Jubilee of Youth 2025 Reflection by Beatrice Lanting
I’ve always wanted to travel to Italy, but I never expected that I would go to Rome for a mission trip with Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO). I went with 34 students/alumni from across Canada, 5 other staff, and more people from CCO who were attending as a pilgrimage or to be on the worship team. We were in Rome from July 27 to August 4 during the Jubilee of Youth, where about a million young people gathered from around the world.
Because I was going for a mission trip, Jesus gave me the expectation that the Jubilee of Youth wouldn’t just be about what I would get out of it, but also about what others would receive.
Before we headed to Rome, our foundress Angele Regnier reminded us that during the Jubilee, we would meet people who are spiritually open. We knew that there would be a lot of people there who know about Jesus, but “do not know Christ, or do not know Him well enough” (Pope St. John Paul II).
That’s why Jesus gave us opportunities to share the Gospel there. Lives were changed.
Jesus worked in us as we ran the Blessed Carlo Acutis Centre, which was hosted at a church called Chiesa di San Marcello. A relic of part of Blessed Carlo’s heart was there. Over the course of a few days, about 25,000 pilgrims came, and 6,000 of them wrote intentions on prayer cards.
Jesus called our students to stand outside the church, inviting people who were walking by to come inside. By His grace, students initiated spiritual conversations with people inside and outside the church, sometimes taking the opportunity to pray over them.
Many people whom we spoke to said that Jesus was part of their life, but they wanted Him to be at the centre.
When we shared the Gospel message with them using CCO’s Ultimate Relationship booklet, it was so simple for them to say yes to having Jesus at the centre of their life, because they were already at a tipping point in their faith journey. All it took was Holy Spirit bringing us together at the right place and the right time, so that people could make a lifechanging decision through a simple conversation with a stranger.
At that church, our students shared their personal testimonies of how Jesus changed their lives. He gave us the opportunity to host an event there called Nightfever, which included relic veneration and praise and worship. The following night, we hosted an event called Summit, which included Adoration and praise and worship. Pilgrims from around the world encountered Jesus as our students engaged in the mission of reaching out to them.
Jesus blessed us with the opportunity to train about 200 young people from France in how to share the Gospel using CCO’s Ultimate Relationship booklet. He helped us present a similar training to mainly Italian-speakers at the Youth Arise Festival. We also attended an event by Jesus Youth, where a couple of people from CCO shared about how our movement evangelizes.
Jesus also led us to attend large jubilee events, such as the opening Mass at St. Peter’s Square, the Canadian Gathering, a papal audience, and the closing Mass. It was beautiful to see Pope Leo, and to look out at crowds of young people and see flags from different countries around the world.
Jesus drew in crowds of people through our times of public praise and worship, and He gave us the grace to share the Gospel spontaneously in random places around Rome.
Jesus taught me that there is life giving joy in sacrifice: in laying my life down, giving my life away, and pouring myself out in community with other people who are doing the same thing, as He says in Matthew 16:25: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
During this mission trip, I saw the reality of Jesus’ call to live out this passage: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; He has sent me to bring good news to the afflicted, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord and a day of vindication by our God; to comfort all who mourn; to place on those who mourn in Zion a diadem instead of ashes, to give them oil of gladness instead of mourning, a glorious mantle instead of a faint spirit.” (Isaiah 61:3)
The mission continues here in Winnipeg and in every place around the world. How is Jesus calling you to experience hope and proclaim freedom during this jubilee year?
In Christ,