In Barcelona, Pope addresses questions from young people about depression, family violence

June 10, 2026

Pope Leo XIV addressed questions from three young people in Barcelona last evening and preached that the nights we experience “can be an opportunity to receive new life, to change and be renewed, to be ‘born again from above,’ as Jesus tells Nicodemus.”

The Pontiff addressed the young people during a prayer vigil in Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium, which seats 56,000 (video 1, video 2).

The first question came from a recently baptized young adult who spoke about the emptiness of growing up “hearing that the only goal in life is to be productive, succeed and maintain our image.” He asked, “How can we keep our gaze lifted up toward what truly matters, when society pressures us constantly to look at the ground or only at ourselves?”

Pope Leo responded that “restlessness is a gift that God himself gives: We are made for the infinite, and that is why every finite horizon, every step, every achievement—while satisfying us—also propels us forward and invites us to keep searching, to search as we move forward, but above all, to search by ‘going inward,’ that is, by delving deeper.”

The Pope advised the young man to “cultivate moments of silence, perhaps pausing for a few minutes each day to read the Gospel and speak with God. Try to walk this inner path together with others, allowing yourselves to be accompanied on the journey and engaging with priests, religious and people who, like us, have set out on this path.”

A young woman then recounted her experience of depression and surviving a suicide attempt. She asked, “Where can we see God when the darkness is absolute and we cannot take it anymore?”

The Pope responded:

As I listened to you, I thought of the hours of darkness, anguish and pain that Jesus experienced as the hour of his death drew near. The Gospels, in the accounts of the Last Supper and the prayer in Gethsemane, emphasize that evening was falling and that night was coming. Shortly before his death on the cross, we read that “darkness came over the whole land.” But, in reality, this was not merely a matter of personal suffering. The Son of God took all the anguish, loneliness and suffering of humanity upon himself, in his own flesh.

In those dark hours, as he was dying on the cross, Jesus shared our pain and revealed to us the face of a compassionate God, who bears our sorrows, who suffers with us, weeps our tears and remains at our side with his presence full of love and mercy. Going through this experience is difficult, as Sacred Scripture attests time and again. There are moments of darkness and suffering that our society silences because certain cultural norms demand that we always be victorious and perfect, and so our limitations, fragility and pain must be eliminated or confined to the deafening silence of loneliness or even shame. And in these moments, we may instinctively think that God has abandoned us as well.

However, the cross of Jesus tells us that God does not abandon us, that he is at our side, crucified with us in moments of pain and extreme loneliness, that he gathers not only our tears but also the cry of our suffering that others do not hear—a cry that Jesus made his own on the cross, saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

“In times of pain, at least as much as possible, we must open ourselves to someone who can help us utter a simple prayer, who can accompany us with discretion without rushing to explain that pain, who can take us by the hand and lead us out of this cry,” the Pope added. “These experiences also offer a message to us believers, to the whole Church: we must not spiritualize pain, superficially attributing it to ‘God’s will’ or to some mysterious plan of his, because 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.”

The final question came from a young woman whose father was imprisoned for attempting to murder her mother; after mother became addicted to drugs, she was removed from her home. She asked, “Holy Father, how can I forgive my father for almost leaving me without a mother? How can I truly be reconciled with God?”

The Pope replied that

so many crime reports, even today, reflect a toxic climate in family relationships marked by abuse and oppression and, in particular, by violence against women, which unfortunately often leads to femicide. 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. He has given us his own Spirit, precisely so that love may be the key to all our human relationships.

If violence exists, if selfishness prevails, if even love among family members turns into hatred, we must question the dynamics of our society, the culture of individualism and the temptation of violence—but not God.

Pope Leo described forgiveness as “a long journey and a process that requires great patience. It is an effort we must make, both on a personal level and through other means of support, as well as inner reconciliation.”

He added:

We must not lose heart: we move forward in small steps toward forgiveness. Reconciliation with the past is gradual. Above all, we must not think that forgiveness always and in every case means returning to the previous situation or having a close relationship with those who have hurt us, especially when there was violence.

We can maintain a good disposition of heart toward the person, reject all forms of hatred or revenge, strive to repair the relationship as much as possible and perhaps pray for him or her. All of this helps us to enter more and more into the dynamic of forgiveness and to be reconciled with God and with others. We are forgiven sinners; we are at peace, are able to forgive and are able to be peacemakers.

In a homily, Pope Leo reflected on Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus at night.

“Brothers and sisters, Nicodemus teaches us that these nights—which accompany our lives, our journey of faith, and the history in which we live—are a time of blessing, a place for rebirth, a womb that always gives birth to new life,” he preached. “These nights strip us bare and return us to what is essential ... These nights restore us to the humility of knowing how to look at ourselves in truth, beyond the presumption of thinking that our journey is already complete and that we move forward as if we had a clear understanding of everything, everyone and even God.”

The Pope concluded:

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. 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.

Through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, may the Lord grant us the grace to open ourselves to him and to be shaken by the wind of his Spirit.

 

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Further information:

• Apostolic Journey to Spain: Prayer Vigil (Dicastery for Communication - Vatican Media, 6/9/26)
• Pope in Barcelona: “We are made for the infinite” (Vatican News, 6/9/26)