iran describes the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n
Faced with this scenario, the pope issued a direct appeal to young people: \u201cBe a radical \u2018yes\u2019 to life! Yes to innocent life, yes to young life, yes to the life of peoples crying out for peace and justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
History does not fall hopelessly into the hands of death<\/p>\n
Leo XIV also devoted part of his address to ecology, citing Laudato Si\u2019, the 2015 encyclical of his predecessor Pope Francis.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeyond good intentions and some efforts in that direction, the situation does not seem to have improved,\u201d he lamented, encouraging young people to \u201ctransform restlessness into prophecy\u201d and not to give in to discouragement.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially those who believe know that history does not fall hopelessly into the hands of death, but is always guarded, no matter what happens, by a God who creates life from nothing, who gives without taking, who shares without consuming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The pope also criticized the \u201cimplosion of a possessive and consumerist paradigm\u201d and encouraged university students to seek a \u201chorizon of meaning\u201d beyond immediacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo little considered by a society with ever fewer children, you show that humanity is capable of a future when it builds that future with wisdom,\u201d he told them.<\/p>\n
He also emphasized the value of teaching, defining it as a form of charity \u201cas much as helping a migrant at sea, a poor person in the street, or a despairing conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means always and in every case loving human life, valuing its possibilities, so that one can speak to the hearts of young people, not only to their knowledge,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
For Benedetta Marchiori, a student at La Sapienza, the pope\u2019s visit was a moment of encouragement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gave so much joy, so much happiness, so much hope,\u201d Marchiori told EWTN News. \u201cIt is truly beautiful to hear someone speak who really sees so many different situations every day and brings them back to us \u2014 reminding us that we truly have an active role in our own growth, through our study and through being truly centered. It is really beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chiara Clementoni, a medical student, said the pope\u2019s address was \u201creally encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea that we are not the sum of what has happened to us, but that through knowledge and study we can also build ourselves as people and open ourselves more to the mysteries that God has placed in nature, that God has placed in everything we can make the object of our study,\u201d Clementoni said.<\/p>\n
At the end of the meeting, the university gave the pope a reproduction of a stone from the Holy Sepulcher, where a team of La Sapienza archaeologists has been conducting excavations in the basilica in Jerusalem since March 2022.<\/p>\n
The project, carried out in collaboration with the various communities that guard the site \u2014 the Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land, the Latin Patriarchate, and the Greek and Armenian churches \u2014 will make it possible for the first time to reconstruct the full stratigraphic history of the building, erected in the fourth century during the time of Emperor Constantine and his mother, St. Helena.<\/p>\n
Ishmael Adibuah contributed reporting to this article.<\/p>\n
This story\u00a0was first published\u00a0by ACI Prensa, EWTN News\u2019 Spanish-language sister service. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.<\/p>\n